Jungle Guide Training: Chagres National Park, Panama

This week, we're excited to share a firsthand account from one of our own students, detailing their experiences during one of our immersive jungle courses. Through their narrative, you'll gain insight into the challenges faced, the knowledge acquired, and the personal growth achieved while navigating the complexities of the jungle environment. It's a compelling read that highlights the transformative power of stepping into the wild.

Written by Seán Meehan

“You lucky Irish bastard,” declared Alex with a bit of a manic grin. Alex is a navy special forces veteran, who had seen tough theatres of war as a medic, led challenging wilderness expeditions across the globe from the Amazon to the Arctic. He had seen it all and had that calm, stoic presence from doing so. To see him a bit worked up, that unnerved me. Had I just had a near death experience? You can decide.

I’m at the front of the line, ascending a steep ridge higher into the cloud forests of Chagres National Park in the deep jungle of Panama, hacking the path ahead by machete. It was my turn to take point, cutting away vines and palm fronds with the satisfying ‘ting-ting’ of the machete blade. There are no trails out here, we are creating it as we go. Second in line was responsible for compass bearing and map reading, then the rest of our group of fifteen or so traipse behind. We had been at it for a few hours by now. My forearms were burning and my grip on the machete was getting shit; loose swings slipping in more and more. I was absolutely drenched in sweat; it poured into my eyes despite a bandana, I was wet to the underpants, sweat dripped off my elbows in a stream, shoulder and hip straps of my backpack were a sodden sloppy mess as it shifted around with every step forwards and upwards. Ting-ting. Leaf by leaf. Slowly advancing at about 1 kilometre per hour.

Next there is a movement down to my right on the jungle floor. But I can’t see what. My foot touches something. There’s another movement. But there are palm fronds in the way, leaf litter all over the ground, sweat in my eyes, so at first I just plod on a couple of steps. Then over my shoulder I noticed one of the local Panamanian guides, Eugenio, dash downhill away from me shouting, “Cuidado!!” I still haven’t clocked any danger and something Rick, another of our expedition guides, comes to mind. He mentioned that when you're swinging your machete it’s possible you’ll trim a leaf that has a wasp nest attached to the underside and the best thing to do is move very slowly, backwards away from the trail. Move fast and they attack you. So I slowly take 2 or 3 steps back whilst trying to figure out why my mate had run off down the hill.

Up the hill comes Rick, expedition leader and jungle expert having led jungle trips for over 20 years all over Panama. “Wooooooowww,” he says as he creeps forward near me. “In 20 years I have only ever seen this twice.” I’m still clueless, wiping off sweat, considering dropping my heavy backpack, and thinking about water and food needs. “An adult bushmaster, full-grown!!” He exclaimed excitedly. Now I’ll assume that you, like me, know very little about snakes. So I need to jump the story ahead here, because for the next couple of minutes I stood gaping like a fish as Rick tried to photograph and video the special snake. Bit by bit we manoeuvred the whole group around the snake's location, which was tricky as it was in the middle of the ‘trail’ with steep ridges falling away either side in a muddy slippery mess. We got a couple of minutes further along the hill and paused for a water and snack break to take stock.

At this point I learned more about Mr. Bushmaster. Rick explained that it is a pit viper and the most feared snake in the rainforest. Because they are so feared, they are also widely persecuted and killed, so Rick said you have a better chance getting up close to a jaguar than a bushmaster this size. This one was between 2.5 and 3 metres long, so 8 to 10 feet. Bushmasters had been known to be barked at by a dog on the edge of a village, get pissed off with the dog, chase it back into town and then strike at anybody who got in its way. In its aggressive mode it could advance quicker than you could run, and instances had been recorded where one snake caused multiple fatalities in one attack. I was grazing on my trail mix and getting water down my neck as I learned these things. Slowly neurons began to fire in my machete dulled brain. Good thing I had snake gaiters on I suggested to Rick, indicating the protective sheaths outside my hiking pants. Not really, he replied, a snake that big would just bite you in the groin or stomach he said matter-of-factly. Right, I said. “You lucky Irish bastard,” chipped in Alex, our other expedition leader. Indeed, I reflected as fear and adrenaline started to flow through me as it should have done had I spotted the bloody snake in the first place.

That evening we did a team debrief on the incident. We were a group of 10 or so who had signed up to receive wilderness jungle training. This wasn’t a jolly in the forest to see some nice birds or waterfalls. It was actually turning to a pretty gruelling sufferfest through wet-season Chagres. We had all been soaking wet for about 8 days now, off-trail, off-grid, in deep forests where no-one goes. The hypothetical of the debrief was; what if I’d been bitten? What’s the evacuation plan? First idea was a satellite phone call to search and rescue, winch down a basket from a helicopter, and hope to get back to Panama City in time for anti-venom. “No good,” declared Rick. “No helicopters with winches here in Panama.” OK, got to find a landing zone for the helicopter - we poured over our maps of the area.

We were a full day's walk from anything that could be called a road. Back down the hill about an hour before the snake we had been by a river confluence with a decent sized mud flat a helicopter could maybe land on. We discussed materials we had on hand to fashion a stretcher; chop some poles, harvest straps off backpacks potentially, lots of cordage and paracord, use our shelter tarps to lie the patient on. The goal would be to keep the patient with as low a heart rate as possible (yeah right!) to slow venom movement, and with the heart above the bite site to use gravity to help a bit. We thought about the muddy, horrible, treacherous ridge we had lumbered up that afternoon. Every second tree was a spikey bastard who wanted to impale your hand. Footholds were nonexistent after months of rain. Just a mud slide downhill for an hour, or 2, or 3, or 4?

With a heavy lump on a stretcher. We could swap out stretcher bearers. Have route finders and trail clearers. But still it would be absolutely brutal. “Ok,” Rick said, “that’s probably the best bet, but a Bushmaster bite with a decent amount of venom, you’d give the person one hour, two tops. They need the anti-venom fast.” That night in my hammock I felt very guilty; imagining my poor family if they’d had to organize to get my stupid snake bitten dead self flown back home to Ireland. Because I clumsily kicked a large snake that ought not to be kicked. I had always pursued adventures and challenges, but in the moments when you sail that bit too close to the wind, you realize it is a bit selfish and reckless.

I wanted out of the jungle. It’s hard to fully communicate how uncomfortable the jungle is in the wet season. I hadn’t been dry in days. You can try hanging clothes, even fast-drying technical material ones, up to dry but the dampness and humidity is just too much. Nothing evaporates. Wet socks in wet squelchy muddy boots. Wet underpants in wet hiking pants. Wet grips on machete and hiking poles. Wet shirts wearing under the heavy wet straps of your heavy wet backpack, creating heat rashes all over your shoulders and sides. The Jungle Guru Rick had explained to us at the outset that this was the reason to run a training course in the wet season. Maximum discomfort and challenge. He talked about the importance of gear choices and gear management. Top of this list was ‘mastering your system,’ as he called it, for setting up your hammock to camp each night. Tent camping on the wet jungle floor with the creepy crawlies and slithery chaps is a no-no. We were improvising camps in deep jungle locations so you just trimmed off some leaves and vines from between two trees.

Get your tarp up to create a ‘dry zone’. Get under there and start stringing up your hammock. Hammock and sleeping clothes should be closely guarded in a dry-bag deep in the backpack throughout the days hiking in the torrential rain. So in the evening you could crawl into your hammock, like a mouse into hay, and be safe from the night's rain. The coziness and relief of being in your hammock, dry, cocooned, rain drumming on the tarp above is just fantastic. You could write in your journal or listen to some music. Completely isolated. Typically the rain was so heavy and loud you couldn’t speak to your neighbor.

I am an idiot though, so on the third or fourth night me and my dry, safe, cozy, sanctuary of a hammock got soaked. I think I set up too close to some large palms and torrential rain was drumming against leaves a couple of metres away and splashing upwards underneath my tarp. The guy ropes suspending me from the trees had also become inundated and rain was seeping past the knots that should have caused the water to drip off the support line and soak down into my nest. I realized this at about 3am with the panicked reaction of a man who might have pissed himself but wasn’t sure. I was wet, and I was also bloody freezing. The nights were surprisingly cold and a light sleeping bag was essential. A wet sleeping bag was completely useless. I swung out of my hammock, head-torch on to find that the ground below my hammock looked like a river. Had the nearby river overflowed in the night? I saw other head torches around camp so I wasn’t the only one unnerved. I trimmed back some of the leaves causing the splashing, fiddled with knots on the hammock support, fought in vain to tension my tarp which was looking battered by the nights intense downpour, and the got back into my hammock searching for a little dry pocket whilst balled in the foetal position. Come on morning, come on. A truly awful night, compounded by the knowledge that my things were wet for the duration now, my nightly sanctuary was lost.

Have I mentioned it was wet? The night after the bushmaster incident the days and days of wetness were going to finally have an impact. Here is what I wrote in my journal that night in my, by now, sort of dry again hammock.

The snake was alert but docile, Alex noted that its belly was bulging with a big meal. Our group was a bit complacent and started snapping photos. We made noise and movements against the recommendations. Most importantly I guess we lived to tell the tale. We also saw toucans, peccary tracks, bullet ants, a little turtle, and some howler monkeys. No more jaguar prints since the river. But the bushmaster tops all and is probably the closest I’ve ever been to getting killed in all my adventures…? Deeply unsettling.

The concern is now really about my feet. Tomorrow is going to be grim. There seems to be no way we can continue over the mountain. The option instead is to reverse course which is depressing. Somehow we must get out now. To dryness! The jungle rot goes away with dry conditions apparently. With Cerro Brujo so abruptly out of sight thoughts really do change to getting the hell out of here. The close shave with the snake thoroughly drove home the point about how far from help we are. Much has been learned but now it feels like time to get out. A good night's rest will help. Conditions are dry for the moment.

Ah yes, the jungle rot. On the steep climb, ting-ting-ing merrily towards Mr. Bushmaster, I had noticed that the soles of my feet were burning and tingling and becoming very uncomfortable. Hours later when we made camp it turned out that I wasn’t the only one. One by one we removed disgusting boots and socks to reveal disgusting feet. Jungle rot looks a bit like a red spotty rash. What’s happening is a fungal invasion into the skin of your feet. A colonisation that just loves wet and warm conditions. Sorry for the squeamish here but, in the interest of accuracy, the skin between my toes was beginning to shear off in alarmingly large pieces. Raw pink flesh below was angry. The red dots of the ‘rash’ were, closer inspection, basically large pores, holes into the tender sub-skin allowing in dirt and grit. This is stage one of a bigger problem. The jungle has many interesting bacteria that can now follow the inroads into the feet made by the fungus. This recipe had been experienced by Europeans explorers who sought to exploit Panama’s narrowness by building railways to transport silver originating in Potosi, Bolivia from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and then later gold rush era explorers bound for California the opposite way, and finally the canal which connects the world's shipping lanes. Many of the workers on these colossal projects had very, very poor foot health. Thousands upon thousands died or had limbs amputated.

Until this stage of the trip my evening routine was a thorough clean of the feet with wet wipes, application of white spirits to help dry and harden the skin, and sleeping or resting with the feet as ‘airy’ as possible at all times. Alas it hadn’t worked. In total about half the group had some signs of jungle rot so, as my journal entry mentioned, we were changing our plan. Initially the plan was to traverse a mountain in the jungle called Cerro Bruja which would require another 2-3 days of progress.

Instead, if we did a big push, we could retrace our steps, on known territory at least, to the edge of civilization - a wooden hut on the edge of the jungle where we had based ourselves for the first couple of nights of the trip. The trudge back to this hut was a bit epic. First nervously passing the snake location - it had moved thank Christ - then as the hours rolled by, my feet got ever more painful. Conversation amongst the group got very sparse. Much of the route was wading through rivers, easier going than chopping through jungle, which was relief for the feet in the cool water, but also exacerbated the fungal paradise in my socks. The last hour was a pain cave. I chewed down some ibuprofen flirting with that tricky edge of kidney problems when you’re really dehydrated. Journal thoughts:

The last hour was certainly amongst the least comfortable of my life. Death march forward. Had to reach camp. If it had been 5 more km I probably couldn’t have done it.

It is hard to describe the joy of the wooden shack after a few days in the deep jungle. A roof. A dry floor. Somewhere to discard all your wet, muddy gear. A chance to fully dry out my hammock. Chairs and a table to eat a meal at. Absolute luxury. A chance to properly sleep, properly hydrate, and eat until full again. Even if the meals were getting a bit interesting as we reached the end of our group provisions:

Great food last couple of meals - today for dinner a stew of rice, veg, spam, onion - very tasty. For lunch a veg broth mixed with mashed potato and parmesan. Weird and wonderful mixtures suddenly tasting amazing.

We spent the final two days together at the hut on the edge of the deep jungle, our funky feet lathered in zinc cream and pointed at the sun whenever it came out, muddy gear washed in the river and strung up to dry all over camp. It was glorious to not be somewhere out there on the wet and dark jungle mountain. It also provided a chance to consolidate our learnings with a series of workshops and discussions. The group participants had come to the course with various backgrounds and objectives; some had personal adventure goals in the jungle, or wanted additional guiding certifications like me, or had military background and wanted to sharpen the axe again. Diverse backgrounds yet we had all drawn hugely from the experience. We learned about things you could study from anywhere; first aid kit preparation, situational management of an accident or emergency, camp-craft skills, shelter building tips, and so on. But what you can’t read in a book or watch in a video, is what it is like to make navigation decisions in the torrential rain in a featureless jungle when you can’t remember which river is which and the map is now wet. You have to live that to internalise the teaching. Rick warned us to ‘master our system’ - will I ever let myself set up a hammock that could get wet again? Or pick a machete that’s a bit too heavy? Or kick an adult bushmaster snake off the trail? You have to experience some things in life as a reference point. Putting yourself in very uncomfortable, very consequential situations is an amazing counterpoint to the very sanitised and controlled lives that many of us live. The point of the course was wilderness skills. To lead in a wilderness context. Humility is a wonderful starting point. How things can go from very good to very bad in a moment. You’re never really in control. You can’t master it. But you can adapt, adjust, keep making good decisions, and keep acquiring skills.

Rick and Alex also talked at length about interpretation as it pertains to being a tour guide. How to bridge the gap between knowledge of a place - facts and figures, history and geography - and true understanding of a place for a visitor or tourist. I wrote in my diary whilst listening to Rick and Alex ad-lib on this topic:

Interpretation is connecting the information around to create meaning for the client. This can provoke thought. Much of the interpretations happen in the mind of the client, after the moment of communication.

These might seem like deep thoughts to be having whilst the soles of your feet are rotting off. But the passion inherent in true experts of the wilderness, like Rick and Alex, can ignite something within students, like we were, or expedition clients, like they normally spoke to. What more is there to life than learning, interpreting, leaning into new experiences and sensations? And knowing that there is no limit to what you can learn. One square mile of Panamanian rainforest has more knowledge in it than a human lifetime can ever learn.

For the last lesson of the rainforest in the wet season I must defer to the local guides who live at the jungle's edge. On one day of the trip we spent an afternoon doing a classic bushcraft challenge; light a fire using only materials you can harvest from around you. Off we all set clambering through the bush to find dead trees hanging well off the wet jungle floor. Splitting them in search of dryish heartwood. Foraging for dryish palm fronds or seed pods - anything that might become tinder to catch a spark. Looking for pockets of jungle that might get more sun and less rain. Then we whittled fire sticks and scratched ourselves to exasperation with various friction fire methods. Not a spark, not a whiff of smoke, not a chance. Lesson completed and internalised, Rick asked one of the local guides how he would light a fire in the wet season. The guide reached into a pocket and produced a cigarette lighter and an empty plastic Coke bottle. He lit the bottle and carefully added some of the material we had gathered to the burning plastic. “Así.” He explained. Like this. Not fully satisfied I asked him but what if you didn’t have that and you were in the jungle at this time of the year? “No vamos en el bosque en este temporada.” We don’t go into the jungle in this season. Wise words indeed. And yet, if you’ve read this far, there’s a little bit of you curious to experience it for yourself! I highly recommend it.

To learn more about training and certification chat with Seán, any Certified Guide, or talk to us here at Jungle Guides International. Our growing community is always happy to help!

Seán has his own blog, where this article is also posted. You can check out more of his writing here.

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