How It All Goes Down
The Green Hell
- This chapter begins with Fawcett asking, "Are you game?" (10.1).
- For what? Wrestling an anaconda? Fishing for piranha? Chewing a piece of gum?
- No, Fawcett is recruiting a new second-in-command, Frank Fisher, for his second Amazonian expedition, this one to track the course of the Rio Verde, which in Spanish means "Green Rio."
- This expedition is even rougher than the last.
- It's muddy, the men's shoes disintegrate, and their eyes are invaded by bees known as "eye lickers" (10.13). This is worse than anything in Eli Roth's Green Inferno movie.
- Even though they are in a lush jungle, dudes can't find edible food.
- All the plants are pointy and poisonous and any animals that die are almost instantly stripped of flesh by insects.
- For almost a month, the men travel with next to no food.
- Fawcett fears mutiny.
- Hey, at least everyone is too skinny to turn to cannibalism.
- When all hope is almost lost, Fawcett spies a deer in the jungle. He shoots it with his rifle, and the men finally have fresh meat to eat.
- Half Fawcett's men die, but the rest escape the journal into Bolivia.