father was onto his favourite topic.
Zinzi fell asleep sitting upright listening to her headphones. Ollie closed his eyes and listened to the students joking with each other in Spanish. But his eyes flew open as the truck’s engine juddered and came to an abrupt stop.
His father spoke rapid Spanish to Rodrigo, the driver.
“What’s up, Dad?”
“Run out of petrol. We’ve got a jerrycan full. But we’ll stop here overnight and set out again tomorrow. Might as well.”
“Here?” Ollie looked up into the trees that disappeared into the mist at the side of the muddy road. He saw Rodrigo picking up a gun from the cab of the truck. He leant it against a tree. Ollie hoped it had a safety catch. It was an AK-47. Or at least he thought it was. He’d seen pictures of the ones used in Vietnam. Did AK-47s have safety catches?
It had stopped raining. Vine flowers were hanging down everywhere like bright red stars. Ollie felt Zinzi watching him as he strung up his hammock between two trees. “Your knots are all wrong, Ollie.”
“What makes you such an expert on knots suddenly?”
She laughed. “Let’s swim. There’s a stream over there.”
“What about alligators?”
His father shook his head. “There won’t be any so high up in the mountains. But, all the same, watch out. Take a stick and probe the water first.”
Felix and Alonso had the same idea. They were stripped down to their shorts and were already prodding the pool with long sticks. And that was when the anaconda took Felix Ballesteros. Except right then, Ollie didn’t know whether it was Felix or Alonso. Nor did he know that he, Oliver Strange, would willingly jump into the same pool of water as an anaconda.
3
Snake Feast
“He needs immobilising in case he has serious spine injuries. Tear up some strips of cloth and soak them in mud. Find some strong strips of bark, Zinzi. Cut down some long tree vines, Ollie. We’ll wrap him in the mud-soaked cloths and bark and tie them on, like the locals do. The mud dries and makes a basic cast.”
Ollie fingered his knife. Zinzi had done a good job of cleaning it. But still it was odd knowing his favourite blade had last been stuck into the flesh of an anaconda. He chose the second blade, rather, to cut the lengths of vine.
After he was wrapped up with mud, bark and vine leaves, Felix himself looked like a strange, fat and sluggish snake.
Rodrigo got down to skinning the anaconda. He started by slitting the belly and slithering his knife beneath the snake’s skin. Ollie couldn’t watch. Even with the skin half off, it was still too much like a real anaconda. When it was done and the skin stretched out and nailed to a tree to dry, his father said, “Come, Ollie! I need a picture.”
Ollie posed with his back to it. Grandma and his friends at school in Tooting would never believe this was him – Oliver Strange – standing in front of an anaconda.
That night they ate roasted anaconda – all except him.
Zinzi held some out on the tip of her knife. “Try it. It tastes like a combo of chicken and tuna.”
But Ollie could only think of those tight coils.
Later, still awake in his hammock, he took out his Slimlite torch and searched the branches of the tree above. Did anacondas travel in pairs?
The forest was full of noises. Whispers and chirrups. Whistles and grunts. He lay, trying to pick up the sounds. Sometime in the night, he was woken by something against his arm. His body froze as he waited for the slither of a coil across his chest.
“Ollie?”
He jumped upright so fast he almost toppled out of the hammock. “Zinzi? What are you doing?”
“I thought you were awake.”
“Well, I wasn’t.”
“I wanted to talk to you about El Dorado, the city of gold.”
Ollie groaned. “It doesn’t exist, Zinzi. Go back to your own hammock. I’m trying to sleep.”
In the morning, the mist turned everyone into ghosts as they drifted around the camp stoking up the fire and rummaging about to find a kettle and mugs for coffee. Even in the misty darkness Rodrigo was wearing his mirror sunglasses as he poked about under the bonnet of the truck. A strong smell of diesel wafted across as he tipped a plastic drum against a funnel balanced in the fuel tank’s opening.
Ollie slurped up the last of his cornmeal porridge.
“Why were you so grumpy last night?” Zinzi was dunking a corn biscuit into a mug of coffee.
“We’re on the trail of frogs, not gold. If no one else has found the city of gold in five hundred years, we’re not going to suddenly discover it in a few weeks.”
“We might be lucky.”
“We might also get our heads chopped off by a sharp machete.”
Felix sat down carefully next to him. Ollie knew it was Felix, as there were distinct purple welts all over his body and bits of mud still stuck to his skin. Ollie eyed him. He was clutching his side. He didn’t look too comfortable. “You okay?” He tried out some Spanish. “Está bien?”
Felix smiled. “Sí. Enérgico!”
Zinzi laughed. “You have to be enérgico to fight a snake that size.”
Oliver’s father spoke to him in rapid Spanish.
Felix nodded. “Sí. Muchas gracias.”
“There’s not much you can do about a broken rib. Broken ribs have to mend themselves.”
Ollie smiled. “So, you’re a medical doctor now, Dad. Not just a frog doctor.”
His father pretended to look serious. “I prefer the word herpetologist to frog doctor, Oliver.”
“So, what now?”
“We’re off to find a super frog the size of a paperclip. Rodrigo will take us to a place where we’ll hire a motorboat. Further up the river, where it gets shallow, we’ll meet some Embera guides. They’ll take us by canoe to their village where we’ll get their permission to look for the frogs.”
“What about guerrilla fighters?”
“Right now the area is calm. We have to trust Rodrigo.”
Ollie eyed Rodrigo. He wasn’t so sure about trusting him. What was going on behind those mirror glasses?
The forest was dense on both sides and with the mist gone, Ollie could see exactly how tall the trees were. Thick bands of creepers wound through the foliage like snakes searching
