The Tepuis

These are the Tepuis of Venezuela. According to Mr. Fuller, who's a Geologist, these are some of the oldest rocks on Earth. The Tepuis are way, way bigger and taller than the mesas you see in Arizona. In fact, the tallest waterfall in the world flows right off the top of one of them. It's called Angel Falls. Mr. Fuller told us that the plants, animals, and weather on top of 'em are totally different than the ones in the jungle below the cliffs. The Tepuis are so tall, that the tops of them usually poke out of the clouds.

Anyway, Billy, Todd, Mati and I just got back from our first trip on the annual expedition that my Dad and his Campo Mata buddies go on each year. The adults fish for all kinds of monstrous fish in the jungle rivers, plus they pan the river banks for diamonds. On the first day there, they let us go out on the river with a new guide while they did their thing. Of course - as usual - things got out of hand pretty quick. Before we knew it, we were kidnapped by a band of diamond smugglers and taken to their hideout in the middle of nowhere...smack dab in the heart of the steamy Venezuelan jungle.

Since I'm writing this right now, you know we got away, but it wasn't easy. You'll hear all about that adventure some day soon. For now, we Machacas are going to kick back in our treehouse hideout for a while and lick our wounds.

Venezuelan cowboys aren't much different than the ones you might see in Texas. We call them Llaneros, because most of them are working in the savannahs, or Llanos in Spanish. The dead cowboy that we Machacas saw on the concrete slab behind the clinic in Campo Mata was one. He'd been shot in the chest, so it wasn't nearly as gross as the guy who'd gotten smushed by all that steel pipe my Dad's company uses to drill for oil. We didn't think much of it until we found his silver spurs at Pablo Malo's banana plantation. After that things got all outta hand. In the end, we figured out who killed the cowboy, but it wasn't easy. 'Course, you'll have to read the book to get the whole story.

Gators at Night

See all the sparkly lights? Well, they're not stars, and they're not bugs. Those are gators! It's what we Machacas try to stay away from when we're on a night mission in the jungle. There were plenty of them that night at Pablo Malo's plantation, even though the river was flooding a lot more than the one in this picture.

We're pretty good at telling what kind of animal eyes are reflecting off our flashlight beams: gators, anacondas, ocelots, tapirs and capybaras are some that we've seen before. But the ones you absolutely, for sure, never want to see looking at you from the darkness of the jungle are Loca's, Pablo Malo's demon dog. 

The Final Book Cover

Well here it is, at last! Those artists got it just right. It's bang on. That's me with Mati, my dog. We've just left Pablo Malo's banana plantation where things have heated a little bit, so we're high-tailin' it back through the jungle to meet up with Billy and Todd.

(Just click on the picture to see it a little better.)