WATER THE COLOR OF caramel macchiato slipped beneath their keel as they motored quietly and efficiently up the Rio Madre de Dios. Skip smiled with contentment. That new motor he'd bought might turn out to be one of his best investments. Unless they had to portage. But he'd cross that bridge when they came to it. To extend their range, he'd adapted a one-gallon external fuel tank to back up the motor's own 1.5 liter internal tank. He'd brought along a few five-gallon tanks to refill both of those.

In the last few hours they'd made it past the lodges that hosted ecotours, a few tiny settlements, navigated twisting, braided channels, and were now out where the only things on the map other than the river and its tributary streams were various indigenous territorial reserves. They'd spotted monkeys and macaws, a caiman and a capybara, though one was not hunting the other, at the moment, at least, and a sloth, hanging from the underside of a tree branch, nonchalantly watching them pass by. Zane was the one to point out the boa dangling over the river from another tree. Skip thought he'd seen a puma, but it might have been an ocelot. It slipped back into the shadows too quickly for him to get a better look.

He had been trying to track their progress with his system of maps, both GPS based and screenshots and photos of maps from his research, including the information he'd gleaned from Fawcett's journal. He was finding it increasingly difficult to tell exactly where they were at any given bend in the river. He had also been keeping an eye on the sky, watching afternoon thunderheads building up along the highlands to the west. Though it was not the rainy season, this was a rainforest after all, and so there was no real dry season. Just wet and not-quite-as-wet.

Up ahead, the river took a sharp turn to the right. Skip slowed, swung wide, and leaned far over to his left, trying to see what was beyond. A left-hand bend, looking like it was seventy-five yards further, from this angle. He slowed even more and consulted his maps.

"If we are where I think we are, this should be this big series of bends, right here," he said, indicating the feature on the map. "It makes a big oxbow, miles long, and comes back on itself over there, what looks like less than a quarter mile across. It's like that bike path along the beach I used to ride when I was a kid. When it reached the marina, it took five miles around the streets and parking lots to end up a hundred yards from where you were. They finally put a bridge in. Made things a whole lot easier."

He pulled the boat in to the bank on the left and climbed out to scout it out. "Looks like there's a trail running through there. Other people had the idea to portage this section too."

Any opportunity to cut off river mileage was a big deal, since it could potentially make the difference between a hundred miles or three hundred, and by extension, affect their fuel usage, supplies and resources. Assuming the cutoff was even passable, that is.

Skip disappeared into the jungle while Nusiri and Zane waited on the sandy shore. Nusiri would give him no more than three minutes. She'd grown up in the jungle, and knew how easy one could get hopelessly lost. Skip, a former wilderness guide, she trusted. With anyone else, she'd go in looking after thirty seconds.

Skip was back out in less than a minute and a half.

"It's tight, but it's passable. And yeah, it leads back to the river in only a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty yards."

Whether the trail had been made by man or beast, they could not tell. Tangled vines draped from the trees and buttressed roots impeded their steps. Zane, light on his feet, had it better than his parents. Still, the process of shuttling the raft and all their belongings, even that short a distance, was going to be harder than it looked. Forty-five seconds in, Skip stood tall on a massive root and pointed ahead. This was the view of the river that he'd had. He had yet to walk the entire trail himself. But then, what could go wrong in only one hundred fifty yards?

The first pass wasn't all that bad, considering the awkwardness of picking their way across uneven, muddy ground, stepping over stones and roots with top-heavy packs on their backs and arms loaded with supplies. Skip only fell once, skinning his knee.

It was when it came time to haul the raft and its motor, that things got dicey. Skip was glad for the built-in carry handle on the new motor that made balancing it easier. It was the fifty-nine-and-a-half pound weight of the machine that gave him trouble. He was strong enough to carry that weight that distance, but the terrain added an extra challenge. Keeping an eye on the ground to avoid tripping again, he didn't see the low-hanging branch. He walked right into it, his forehead taking the impact as his hat fell to the ground and the motor dropped from his arms. He went down hard, on his backside, landing hard on a bowling ball-sized stone.

"That's gonna leave a nice bruise," he said, wincing at the sudden tenderness as he stood up. He shook off the pain, stretched out his leg muscles, and wiped a small smear of blood from his forehead. He picked up his Stetson and brushed the dirt away, at least glad that the bit of mud left behind almost blended with the color of the hat. Not that it didn't already show the stains and wear of his past adventures. He then bent down to retrieve the outboard motor, adjusting his stance to favor the nasty bruise that was already spreading. Walking now much slower, and taking care both above and below, he continued on. At least he was at the halfway point.

Meanwhile, Nusiri and Zane were having their own adventure, trying to team carry the inflatable dinghy. For such a short haul, they had seen no need for disassembly. It was normally easy enough for two people to carry, one on each side, holding onto the side carry handles or the grab rope that ran the perimeter of the craft. But in tight quarters, such as the path they found themselves on now, there was not room enough for that. Instead, they had to flip it ninety degrees widthwise and wrestle it sideways through the tangled vegetation, scratching their arms, and the raft itself in the process. More than once, they had to stop, lower their burden, adjust their holds, and push, shove, and otherwise force their way through. Too late, both Nusiri and Skip remembered the machetes that hadn't been needed on their earlier passages, now that all hands were full and occupied.

At last, they stumbled out of the forest onto the riverbank again, just one hundred fifty yards from where they'd begun. But at least they'd cut off several slow miles of river travel.

"Okay," said Nusiri. "And, I think we're done with portaging for a while."

She and Zane began loading back up, while Skip hooked the motor back up to the transom. That was when he noticed the tiny bubble forming on the wet rubber tube. Looking close, he could see the scratch marks, and if he put his ear down low and listened carefully, could hear the faint hiss of escaping air.

He sighed. "Zane, could you hand me the patch kit? Be a few minutes longer before we're on our way."

He'd been through this before. This wouldn't be the first bandage on their little dinghy.