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Three in the front. Four in the back. Two in the bed. I’m riding shotgun in an old rusty pickup. Ricardo reaches between Mario’s legs to shift gears (a constant source of laughter). Puttering up the road, three birds join us inside of the cabin. No knives, guns, or bows on this hunting trip. We’re fighting fire with fire, hunting for roosters, using roosters as weapons.
Gringo Pablo upgrades from truck bed to cabin before departing the sandy streets of Town. Our destination: La Parte Alta. Pablo opens an oxidized mint box filled with marijuana crumbs and a cracked glass pipe and our hunting hodgepodge flies down the lone paved road at over twice the legal limit. Roosters cluck while he blows smoke into their beaks. Meanwhile, Chivo Gringo tries convincing one of the birds to bite onto Mario’s ear. I’m sick with laughter inside of our mobile marijuana sauna, remembering what it feels like to live without worries again. Much has happened since my arrival.
But it feels like just minutes ago I was pulling up to the crumbling cement pier for the first time. Squawking continues as Ricardo phones his wife, Carolina, professing an inability to pick her up at the pier because he is out “working” in the highlands. It is a rough life that he leads.
The banter quiets as a yellow fleck appears around a bend in the road. An open-aired truck-turned-bus filled with fruit is heading straight towards us, the occasional papaya or banana falling and splattering in the road. We’re outsized, speeding over rubble, and nobody seems to mind Ricardo’s aversion to the brake pedal. There’s no traffic signals, no state troopers, no yellow lines up here. The laughter ceases. But only for a minute. We swerve and the pipe goes into circulation once more. I feel like I’m on Willie Nelson’s tour bus, only everyone is speaking Spanish and we’re surrounded by active volcanoes. Turning at the fork where the asphalt stops, we continue skidding over lava gravel and mud, our tires throwing debris in every direction. Another hour of twists and turns lies ahead.
Mario has counted five wrong turns and the location of our destination remains a mystery. As if he were trying to get us lost, Captain Ricardo manages to find every dead-end trail in the highlands. This is a hunt without hunters, men without a mission. A group of delinquent surfers would’ve been my last choice for survival mates, and our backdrop could turn into a deserted island at any moment. It’s happened before.
“¡Dobla aquí!” Luís shouts out. “We’re here!”
It’s amazing my friend can locate the proper finca. All of the tracts of land look identical: riddled with garbage and devoid of harvest. Ricardo executes another twelve-point turn on the overgrown trail. Unable to traverse the thick “baby diarrhea” mud in his rusty chariot, our Captain stops at the barbed wire gate. Luís exits the truck and combs back his jet-black mullet. “Let the hunting begin. ”
Editor’s Note: You can find more of the author’s work here.
