I got into filmmaking and photography as a means to sustain a lifestyle of adventure. The Darién had been at the top of my list since I’d read George Meegan’s The Longest Walk chronicling his journey from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, where he narrowly survived traversing the Darién.
When I originally met Jason Motlagh in Kabul in 2008, he was only 27, but already working with some top filmmakers and photographers like Jim Nachtwey and Rick Rowley. Since then we had worked alongside each other, and shared contacts and story ideas for almost a decade. I had continued to stay in touch with him hoping that we would eventually work on a big project together. So when he called about the Darién, and at first I had to say no, it was really very demoralising. Fortunately the dates changed and it worked out.
I’ve worked on some high risk stories in Afghanistan and Asia. In conflict zones where bullets are constantly flying, there’s an obvious element of danger. But in the Darién it’s really hard to know if a friendly river pirate is planning to kidnap you or if a competing armed faction is planning an ambush along the river. Jason and I are pretty like-minded and I knew he wouldn’t take foolish risks. When he told me about Carlos Villalon I called an old friend who knew him from his work in Colombia. He confirmed Carlos was a solid guy. That’s all I needed to know, it was word of mouth from good trusted friends. But it is not like we just went into the Darién blindly. Carlos has been cultivating contacts all over Colombia’s conflict zones for more than a decade. I think he and Jason spent about a year trying to get the right permissions from people that assisted us along the way in Colombia and Panama.
I’ve spent a lot of time in jungles but the Darién was by far the most dehydrating experience I’ve had. It was hard to ever drink enough water. I always felt like I needed more. I would sweat so much that my clothes were drenched all the time. It can make you delirious.
On this trip I kept five copies of the project. Jason always had a copy and I literally slept with a copy in my shorts every night.
But waiting was one the most difficult parts of the trip. At one point I think we spent five days waiting for a group of migrants to show up in a village. It was getting really difficult for Carlos and Jason to determine if the information we were getting was accurate or just smoke and mirrors. For me it was difficult because you can only shoot so much footage of a tiny village before you are just shooting the same thing over and over again.
So when we finally found migrants on the Cacarica River none of us could believe it. The migrants were in shock too. They couldn’t fathom some guys would show up with cameras claiming to be journalists in such a remote, otherworldly place. At first some of them tried to play off that they were tourists but then a few minutes later they started to come apart. One started crying and praying to Allah. That moment will stay with all of us I’m sure.
My family were immigrants at one point and I know how lucky I am.
Filming in the jungle
I came across a lot of challenges shooting in the Darién.
Every so often everyone would stop for a break, but this was when I had to keep shooting what the migrants and Jason and Carlos were doing. The other challenge was shooting vision of the jungle and capturing the detail; the trees, ants, and flowers. Every time I stopped to do this it would set me back from the group by two to ten minutes, so it was a constant challenge for my legs to catch back up to the group.
I had enough batteries to keep the camera going in the jungle for about a week. It meant Jason had to carry a heavier load adding about four to five kilos, but if we had got stuck without power the batteries would have saved the day. We came close to dumping some of the batteries on the last day but Jason was still fit enough to go on.
"In the Darién it’s really hard to know if a friendly river pirate is planning to kidnap you or if a competing armed faction is planning an ambush." Source: Jason Motlagh
I once did a very similar jungle trip to a remote no-go zone controlled by river smugglers and a narco army. At the very end of the trip our fixer got into a very heated argument over money with two boatmen in the middle of a river. Before I knew it, they pushed us and all of our gear into the river. We almost lost everything, including two weeks of footage for a great exclusive story. So on this trip I kept five copies of the project. Jason always had a copy and I literally slept with a copy in my shorts every night. I know that this is totally obsessive, but I was determined not to lose the project to theft, confiscation or another river fiasco.
But for me the most challenging thing was that we were always in very narrow, leaky unstable boats. It was mostly impossible to change a position once you sat down. The camera angles I had to work with were extremely limiting sometimes. There were a couple boats that seemed destined to flip and sink but never did. We bailed a lot of water during the trip.
I think we generally worked really well as a team. There were a couple tense moments when disputes broke out over how much to pay boat drivers and porters that were demanding more money, but that seems to invariably happen on every expedition I’ve ever been on.
Jason and Carlos like to give each other a hard time but it was mostly in fun. Carlos’ Spanish accent reminded me of Al Pacino’s character Tony Montana, from the movie Scarface. He can really blow out some colorful lines that encapsulate any screwed up situation concisely.
Given the right opportunity I would absolutely travel the Darién again. These are the kind of assignments that really motivate me in every way. It has a multitude of physical and mental challenges and a lot of journalistic merit. When you complete an epic adventure that doubles as an important piece of journalism, it is hard to find a follow up to match it.
