Lost in the Lost World

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'They're not shooting at us, are they?' I asked.

'I doubt it,' Mauro sighed. 'But let's go. If they're Brazilians, they're here illegally. They don't like to be seen.'

At the end of each day Mauro introduced me to more of his tribe. There was a nuggety character named Javier, a former Caracas legal clerk who had, inexplicably, come to the Lost World to raise bees-the African killer variety. He confessed that his arms were stung so often they blew up 'like Popeye's.' And there were young artists trying to make a living from the sale of their handicrafts. I wasn't buying.

Increasingly desperate to escape Kawaik, I hiked to the fringe of the last tepui, scrambling past the array of prehistoric mosses, lichens and triffid-like bromeliads that first brought the region fame. This was 'El Abismo,' the Abyss. A cliff dropped straight down to the jungle canopy, and an ocean of vegetation stretched off unbroken, brushed with pale mist, toward the horizon. You could picture it continuing for thousands of miles, across Brazil, to the Andes of Peru and Bolivia. It was impossible to imagine all the dramas going on beneath that green carpet; the outside world, once obsessed with the Amazon, no longer seems to care. And so it remains, true to the theme around here, lost as the wayward souls of Kawaik.

FromEscape(September, 1999.) Subscriptions: $18/yr. (4 issues) from Box 462255, Escondido, CA 92046.

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