El Encuentro January 16, 2022
A dog barks from the top of a steep forested trail, as we climb above the last neighborhood in Rancho San Nicolas. Soon the pooch is at our feet, tail wagging, to my relief. Then his owner descends the trail, and my alarm is raised once again—the man is holding a hatchet.
“I think we need a translator,” says Mushroom Man, who is ill-equipped for the encounter. Fortunately, my anonymous source is present to offer peaceful greetings, in what is probably the hatchet-man’s second language. He says that he lives here in these woods, and we are welcome to enter his domain. This is very magnanimous of the man, that is, if this is indeed his private property, which it likely is not. Paper deeds are so hard to come by in these parts.
The man’s disheveled clothes and general grogginess make me think he just woke up, but his imbalance and his slurred Spanish suggest that he perhaps has not been to bed yet. He drops a plastic bottle of discolored liquid but assures us that it is merely fuel oil. The hatchet swings at his side like the bat in an on-deck circle. Paper title or not, I am convinced the fellow with the hatchet is in charge of this hill today.
He urges us to follow him further up the trail. In a half-hour walk, he says, he will show us a hidden mountain lake. The cost for the three of us is only 200 pesos. In other words, for just 10 dollars, a drunken man with a lethal weapon will take us deep into the forest. This sounds like a real deal, especially for Mushroom Man, who is hoping to harvest some fungi after yesterday’s unseasonable rain shower. So far, we have seen nothing. The piney hillsides are dry. I wish I could say the same for our self-appointed tour guide.
He warns us about aggressive green snakes, raising his trouser leg above his Wellington boot to show the scar from a recent attack. A snakebite on the back of the thigh seems as painful as it does implausible, unless snakes here have Jordanesque leaping skills, or the man accidentally sat on one. Nevertheless, he proceeds to raise his hatchet and slice a sapling into a small snake-defense pole, which he hands to my anonymous source as a courtesy. He does the same for me and Mushroom Man, but I want no part of his scheme. I pay him 10 pesos for the sticks, which may or may not also serve as divining rods. We thank him politely for his invitation, and the three of us quickly retreat down the hill.
A long traverse on the mountain road out of Santa Cruz Almolonga brings us to the signed entrance of a genuinely uncontested public space: Parque El Encuentro. Cost of admission is 10 pesos, and there is a good trail leading directly to the aforementioned hidden mountain lake, Laguna El Cochi. The lakebed, however, is completely dry. There are no signs of mushrooms, or any moisture at all, except for the clear river flowing below. But at least we saved 190 pesos for our efforts. The hatchet-man, unquestioned master of his domain, will have to find another way to pay for his next shot of fuel oil.