Chapter 45. Boyuca
Two hundred feet below the surface of the blue waters of the Bay of Honduras, the man called Mountain Man Pete, in full black rubber scuba gear, silently flippered his way downward to colder waters. The group of explorers had spent the previous day investigating the island of Xochipilli. Charlie Winston had taken some samples of the flora and fauna, and had even managed to capture a small red snake for his son Teddy. Today, the party was at sea again. The Mountain Man was assigned the job of underwater exploration, because he was the only one who had received scuba training. Pete reflected on his life as he pumped his strong legs back and forth through the water. He liked the quiet ocean world almost as much as the high summits of the Rockies. He liked anyplace that was peaceful and showed the grand and beautiful hand of God in nature. He felt a closer connection to the spirit of his departed wife during these times. A school of bright yellow angel fish suddenly moved in front of Mountain Man Pete, darting right and then quickly left. It startled him, but he quickly regained his attention. The only thing he was a little bit worried about was sharks, but fortunately, he had seen none of those. He had seen a few manta rays, though, and some parrot fish. The variety of fish down here was staggering. He had observed huge schools of the three-striped black and white damselfish, the tiny, spiny yellow tang fish, and even a few orange striated frogfish. He adjusted his blue mask and moved the yellow fins on his feet back and forth, and powered farther north. The water here was very clear, but as he moved forward, it looked like it got a little darker up ahead. Perhaps it was a large coral reef of some kind. As he got closer, however, it looked bigger than a coral reef.
Closer and closer Mountain Man Pete went, and as the black blur coalesced into view, he realized what it was—a rock--a very big rock, almost like a skinny mountain under the surface of the water, sticking up from the ocean floor like a stony monument to Poseidon. It was huge, maybe the size of an eight-story building. The rock structure did not go all the way up to the surface. It stopped about 100 feet below the water. He had never seen anything like it. As he swam in to get a closer look, Mountain Man Pete was dumbfounded. There was a second pillar of rock directly behind the first one. Yes, a pillar, that was the word for it. It looked like one of those Greek columns at the Parthenon.q What had Professor John Morse said—the Pillars of Hercules? These must be the pillars! Mountain Man Pete pictured the rocky undersea pillars hundreds of years before, at the time of the explorers Juan De Solis, Amerigo Vespucci and John Cabot. Is it possible that at that time, the pillars jutted out of the water? Could these pillars be what Cabot and his sailors saw? Pete was certain that must be the case. Satisfied, Mountain Man Pete took a few pictures of the pillars with his waterproof underwater camera and then swam toward the surface to alert the others as to his discovery. Now that they had found the Pillars of Hercules, they only had about forty miles to reach the island of Boyuca.
Island of Boyuca, Bay of Honduras.
Following the directions from the map, Captain Ben Z steered Skip Drame’s ship 28.8 miles east of the underwater pillars and then 9.6 miles north, and, not surprisingly, found nothing but open blue water. After a brief powwow between the captain, the two professors, and Drame, the consensus opinion was that the captain should use this point as a midpoint of a circle and then search for any island in a five mile radius of the midpoint. If that proved fruitless, then the circle could be expanded to ten miles. After only one hour of searching, the captain located a small island approximately one mile north of the midpoint. The island was not on the captain’s nautical maps. Charlie Winston and John Morse saw this as a good sign. If it was not on any map, then there was a good chance this was the island they were looking for. The captain anchored the big ship about one hundred feet from the shore, and the members of the crew made plans to form a landing party with two inflatable rubber rafts. Brenda decided to stay on the ship, along with the rest of the staff. When they got to the shore, Charlie Winston handed out the machetes, and the party of seven—Charlie Winston, John and Zach Morse, Mountain Man Pete, Ka’-an, Skip Drame, and Bolinda Jeffries—bounded over the sand and entered the thick foliage of the island jungle.
It was slow going, of course, because there were no trails. The Mountain Man volunteered to go first down the trails, hacking his way through the denser areas with his machete. The heat was stifling and the mosquitoes seemed to be on steroids. Charlie Winston bagged a few interesting looking red tree frogs along the way. Zach Morse was thinking this trip was a lot more fun when they were on the boat.
“So what are we looking for again?” asked Zach, grabbing his father’s hand and pulling himself up a small muddy incline.
“A river of scorpions or a river of blood should be the first clue,” said his father.
“Oh, that’s all,” scoffed Zach. “Hey, Pops, just make sure you don’t stroke out here in this sun. You’re not in the greatest shape, you know.”
“Oh, I’ll be just fine,” said Morse, smiling and forging forward.
Mountain Man Pete hacked away a section of leaves and the party came upon a small stream. “Well,” said Pete, “It don’t have no scorpions in it, but at least it looks cold and wet.” Pete kneeled down beside the stream and cupped his hands, throwing cold water into his face. He tasted the water and it was good. Pete filled up his canteen and encouraged the others to fill up their water bottles. Pete took out his compass, and charted their bearings.
“Let’s go a few more hours north, and then we can pitch tents for the night, and circle back to the boat tomorrow afternoon,” suggested Pete.
That sounded like a good enough idea to everyone else. The team continued to forge through the jungle, at times pausing to listen to the sounds of the island. So far, they had seen nothing more menacing than mosquitoes and a few non-poisonous snakes. Zach noticed that Ka’-an seemed particularly nervous as they walked along.
“Hey Ka’-an,” said Zach. “What are you looking at? You keep gazing around like you have seen a ghost.”
“This place gives me a bad feeling. It is called the Evil Place. It must be called that for a reason. I keep feeling like we are being watched.”
Zach looked around into the trees. “Well, if someone’s watching us, they are sure being quiet about it. I don’t hear anything.”
“That’s what concerns me,” said Ka’-an. “It seems almost too quiet.”
“So what’s your story, Ka’-an?” asked Zach, ducking to avoid a tree branch snapping back at eye level.
“Not much to tell,” said Ka’-an. “I am the oldest of eight children. I was born in a small village near Guatemala City. I work as a tour guide. When this opportunity came up, I jumped at the chance. Not every day you get to get paid to go on a yacht with a movie star. What about you?”
“Dad’s a professor at UCLA. I am in college at Emory. Charlie Winston is one of my teachers. I have a sister named Zoey. And I have no idea why I went on this wild goose chase, but the last adventure I had with my dad was pretty fun, and Professor Winston is giving me extra credit for going.”
Ka’-an laughed. “Your father is a very smart man. I read his book on Nostradamus.”
“Thanks,” said Zach. “So you think we’ll find anything on this island?”
“I don’t know. But it sounded interesting, didn’t it? Maybe I will get a part in your dad’s next book?”
Zach smiled and pushed his way through the forest, brushing aside a large spider web.
“I hate spiders.”
“Come on,” teased Bolinda, trudging forward. “Man up.”
Zach laughed and shook his head.
After a few more hours, the party of seven had not found anything of particular interest on the island. They broke out their tents and began searching for firewood. Zach and Ka’-an gathered the firewood, and Mountain Man Pete started the fire. Drame volunteered to make the baked beans and hot dogs for their meal. When the meal was done, the six men and one woman sat on rocks around the campfire. The night air was chilly and the stars were out in full force.
“Let’s have a story,” said Zach. “Ka’-an, tell us more about the Mayan Hero Twins.”
“Yes, Ka’-an,” tell us more,” said Winston.
Mountain Man Pete, who was busy with his Army knife whittling a piece of wood, was also interested. “Yeah, Ka’-an, tell us a story.”
Ka’-an pulled out a cigarette, which he lighted in the embers of the fire, and took a long drag. “There are many stories of the Mayan Hero Twins before they entered the Underworld and faced the Xibalba. Would you like to hear the story of how monkeys were created?”
“Yes, that sounds good,” said Morse.
“Hunahpu and his brother Xbalanque were created when their mother Xquic called out to the decapitated head of her dead boyfriend Hun Hunahpu. The skull of Hun Hunahpu spat on Xquic’s head, which resulted in the twins’ conception.”
“This is great stuff,” said Mountain Man Pete, a fan of the Grateful Dead. “Son of a Deadhead.”
Ka’-an continued. “Having no money, Xquic asked her mother-in-law, the twins’ grandmother, to take them in. The grandmother begrudgingly took them in, but she never treated the twins well. She much preferred the twins’ older half-brothers, One Howler and One Artisan. The older boys always got to eat first, while the twins were required to labor in the fields every day.”
“Sounds like Cinderella,” said Bolinda.
“Right, very much like Cinderella. Anyway, one day, the twins returned home from the field without any food to eat. When they were questioned by their grandmother, the twins claimed that they had shot several birds but the birds were trapped in a high tree. The older boys went to the tree and climbed up to find the missing birds. As they did so, the twins used their magical powers to make the tree grow taller and taller. Hunahpu told the other brothers that the only way down was to remove their pants and tie them around their waists. When the older boys complied, their pants became tails, and they were transformed into monkeys.”
“Is that it?” asked Zach.
“That’s it,” said Ka’-an, shrugging.
“It seems like something is missing from that story. Like why did removing their pants make them monkeys?”
“I don’t know. That’s just the story,” said Ka’-an.
“I don’t get it,” said Zach.
The men laughed and shared stories for another half hour before retiring to their tents. Ka’-an had trouble getting to sleep in his tent, and kept one eye open most of the night.
In the morning, it was surprisingly chilly for a tropical island. Mountain Man Pete and John Morse were the first ones up. Pete started a fire and boiled some hot water so the two could share a pot of coffee.
“Couldn’t sleep a wink last night,” said Morse. “Too hot. And then this morning, it was suddenly so cold.”
“I couldn’t either,” complained Pete. “I think I set up my tent over a tree root. My back is killing me. We’re both getting’ old. Say, if we find this Fountain of Youth, I get the first swig.”
“I’ll be fighting you for it,” said Morse.
“You got any idea where to start looking for this thing?” asked Pete.
“Not really. I guess I was just kind of hoping we would bump into a hill of scorpions or a river of blood and pus or something. You know, something from the map.”
“The map doesn’t give us any clue where to start, does it?”
“No. My first thought was that if there was some kind of rejuvenating pool of water, it might be a hot spring of some kind, maybe formed by an old volcano. There is a decent sized mountain on the island. I don’t know. I am really just wildly speculating.”
“We have some of them hot springs in Colorado. But when I went in ‘em, I kept expecting it was gonna be like a hot tub, you know, like super hot. They were luke warm at best. It was kind of disappointing.”
“Yes, I know what you mean,” said Morse. “Perhaps it might be a unique kind of plant on the island which has curative properties, something like that. That is why I think it is important to take specimens of any unique plant and animal life we see.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Charlie Winston was telling me last night that this map got discovered in a secret vault behind a painting in an old Spanish castle. Is that true?”
“Yes, it is true. I am constantly amazed at the ways History reveals herself to us.”
“How do you like your coffee, John?”
“Ummm.” Morse looked over Mountain Man Pete’s head to the sky and pointed.
Pete looked around and stared in the sky to see what Morse was looking at. There, over the trees, a red signal flare burst upward into the morning sky.
“The boat! The captain must be in trouble!” exclaimed Pete. “Everybody get up! There’s trouble back at the boat!”
Pete rousted everyone from their tents and the party quickly packed up their tents and jogged back the way they had come toward the beach. It took nearly a half day to trace their steps all the way back to the shore. As Pete cut his way through the last group of branches into the beach clearing, he stopped in his tracks. The other men came quickly, scrambling past him onto the sand. All the men were speechless. There, in the sand near the surf, were six wooden poles. On top of each was an impaled human head.
“Look,” said Winston, crestfallen. He pointed past the poles to the ocean water. The shallow water between the beach and the yacht was tinged bright red. “The river of blood,” mumbled Winston.