South America Story

This is a story that Scout wrote as one of her final assignments for Mr Mitchell in Year 6. I include it here and have only changed the spacing on the page. All the rest is her own work.



“This is a once-in-a-life-time opportunity. I’ll do my best, Mr Worthy,” I said with a small tear in my eye.

Mr Worthy explained“ I had 2 weeks to finish my 4page story on my trip to South America for the Mosman Daily newspaper.”

I hung up the phone and looked around my small crowded house; filled with at least a dozen large purple notebooks filled with knowledge on my journey to South America, animal fur, list of animal and tree types and cameras with more than 600 pitchers on each one. I walked over to my laptop I had kept all my other zoologists writings in. I pressed the small button to open the top half of the computer, which held a screen that would hold my writings for the Mosman Daily newspaper for the next 2 weeks. I opened up the Word Document and set the font to size 16 and Bell MT style writing font. In a few minutes I was away and had my full concentration was on the work I had for the next 2 weeks?

I started by saying The journey to the end of the world-the trip to South America. This story is about the wild land that will tug your soul. On the 4th of July 1999 I landed in Pure with my crew of 6, Jim the teams medical officer (doctor), Jack and Sam were the men that carried the cameras, camping supplies and food, Heidi my partner who helps me discover new things about animals and tree’s, Tim the supervisor of the trip and me the person who is writing this story. The wheels of the plane landed with a screeching sound that made a few people on board cover their ears with their hands.

The nice flight attendants ushered all the passengers of the plane. The terminal was very crowded but my team managed to get through and outside the glass doors, to where a small safari like car waited. Pedro (driver) drove us through the streets of Iquito, the scenery was spectacular, and the buildings, the people, and the cars were nothing like back in NSW. Pedro drove the 6 of us to the shore of the Amazon River; we bought tickets for a long and unfortunately boring trip to the Amazon jungle.

We cruised the Amazon River for a few days until we reached Manaus in the rainforest (Amazon Jungle), on the cruise we visited local art galleries of Amazonian, we did bird watching, jungle treks, piranha fishing and I made some spare time to jot some information down on the animals and trees I saw. After rocky sleeps and seasickness we made it to the unbelievable, indescribable, beautiful, dense, over grown, luscious and opulent AMAZON JUNGLE!

Rustles in the emergent layer, canopy and understorey trees and bushes made a sound that no of us had ever heard before. I heard a sound like someone was there, but I convinced myself it was just the wind playing up.

“AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!”

3 men came shooting out of the bushes I heard the wind blow through. Well I guess it wasn’t the wind. The Men had long, sharp spears in hand ready to strike. 2 men wore small red coverings over their genitals but the other man wore nothing that made Heidi’s and my mouths drop just looking at him. The thought of actually being in the Amazon Jungle was enough, but now this; it’s just too much to bear.

Each man grabbed 2 team members and pulled us in to the dense jungle. Their grip was hard and struggling didn’t make them let go. The smell of smoke made Jim’s mind wonder where they were taking us, Tim’s mind raced with questions like were they going to make it back to back to civilisation, Heidi questioned her self if they were going to separated, Jack’s brain hurt from just thinking is they would be held hostage, Sam’s couldn’t bare to think about dieing in the rainforest and being left to be a meal for a hungry jaguar and I thought of a way to get out of this mess.

Vines crawled up every tree trunk, every rock and made the ground very green and crowded. One vine, over the years had connected to a Mistletoe tree to a Twin Kauri tree. The scary, naked man with out looking walked straight into the dark green vine and let go of his hostages and fell to the ground in pain. The other 2 men let go of their hostages and yelled in an interesting, weird and unknown language. I gave the team a signal to move away slowly from the worried men.

Soon the men were out of sight. I thought to myself we had luckily made it through our first diaster, but I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be the last. A rocky ledge near the relived crew was a home to a black jaguar in a dark cave none of us saw it in. Heidi spoke a little to loud “Well what do we do know Tim”.

“SSSHHH, be very still and quiet, look up there in the cave,” said Tim in a trebling voice.

Heidi had spoken loud enough to wake the jaguar. The jaguar walked out of it’s sanctuary (cave) and sat down on the green grass staring at us. With a great roar from the fierce animal, Heidi screamed and ran the fastest she could followed by Jack, Tim, myself, Jim and Sam.

In a few seconds the jaguar was after them using it’s powerful legs to jump high in to the air. 3 spears flew through the air not aiming to hit the scary animal just to scar it a way. The animal jolted off into trunk-covered rainforest leaving the 4 men and 2 women breathless. “ That was a close one,” I said with a big gulp of air. Before anyone could answer the 3 native men walked out from behind the bushes with no spears. It must have been them who scared the animal away. I said with simplest words so they could understand “thank… you… for… saving…us.”

“That ok,” one man said with trouble and poor English.

We watched the 3 men collected their spears walked off into in amazing Amazon.

Night fell over the Jungle making silhouettes on all the different types of trees. Jack and Sam built the tents in silence which made it easier for my to concentrate on my writings on our journey so far. I tossed and turned in my sleeping bag which kept me awake all night with very little sleep by morning. The morning sun shone trough the tiny gaps between the trees on to the tent I was sleeping in, I turned to face the sun in my sleeping bag still asleep. The suns rays shone in to my eyes, which woke me up. I crawled out of my tent and woke everyone else up.

After a bite to eat supplied by Jack and Sam I sat on a rock a pulled out one of my purple notebook and finished what I was writing on yesterday. Heidi felt a tree’s trunk and said thoughtfully “ I think this tree is creaking.” Huge cracks made it clear the tree wasn’t just creaking but the tree was about fall and leave a metre wide stump. Sam looked a Heidi, then at the tree and realised the tree was heading in the direction of Heidi!!!!!

Sam saw Heidi’s face it looked terrified and frightened. Sam ran towards Heidi and jumped on her to pull her out of the way of the falling tree. They both hit the ground with a thud. Sam moved off Heidi and checked if he still had 2 arms, 2 legs and 1 head over 2 shoulders.

Everyone was speechless; Heidi managed to say, “ Are you all right Sam.”

“Fortunately yes,” answered Sam.

Sam and Heidi stood up and brushed them selves off.

They looked at the huge tree that could have killed them. Jack packed up the tents while I took pitchers of the giant, fallen tree. I walked over to the stump the tree had left. “Hey everyone look at this,” I said pointing at the inside of the tree trunk. “It’s hollow and what’s that noise?” A small yellow and pink spotted frog hopped out of the tree trunk. All 12 of our eyes didn’t only look at the animal but what was on it’s head. A little black horn sat on the frog’s head.

“Oh my gosh… this animal must of never been discovered. The animal isn’t on any of my charts. Do you know what this means? We just made history my friends,” I said with a big grin on my face.

Tim caught the undiscovered frog, put it in a small comfortable cage and put it in his bag. “When we get back to Australia we show the animal to the world and we’ll be famous,” I explained to my team. “OUCH,” I screamed. “Jim, take a look at this what dose it look like to you?” I asked in pain.

“Looks like a spider bite to me. Here let me put some ointment on it should be healed by morning” Jim said.

Night fell once again, I sat by the fire Tim made to cooked dinner over and I wrote more information down on the frog. This was our last night in the Amazon Jungle and tomorrow we would make our way back to the river and catch a boat back to Iquito, then catch a plane back to Australia. That night I had a good sleep in the tents put up by Jack and Sam. Tim woke me up in the morning with a worried look on his face. “ I have some bad news. When I woke I looked in my bag to feed the frog but I pulled out the cage and the frog was gone,” Tim said in a sad tone of voice.

“ Are you sure it’s no in there” I said in a disappointedment.

“Yes, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to I swear,” Tim replied.

“Well I guess the next time when come in 2 years we will spend all our time looking for the specie and hopefully well find it. Lets just pray that someone else doesn’t find it before us. But in the mean time lets get a move on and lets get out of here,” I said.

The boat departed from Manuas and few days later we arrived back in Iquito. 14 long hours it took the plane to land back in Australia.

Remember that more and more animals are out there waiting to be discovered and it’s our job to find them.

THE END