Years ago, my brother Nick accompanied me on a dream vacation to the Peruvian Amazon. The following is an excerpt of a short story about a trip that changed both our lives.

On the third day, we came to breakfast and met our new lodge mates. We’ll call them the Calvers. They were a retired couple from Washington State and they were serious audobons. Their binoculars looked like something out of a James Bond movie.

Now, I had heard that there was some pretty serious bird-watching to be had down here, but to be honest with you, I was hoping for something a bit more life-threatening, like a jaguar sighting or accidentally stepping on a boa constrictor. You know, the hard-core crap-your-pants kind of natural experience. I would get my wish in the end, but not before the bird people got their way.
The man informed us that about 700 bird types had been identified in the Amazon region alone. That’s an impressive figure, no doubt. I just secretly hoped that we weren’t going to spend the remainder of our vacation helping him tick them off from his notebook.

I know what you are thinking: you guys had the place all to yourselves for two whole days. Would it kill you to let someone else choose the itinerary? And the fact of the matter is that Nick and I were free to join or opt out. We could have hung back and chosen another activity with one of the other guides. But we said, “What the heck! Let’s go find us some rufous-faced antbirds!” And that’s how we lost five hours of our lives.

We set off after lunch. The plan was to be on our way back well before sundown. That’s probably not a bad policy when surrounded by supremely-camoflaged predators. This thought was an ever-present monkey on my back since the first night we slept at the lodge.
That night had had a profound effect on me. I was so seduced by the beauty of where we were, so completely relaxed, that I began to drift off in the hammock on the back terrace. At some point, I was roughly awakened by a cacophony of shrieks and whistles and hoots. The forest had come alive and was putting on one hell of a show. Of course, I knew that many species that inhabit the Amazon are in fact nocturnal, but for some strange reason, I expected dead calm when the sun went down. As I stared into the infinite blackness, the hairs stood up on my arms as I wondered, “Were there any eyes out there watching me?” It was both un-nerving and exhilarating, that feeling. But as I say, the impression it had made was indelible to the point that my eyes darted nervously about even in broad daylight out there.

We made our way to a marsh that was supposed to be a mating ground for a bird called the Lesser Kiskadee. Mr. Calver tried to entice us by telling us, “It’s also referred to as a tyrant flycatcher.” Maybe he thought that by using the term “tyrant”, I would be fooled into thinking we were about to see something dangerous. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

After hiking through a bog that made us wet and smooshy well up to our knees, we caught sight of some makeshift enclosures on stilts. We climbed the precarious ladder and found ourselves about fifty feet off the ground by the end. We huddled together and waited. The guide insisted on our silence and the Calvers were more than happy to comply as they waited with baited breath to see their beloved flycatcher. After about twenty minutes of that, Nick and I had one of those uncanny psychic exchanges that siblings are capable of. We looked at each other, both said to ourselves and each other, “We should have gone fishing with Ahu.” And then rolled our eyes and sighed before finishing the thought stream with a defeated shaking of the head.
The Calvers lay on their bellies, their eyes stuck to their 007 binoculars, fixated on the sighting that had brought them thousands of miles away from their comfortable existence.
You had to give them credit. They had a passion, after all. And it was a mutual pursuit, something that bound them together; kept them going, literally and figuratively. But my admiration started to ebb away as the hours crawled by. For starters, I had stupidly forgotten to apply insect repellant and I was finding out just how delicious and irresistible my blood really was. Additionally, I was just plain bored and annoyed. I didn’t even know what this bloody bird looked like and it occured to me that I could be staring at one right at that moment and wouldn’t even know to pipe up. I might whisper non-chalantly after it alighted, “So, does this bird have a really long tail and a yellow breast because if so, I just saw one.” Then the Calvers would stare at me, slack-jawed by my inconsiderate ignorance, wondering if they could vote me off the platform.

By the time my brother finally caught sight of one, with his naked eye, incidentally, by remarking, “Um, guys, isn’t that the bird we’re looking for?” I knew what he really meant was, “Is THAT the damn thing we’ve spent four hours in this mosquito bordello waiting to see?” As the Calvers cooed over their darling, the guide winked at my brother and I conspiratorily as if to say, “Now we can get the hell out of here.”

But the day was not a total loss. On the march back, I stepped on what I thought was a tree root until I realized that tree roots don’t hiss. Turned out that I had stepped on the tail of a caiman and she took a good snap at my boot just as the guide grabbed my shirt and lifted me out of the water in one deft maneuver. Day Three and I had already almost been attacked by a caiman. Things were definitely looking up!