El Real is unreal. If you were to imagine a frontier jungle town from the movies, this might be it. Old ramshackle wooden buildings on narrow streets, I find it beautiful. There is a mass going on in the Catholic Church on the Square and the music is a mix of jungle drums and tambourine, entrancing. There are no roads into town and it is mostly black with a few Indians. It was founded about 1600. We are the only Gringos in town, that makes three days since we’ve seen any, I like that.
We pass into primary jungle and it is like entering heaven. Vines hang, ferns sprout from the ground and hang from above and shafts of golden light filter down through the canopy of leaves above. The trees are as large as redwoods but much younger. Every surface is covered with growth of some kind, vines, bromeliads, ferns, trees, a riot of life.
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