Pancho and his twenty-one-year-old son Angel had ridden all morning in the back of a battered pickup truck from their tiny village in the far eastern part of the country. When I saw them, at first I was a little confused. It struck me that they weren’t exactly dressed for a monthlong journey over mountains, through rain, and into the thick forest. They looked more as though they were headed to the mall. Both wore oversize jeans, leather shoes, and pressed dress shirts. Pancho favored a blue button-down that throughout the trip would always look as though it had just been ironed. He wore a sombrero, Angel a Diesel cap. And they each carried an overnight-size sack, not a giant pack. When I asked about his bag, Pancho just chuckled, as though I were the silly one. Pancho is solidly built, with a jet-black soap-bar mustache, probably in his late fifties, though Chris told me that he could outwalk both of us. Years before, he had worked with Chris on a dig. He could handle a gun and was a tracker too.
