Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

Ruin and Recovery231didn’t bode well. We knew that based on all the activity around us, wehad to leave the area, but the speed with which we left came as a surprise.We were given little information about what was going on, andwhile that itself was not a strange thing, it was odd given the scopeof the moving required. All they told us was to pack up and get readyto leave. Everyone was heading out—all the politicals, all the militaryguys, the three of us, and all the FARC, even Sombra. They wouldn’tsay how long we’d be gone or whether we’d return.The brutality of the forty days we marched after we abandonedCamp Caribe rivaled anything we’d been through before. For the firstseveral months at the camp, we had done a good job of getting ourselvesinto decent physical condition, but since June 2004 when PlanPatriota was first announced, the FARC fed us so little that we wereweak even before we started the march. Existing on what we called cowgutssoup—because of its foul smell and the disgusting bits of cow thatfloated on the thickly congealed fat layer—and a few spoonfuls of riceor beans had taken its toll on us.In addition, the three of us were marching with many more possessionsthan we’d carried back in October of 2003. We had all accumulatedso many things that we couldn’t possibly take it all. Thoughwe left a lot behind, we took what we considered necessary. I attachedmy mattress to my equipo. I thought that having a comfortable placeto sleep made all the difference in my attitude and ability to manage. Iwas wrong. Trying to maneuver through the jungle with that large rollon my back required me to do hundreds of squats as I bent under vinesand downed trees. I soon abandoned it and quite a few other thingsto lighten my carriage. Everyone else did the same, and the longer wemarched, the more we reduced our loads to the essentials.If we were grateful for anything, it was the lessons of generosityand perseverance the military prisoners displayed. They insisted ongiving whatever they could to help us, even though we weren’t allowedto speak with them. For several days, we set up a temporary camp just