How I Survived a Wedding in a Jungle That Tried to Eat Me Alive

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Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now.

I'm Eli Bosnik, and I'll be pressing onward through the foliage of ignorance tonight, but I'll need some guides through the thicket.

First up, two men whose heart of darkness are because of cholesterol levels, Noah and Tom.

Hey, I'll have you know I've gotten down to cholesterol some levels at this point.

My doctor said I'm a medical miracle, but like in a frowning way.

I don't know.

Frowny face ways now I am.

And also joining us tonight, albino apes fit for the cover of any National Geographic ETH and Cecil.

We are porn stars.

Exactly.

Nice.

You do not want to see what we could do with a banana.

Yes, yes, I do.

It's pretty cool.

Before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons.

Hey, patrons.

Fill it with your what?

Hey, patrons.

Without your money, we'd be stuck in America's corporate jungle of dead-end jobs.

Except for Tom, who's still there.

But that's not your fault.

That's not your fault.

If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around till the end of the show.

And with that out of the way, tell us, Noah, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today?

So, Tom will be regaling us with How I Survived a Wedding in the Jungle That Tried to Eat Me Alive by Melissa Johnson.

And Tom, you obviously aren't done dropping hints to Heath that there are worse things than inviting you to his wedding.

Are you ready to lay it on Thor?

I am indeed.

Let's go.

So, tell us, Tom, where'd you find this gem?

I ran ran across this article a while back in Outside magazine, and I thought, this is a classic citation-needed tale, one which needs not to be summarized, but told outright without adulteration from myself, which makes sense since I am not, after all, much of an adult.

So I'm beyond thrilled to bring you this story from Outside.

It's how I survived a wedding in the jungle that tried to eat me alive, written, and it seems survived.

by Melissa Johnson.

So here we go.

I lie half naked and miserable in a puddle of my own sweat.

Okay, well, now we're just talking about Elestra, I guess.

Right?

Is it oily?

It is true.

In the puddle?

It's a very personal question.

I open the tent flap to breathe, but there's no relief.

Even at midnight, who comes to the Guatemalan jungle in July?

Child soldiers?

Yesterday's.

Chris Walking and the Rock.

Yes.

Yesterday's hike was rough, but the 15 miles today was raw pain.

The mosquitoes were so vicious that by mile two, even our local guides had asked to borrow our 100% DEET.

Bugs here suck down lesser repellent like an imperitif.

Nothing provides complete protection.

Hate to argue with you, lady, but have you tried staying the fuck home?

100% effective.

So here's that rare deep woods off from 2022.

Would you you like to smell the sprayer?

Our destination is La Danta, one of the largest pyramids on Earth.

It's not even in the top five.

It's located in the...

Amway is the biggest.

It's located in the ruins of El Mirador, a centerpiece of Mayan civilization from 800 BCE to 100 CE that was abandoned nearly 2,000 years ago.

There are no restrooms, no gift shops.

In fact, the site is still being excavated.

This is where Angela and Sully want to get married.

So, accompanied by a pair of guides, a half-dozen pack donkeys, and their 10 toughest or least informed friends, the brides are determined to march us 60 miles over five days through Parc Nacional El Mirador in northern Guatemala to La Danta to say, I do.

It is our second night on the trail.

Hey, girls, so sorry to miss the fun.

Send me the wedding website or whatever.

Let me know if you want a Venmo.

End of essay.

There you go.

Boom.

I close my eyes and wait for Tara, aka tent dog, to start snoring.

I met her 48 hours ago.

Broad-shouldered and sharp-jawed, she looks like she could win a car tossing competition or spit and hit Mars.

A major in the U.S.

Army, she's been training soldiers on how to survive in the field since before survivor was a tiki torch in Mark Burnett's eye.

Back in the small town of Flores, the night before we all set off, she'd said something about a kidney condition with a shrug.

Nothing phases, tent dog.

Bet you didn't love your description in this article, right?

Yeah, she looked like she could split me in half with one hand, so I decided to give her reasons in print.

I'm in witness protection now.

I slip out of our nylon cocoon to pee, swimming through the liquid night, humidity 83%, cicada's buzz from thick vined shadows, the jungle's 24-hour booty call.

Yas, girl boss, malaria, more like you up.

Am I right?

Who are you writing this for?

the misshapen moon shimmers like a mirage.

I drop my underwear and flash a rounder moon at the donkeys.

A languid tail whips a fly.

Because my body temperature nearly matches the outer world, it's hard to feel the boundary line.

So I watch to make sure the piss is pissing.

At least it runs clear.

I've been pouring water to replenish the gallon I sweat every hour.

Don't forget to include a vivid description of my piss my article.

I write to myself.

Yeah,

how are your shits, Melissa?

All right, well, let's put a pin in that.

No sound emerges from our five tents, just green black humming in all directions.

1.6 million acres of primeval rainforest teeming with the richest biodiversity in Central America.

I shake my hips, pull up my skivvies, and float back to my tent.

Hey, here's some toilet paper, Shakira.

Hips don't dry, okay?

I flop down and remind myself, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

When a mosquito the size of a Winnebago chomps my left butt cheek, the pain is electric, but passes quickly.

After frantic swatting and cursing, I drift off, anesthetized by this single dart.

It was not a mosquito.

Yeah, we know because electric pain and then anesthesia.

Yeah, no, it's not mosquito behavior at all.

Four months before this trip, in April of 2017, I sat in a collapsible chair at a campsite in Joshua Tree, California, avoiding eye contact with the breakfast of sardines I had to force down.

Sardines for breakfast?

I didn't realize you are a victim of a hate crime.

Take all the time you need, honey.

Take all the time you need.

Jesus.

Sorry about the

yes, I said, before Angela finished her question.

Well, I'm tempted to say, well, there's your mistake right there.

But when somebody's eating sardines for breakfast, it's really hard to say something else.

Is there a mistake right there?

I'd met her five years ago when she was a subject in a documentary film I directed, and we became friends.

An Arab-American medic in the army, Angela met Suli, a Mexican-American enlistee, and couldn't resist her thousand-watt smile.

Despite the recent repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the policy had

left its scars.

The military still didn't feel like a safe place for their love.

Although Angela had once dreamed of being a lifer, she quit, and Suli followed suit.

They launched new careers and big plans for life as wife and wife.

I mean, if you're getting married next to a Jaguar, it's not a very long life stand.

A huge commitment, yeah.

As Joshua Tree's cold March winds blew dust around our campfire, I swaddled Angela and Suli's drowsy chihuahua inside my parka, keeping us both warm.

They told me they planned to marry in Guatemala.

Something about the Mayan ruins, a hand-picked crew, almost all women.

Did I want to come along?

We have this one lady with a mohawk.

We have to knock her out because of her fear of flying.

It's a whole thing.

I didn't want details.

I just wanted in.

Well, yeah, I feel like you should have wanted details, Melissa.

Jesus.

Travel and fuse the best.

I

I love these sardines.

I love it.

No more details on here.

Totally on board.

I was a single 39-year-old living and working in Los Angeles, freelance writing and making films, and my life felt rife with uncertainty.

This trip offered a chance to grab on to the one thing I knew about myself.

Diphtheria.

I descended the peaks of the high Sierra, explored the bowels of the Grand Canyon, and snow camped across north-central Colorado's gore range.

My future was a cloudy mess, but I knew this.

I am an adventurer.

Swipe left, swipe left, swipe left.

Sorry, Tom.

Sorry, force a habit.

Force a habit?

Go ahead.

To be clear, I am not a fearless adventurer.

I'm paranoid about viruses and parasites and have a phobia of ticks.

Growing up in Syracuse, New York, a hotbed for Lyme disease didn't help.

Anything insidious or invisible is my enemy.

Well, that's kind of baked into the definition of insidious, isn't it?

I mean,

give me something I can see and fight, not a freeloader sucking out my life force.

It'd still be your enemy, though.

Yes, I have low-grade OCD and watched Alien at an impressionable age.

Hey, lady, you don't have to overexplain it.

We all hate ticks, no matter how many times we've seen movies.

Yeah, I saw Alien when I was young, and I have fucking high-grade OCD, but I'd rather fight a tick than a jaguar.

That's right.

Whatever

she's beating up in the Guadalupe jungle.

But at this point, I wanted to say yes and feel grand for saying it.

I'd fallen out of trekking shape.

I needed to prove that I still had the stuff.

There would be plenty of time for fear.

I am the kind of person who says yes.

When Heath told me he was getting married in Brooklyn, I asked him where in Brooklyn before I gave a hard yes.

The context.

He asked to move the dinner from seven to five because it was, quote, a little too late.

What are you Spanish?

Had I been listening, I would have heard that almost everyone on the trip was professionally fit and 10 years younger than me.

A soldier, a martial artist, two physical therapists, and several fitness instructors.

Was this trip directed by Quentin Tarantino?

What the fuck is that list?

My regimen of strolls on Venice Beach and Sunday morning flop yoga wouldn't cut it with this crowd.

Yeah, that martial artist could hit throw a mosquito.

Probuscont control, yeah.

Probus control?

Had I been listening, I would have heard Angela describe her dream wedding.

A super trek to a remote destination that we all barely survive.

It bonds us forever.

Like how Suli and I met in the army.

Some of us just like our partners, and we had a little party about it.

But planned Stockholm Syndrome is cool too, I guess, Melissa.

Yeah, right.

No, uh-huh.

Had I been listening, perhaps I would have said no.

Instead, the conversation turned to breakfast.

Angela gestured to my sardines.

They're not so bad if you hide them in the eggs, she said.

The chihuahua squirmed against my belly.

Hey, why are you bringing up the chihuahua when the subject is food and being hungry, lately?

Trying to say.

I peeled back the tin and threw another oily stinker onto the campfire skillet.

As it popped and sizzled, I heaved a spoonful of orange whitefish roe into my mouth.

You can just say heaved.

Just get it done.

It's like a competition to make the grossest breakfast with the least amount of preparation.

What the fuck is next?

Raw puffer fish livers?

What are you eating?

I was choking down sardines and row at the behest of my acupuncturist.

Hey, guys, good news.

We don't have to feel sorry for these people at all.

Oh,

thanks.

Tom.

Amazing.

He said this diet would help prepare my body for the harvest of my own eggs a few weeks later, and I'd learned not to question his methods.

At least it wasn't the encapsulated deer placenta this time.

Eggs go in, eggs go out.

It's right here in this Sam I am medical book.

So anyway, I went to a stream to lay my eggs and wait for some guy to come in the stream.

We'll see what happens.

I wanted a sexy adventure buddy and a safe, reliable co-parent to have children with, but he hadn't appeared yet.

Refusing to settle for the wrong guy, it felt plucky at 23, but at 39 seemed more like a game of chicken with the universe.

Freezing my eggs stretched out the road a bit longer, but it might be for nothing.

All right, so I don't mean to be mean, Melissa, but you're blindly agreeing to a death wedding while eating sardines for breakfast on the advice of a professional liar.

So maybe, just maybe it's best if the line ends here, Mel.

Just maybe

you do not belong in an American Eagle ad, that's for sure.

A fertility clinic is the one place in Los Angeles where you can't hide from the realities of aging.

I'd never felt less in control as I dropped 10,000 hard-earned freelancer bucks to take my best shot at having a baby.

I'd have eaten the sardine can itself if that doctor had suggested it.

A doctor didn't suggest it.

That was an acupuncturist.

Anybody can legally buy scrubs.

You're an agent.

When I returned to Los Angeles from Joshua Tree, I shut up my abdomen with expensive medicine for several weeks leading up to the egg retrieval process.

I didn't have a partner to help me prep the injection site or hold my hand as I stabbed the dripping needles into my subcutaneous fat.

My only companion was the paid model in the injection tutorial video produced by the medicines manufacturer.

Night after night, I'd mimic her manicured hands long after I'd memorized the steps.

Hey, article, I think we just jumped into another article, right?

No,

we didn't.

A month before Guatemala, with my eggs successfully retrieved and on ice, I sat across from a travel medicine doctor in Santa Monica.

She'd already vaccinated me for dengue fever, hepatitis A, and tetanus, and given me a bottle of melarone to ward off malaria.

I filled out a form detailing my history with Giardia, a parasite and contaminated drinking water that causes diarrhea, exhaustion, and in my case, so much weight loss that my college basketball coach worried I'd become anorexic.

I'd caught it five times on wilderness treks,

even when no one else did.

I don't know what to tell you, she said.

I guess bugs just like you.

Hey, everybody, this is Tara, aka Tent Dog.

I was described as a strong spitter, I think, with a kidney condition.

Melissa shat herself so

get out of the article tent dog as i was saying tom is me thomas me

what about ticks i said do ticks in guatemala carry lyme disease honey they got something she said she had what i don't even she handed me a prescription for a single doxycycline pill the size of a baguette anything bites you take this No hospitals in the jungle and get the best tweezers you can find.

Oh, and cauterize the wound with a giant burning stick from the fight.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, always, always.

Guys, are there like really good tweezers?

Thank you.

I was like, off-brand tweezers are a problem?

Okay.

I stopped at a drugstore on my way home.

The pharmacist said, don't go to Angela and Suli's wedding.

I've been dealing with this all week.

I open my eyes in the misty jungle dawn, grateful to have dozed a handful of hours.

Tent Dog continues her Darth Vader breathing, perhaps dreaming of repelling from a helicopter or choking out a python.

I sit up

and listen,

hearing only the guttural wail of a howler monkey declaring its territory.

The other tents are still.

I start to lay back down, but a tight sensation between my legs grabs my attention.

Hold on, is this love?

No.

It's not.

I face away from tent dog, cross-legged, and peel off my underwear to inspect.

Nothing.

But what is that ache?

I pull my right labia aside and my field of vision snaps into a tunnel.

Behold.

Is this love?

No.

My nightmare.

A tick has bitten my vagina.

Just a

little heart of hearing God answering prayers.

One gigantic, pulsating tick on the way.

It's a weird request, but sure.

I miss when Tom talks about cold people.

The Predator is massive, the size of a pencil eraser with a revolting blood-brown shell and mandibles that rival jaws.

Okay, I'm sorry, this is the least of your problems right now at this moment, but your blood isn't supposed to be brown.

Maybe you should see somebody about that, too.

A dizzying heat rushes to my face.

I feel the urge to tip headfirst into an imaginary hole.

A voice from some deep place arises.

We've trained for this, Johnson.

Yeah, my basketball coach was weird.

We did weird stuff.

The drills were fucking, it was

coming to the odds, though.

I mean, like, honestly, I said at the time, I'm never going to

get out of my vagina with a pair of tweezers, but

thank coach for this.

I grit my teeth and pull out a brand new pair of Mr.

Tweezermans, excuse me, Dr.

Tweezermans from my

flip on my phone's flashlight and assume the butterfly position.

Yeah, it's at this point that Heath and Noah usually block me from the company email again.

The good part about being bit by a jungle-grade arachnid on the lady tacos.

Nope, nope, I'm rejecting the premise.

It doesn't matter where you go with this, you're wrong.

Is that the folds of the labia make it hard for the little jerk to get traction?

I spread my labia with my left hand, slip my eyes, and dive into surgery.

And think to myself, this is going to make a great article one day.

They all explain it.

Silver lining, this thing can't get any purchase.

Nice.

The creature squirms and plunges for deeper velvet, legs in blind fury, cruel mouth desperate for flesh.

I voted for Trump.

Oh, he's got a little MAGA hat

in my mind, yeah.

But my wrath will not be evaded.

Not today.

I grasp its beady head with a firm hand and yank up once, exorcising the demon from my holy garden.

We're like five paragraphs into this.

Jesus Christ.

Fuck you.

The posture is so bad just hearing this.

I'm all.

I know, me too.

Like, legs are crossed.

Like, Jesus Christ.

Everybody thoroughly checked their ball sacks while reading it.

Fuck you, I hiss.

I dump it into a plastic sandwich bag and smash out its guts with a rock.

I swallow the enormous antibiotic pill in one gulp.

Then we split a cigarette.

Tent Dog wakes up, fresh as springtime.

Yeah, she's actually into vaginal tick bites, so she's fine.

I've had a negative life experience, I say.

She rolls over, and I relay the ordeal with the gravitas of Obi-Wan Kenobi describing the destruction of planet Alderon.

She bursts out laughing.

I decide I hate Tent Dog.

I'm going to describe you so unflatteringly in my article about this.

Square jaw, spit Mars.

You'd spit at Mars, I bet.

Talk about your pee.

At breakfast, I am perhaps a little unhinged.

Aw, honey, you barely touched your sardines smothered in row.

Is something wrong?

I just want everyone to know I was bitten by a tick on the vagina, I announce.

Also, well, we're doing two grievances.

I hate Pencroft.

Who wants to go next?

Two grievances.

The group looks up with full cheeks and wide eyes.

Ashley, a bubbly blonde Yogini who weighs as much as my left leg, offers me tea tree oil from her stash.

I splash on so much it feels like my undercarriage has been power washed with blisterine.

I thank her for this kindness.

No, I'm sure random oil splashed over the open wound on the recommendation of a fucking unqualified soccer mom will help.

It can only help this situation, right?

She says.

Also, you're splashing too hard if it feels like it was a power wash.

You're doing the concept of splash wrong.

Angela pulls me aside.

Hey, look, she says, if you don't want to go on with us, I totally get it.

That sucks, but one of the guides can take you back.

There's like a thousand hours of drone video of literally everything you'd ever explore on foot on YouTube.

Eli watched it nine paragraphs ago.

It's a big, boring hole.

Just a big, stupid grasshole.

Just say yes, and this will be over.

But her tone is so compassionate, so ready to let me off the hook from this hellish trip that it soothes me out of my tantrum.

The tick is dead.

I took the pill.

I'll be fine.

A lot of women have thought this about me, so I add more to you.

I slap gators over my hiking boots, and we single-file out of camp for eight more miles through the bush.

Another breathless dawn sags over our heads on the third day, but I feel light in a way I haven't since I boarded the plane at LAX.

No matter what else happens, we've made it to El Mirador.

Now we just need to climb the La Danta pyramid and pull off a secret wedding.

A secret buckup.

You don't have permission to be there?

Next, you're going to tell me that they're going to dump a fucking barrel of oil on a family of seabirds instead of exchanging rings.

I hate everyone in this so much.

Jesus.

A moment before we leave camp, Sulie decides she needs a pre-wedding beauty treatment.

She plops on a stump, douses her hair with a water bottle, and shakes off the excess.

Ashley uses the tiny pair of scissors from the med kit as Angela brushes bits of hair from her beloved's shoulders.

Look how prepared I am, Sulie says, showing off her underwear waistband, which says, Tuesday.

Today is Tuesday.

Angela smiles.

It's time to go.

Okay, I like that her waistband has like a stage direction for somebody else to smile.

That's cool.

I'm going to write stuff on my underwear.

I like that.

Eli laughs.

Just see it on stage for a live show.

We did a comic wedgie and he did himself.

Arms crossed in silent fury.

Didn't work.

Commit to this.

I think we're climbing over natural ridges and hummocks to get to the La Danta pyramid, crown jewel of El Mirador.

But our guides, Alejandro and Luis, explained that we're actually climbing over the half-digested bones of a capital city that would take lifetimes to unearth.

With an estimated population of 200,000 at its height during the 3rd century BCE, El Mirador was the nerve center of a densely settled network of towns and villages.

But the city declined and was largely abandoned in the first century CE.

You would be amazed at the architectural marvels that we might be destroying with every step.

It's awesome.

This collapse didn't mean the end of the Maya, but it did mark a low point for civilization in the region.

Why did so many of its inhabitants abandon this place, never to return?

Warfare?

Shifting trade routes?

Alien invasion?

Oh, genital bites?

I understand genital bites.

Richard Hansen, an archaeologist who has conducted research in northern Guatemala for over four decades, points to drought and deforestation as the culprits.

Over millennia, the jungle swallowed this once mighty metropolis.

No small lesson for a group of Americans about the fate of a society whose power outstrips its wisdom.

All right.

Well, I'm guessing any minute we're going to get the ticks side of the story, but until we do, we'll take a quick break for some apropos of nothing.

Hey, podcast listener, I'm No Illusions.

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I think we can all agree there's nothing worse than being invited to a destination wedding.

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No, she didn't.

She rode in the car with your mom for 22 minutes, but the memories will be no less magical.

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That's right, Deceptination Weddings splits your profits 50-50 with the guests who attend and play along.

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Clip-clop.

Oh, that's Susan in accounting.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, sure.

No hard feelings.

How much was he paying you anyway?

It was an internship.

Got it.

Sure.

Oh, see, in Chicago, it's just the red bag.

You've got a special colored bag?

Well, it's not just for that, I imagine.

Hey guys, what you doing?

Oh, we were just talking about what our loved ones are going to do when we die.

Oh, man.

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Okay, but Tom, we don't have kids.

Oh.

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Well, then in Chicago, you're going to want your family to use the red trash bag.

Cecil was just saying that.

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And we're back.

When we left off, we were sneaking with a swollen labia up the side of an archaeological dig in the hopes of being just a little less likable than that guy who killed a 500-year-old turtle.

What happened next, Tom?

Despite aching feet, sopping armpits, and a blossoming case of jungle butt, think adult diaper rash, adrenaline inflates.

Adrenaline inflates my lungs as we approach the massive pyramid, which is easy to mistake for a sleeping volcano in the canopy.

Rock, paper, scissors, loser changes, Melissa, okay?

Angela asks Alejandro and Luis if we can spend a few minutes alone atop La Danta for a period of quiet meditation.

And they hang back.

Although the Maya were no strangers to homosexuality and may have incorporated it into some shamanic rituals, things changed when the Catholic Spaniards arrived in the 1500s.

Gay marriage is not recognized in Guatemala today.

A gay man and two trans.

Stop doing the mozzarella thing for Guatemala.

That's probably best.

A gay man and two trans women were killed in a single week during Pride Month in 2021, and at least 19 LGBTQ plus people were murdered in 2020.

Alejandro and Luis seem cool, but Angela can't risk complete honesty.

Also, I've changed the guides' names lest they suffer consequences for being party to our expedition.

So why choose this spot for their wedding?

Somewhere that neither woman has personal ties to in a country hostile to their love.

That's where the article should end right there.

Fuck, you guys want to go to Fire Island?

Fire Island is so nice.

I know there were gay people in these communities, Angela said.

I can't quite explain it, but I feel connected to them.

I don't want to be disrespectful.

I hope the Mayan spirits understand.

They don't.

They don't.

Is lying to the Mayan spirits about your sexuality the liberal version of Mormon soaking?

I just want to know

for my reference.

Maybe.

But don't jump on Melissa's sleeping bag.

That's better.

Besides, neutral ground doesn't exist for Angela and Suli.

When they announced their engagement back in the States, members of their families cried, and not in the happy way.

Despite getting their marriage license in California, the couple didn't feel safe having a public wedding during the first year of the Trump administration.

So we've traveled to a place much less hostile.

So he is the vaginal tick of presidents.

choosing peak rainy season has assured them of precious privacy we have not seen nor will we another tourist the entire week this is what a history of trauma yields when you've been forbidden to be yourself for so long a lost city feels like home hey uh there's actually nothing more straight than being incredibly obnoxious and culturally appropriative about your wedding lady so you are good

you are good you're safe We approach a rickety wooden staircase, scaffolded onto the side of the pyramid.

236 feet to the top.

Lacquered with sweat, I grab at the skeletal railing to hoist myself up platform after platform.

My ego refuses to be left behind by my younger, fitter comrades.

So what if my lungs explode?

The sun beats down upon my pale body as I squint and adjust my hat and sunglasses against its full equatorial force.

Okay, this is kind of triggering.

I did almost exactly that in Hawaii, except I was 20 years old and most of my comrades were much older and also much fitter.

And they were all fucking nice to me and helpful and encouraging.

And I fucking hated it.

I'm

like vomiting as I go.

And they're like, you got this.

You got this.

All right, buddy.

You want us to stop calling you chunk?

They didn't stop calling me chunk.

Do they make you truffle shuffle at the top?

All the time, Tom.

And literally, yes.

I feel like you're a joke, but yes, literally, yes.

I did a naked truffle shuffle at the top of that.

Do you have a tick on your balls or no?

Do you still have that tick?

How see-through was your piss?

That's the question.

The story's incomplete, obviously, until we know this information.

We spill out on top of the pyramid and dump our day packs into the shade of a single tree.

The rough slab is the size of a modest backyard deck with nubs of ancient steps on one side and a simple wooden railing to prevent falls on the other.

We're standing on sacred ground.

No one speaks.

Long, long pause.

I just want everybody to know that I was bitten by a damn giant.

You all ignored me before I breakfast.

Also, I hate Tent Dog.

Our guides had told us that in the midst of the Maya's environmental crisis, they had sacrificed everyone from babies to nobility up here, a futile attempt to appease gods for human errors.

I'll later learn that there's no evidence of human sacrifice in Mayan rituals until centuries later, but right now, the story of spilled blood feels true.

Looking out, it's hard to imagine a bustling city or the degraded landscape that followed.

All I can see, all anyone can pay attention to, is the great green ocean rolling to the horizon.

If I listen closely, I hear a chorus of hungry ticks.

Melissa, come back.

Please.

I just want everybody to know that I have swamp ass really bad, too.

Anyway, love is patient.

Love is kind.

You want me to do Corinthians?

I wiped on this thing you gave me to read.

I don't know.

I can't see the rest of it.

It does not boast.

I think it says that next.

There's shit on it.

The brides slip identical, crisp white shirts over grizzled hiking pants and straighten their sweat-soaked bandanas.

Joby, a mountain biking med student, steps upon a rock-cum pulpit and pulls her hair into a bun to officiate.

Tent Dog, the ring bearer, assumes her post with military posture.

I loudly shit myself.

Damn it.

It's always when it's a poop jokes.

The poop jokes are the ones that really get Eli.

Eli.

I loudly shit.

Don't be laughing.

You're going to be able to read it.

Eli's going method.

I loudly shit myself and fall down the side of the beer.

All right.

So I know the mountain biker efficient isn't on a mountain bike at this moment, but that's still how I picture it.

Yeah.

Her two.

They're like pulling a wheelie and going back and forth.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Extreme weddings brought to you by Mommy Doo.

Sulie stumbles over her open lines.

Nope.

Sulie stumbles over her lines.

It's funny that you stumbled over that open lines.

It is.

It is.

It is.

Kind of pretty funny.

Angela takes her hands.

These two souls, so full of passion and conviction, choose their own holy words and cast a spell over their future.

I've never felt anything close to the bond these women share.

Merging with another person requires a kind of faith I've distrusted and resisted, but this altar was made for transformation.

Sorry, Tom, usually when this kind of bullshit is happening, I have my wife to glare at me not to ruin it.

So

I don't really know what to do right now.

That Cecil does that for me.

So yeah.

Okay, but sometimes

you still shit yourself and fall down the side of whatever

doesn't prevent everything.

The midday sun kindles the white of their shirts into incandescence.

I am the weightless reflection of this glow.

My body, dearest friend and burdened on this journey, appears to have gone missing.

In its place, the jungle buzzes, a cacophony of life in every direction, vibrating with its inescapable, insatiable, many-mouthed maw, the sound of life's deep yearning for more.

I am that yearning.

For to witness love like this and bless it amid the primordial is to be absorbed, absorbed

to become part of it.

Settle down.

50% of pyramid weddings end in divorce, too.

Okay.

When I feel my body again, I realize I can't stop smiling.

My muscles have been paralyzed by a sudden onset of Lyme disease.

Life to life.

Holy shit, it's grinning too.

Holy fuck.

Life to life, creature to creature.

The buzz bounces and refracts and compounds everything in its wake with an intoxicating hunger that hits like joy.

After climbing back up the pyramid, I see everyone and smile awkwardly because I had shed myself.

Life to life, creature to creature.

I've wiped all the shit off myself with some tree bark, I tell them.

It was magical, we all agreed.

Do you want me to do the rest of Corinthians?

I hate

Tintog so much

after the ceremony.

Hugs and a thousand photos taken from every angle.

We notice dark clouds rolling in from the west.

Oh shit, the Mayan spirits know about the game.

Rather than climb down, we stand our ground in the stultifying haze.

Not even a leaf moves.

As the tallest person on the highest promontory, I should be worried about the approaching veins of lightning, but the ceremony has left me invincible.

I raise my aluminum hiking pole in defiance.

Tom, my fingers are crossed.

Lightning could no more strike me down than it could shatter the whole of La Danta.

I drink thirstily from a nearby puddle to emphasize my invincibility.

Moments later.

Tom, change the story.

I don't care.

Just make it a lighthead.

Moments later, when the heavens wash our stinking, ecstatic bodies clean, we shout like children who've known no greater pleasure.

Then, having dumped its violent bounty upon us, the sky moves on.

Beautiful rivulets stream down, dark, brown.

I had missed a lot with the trophy.

Right.

It's weird that this episode has more poop jokes than the Elastro one, doesn't it?

In a final touch of magic, when we make it back to camp, we find that our guides have decorated a long table with plastic fruit-pattern tablecloth.

It feels like the Ritz-Carlton.

Nope.

Alejandro and Luis present us with a pineapple upside-down cake and a magnum of Ron Bautron.

My eyes widen and find Angela's with the same question: Do they know about the wedding?

But no, today is Tent Dog's birthday and they wanted to surprise us.

What, yo, they scheduled the wedding on the ring bearer's birthday?

And it's gonna be their anniversary now.

What a bunch of fucking assholes.

Everything you tell me about these people makes me like them less.

Jesus.

I have a question, though.

I do have a question.

Does she have to give her age in dog years?

10 dog years.

Seven birthdays a year.

So it has a totally different.

That's no, you almost can't help it.

You're going to miss it, right?

I bet this all happened on a fucking Wednesday, too.

Pieces of shit.

You thought it was a Tuesday Wednesday.

Eli,

it was a Tuesday.

It was read in the underwear.

Come on.

Okay.

Let's close the weekend.

Read an underwear.

Week of Christmas.

The air dissolves into toasts and merriment while the red sun sinks below the horizon.

I gorge my body with sugar and caramel vanilla rum, offering a small blood sacrifice to the mosquitoes who float like spirits above the feast.

On the last morning, I wake up cocky and hung over and vote to take the shortcut back.

Everyone agrees.

Let's abandon the trail and beeline to Carmelita for an early lunch.

The jungle isn't so terrifying after all.

We've tamed it.

Oh, you fucking idiot.

Shortcut through the jungle is some let's hide in the graveyard level shit by everyone in this story.

You've got it coming.

Whatever comes.

We haven't tamed shit.

You think?

Two hours later, our progress slows to a crawl.

I follow Alejandro, who slashes his machete against the interminable intestinal green at every step.

Rainy season has yielded supergrowth that he didn't anticipate.

The leaves are so enormous, I imagine curling into one to serve myself up as a spring roll for whatever hungry giant patrols this ramble.

No wonder.

You imagine weird shit.

Yeah, why would you.

No wonder people get lost and die in this park.

Angela tells me that Alejandro saved Luis's life out here years ago.

That's how they met.

My stomach flutters.

It was the rum cake mixing with the dysentery.

We pick our way through swamps that stink of death and sulfur.

A gang of monkeys hurl branches at us from a tree.

The Mayan spirits told us you were gay.

Thank all us.

I spy a scorpion two feet from my toe and lunge past it.

A faire de lance, notorious rainforest serpent, pokes its venomous yellow chin out the muck, and I stop breathing.

Where's it a vine?

No matter, press on.

Oh, where's your fucking lightning rod bullshit now, Melissa?

Right?

That's a fucking brave when it's not the thing that's literally the standard cliche for an unlikely event to happen to you.

Are you?

Thick mud paints my purple gaiters gray.

I look like I'm walking on concrete stilts.

I use my hiking poles to peel pancakes off the bottom of my boots every 15 minutes.

Trying to enliven the mood, ever-sonny Suli interviews Diana with her GoPro.

Come on.

So, she chirps.

What did you learn in the jungle?

Welcome to Jungle Talk, the podcast about jungle stuff.

I'm Suli.

What's that?

I just got divorced, apparently.

Anyway,

what did you learn in the jungle?

She's a podcaster.

I get it.

Our wedding was on a Wednesday, by the way.

It doesn't matter what percent deet you use.

The mosquitoes still bite you.

Diana has a bite on her eyeball.

Oh, my God.

Sulie turns to Joby.

What did you learn in the jungle?

Don't go in the jungle, Joby Deadpans.

Okay, leave the fucking what you learned in one sentence shit to the professionals, okay?

Luis assures us there's only a mile or two left.

20 more minutes.

20 minutes pass.

A dour silence falls.

Estella's knee gives out.

Tent Dog, suffering a nasty bout of trench foot, shuffles like a zombie.

But she insists that Estella ride the donkey.

None of us yet know that Tent Dog is also suffering from gout and renal failure, precipitated by our salty diet and dehydration.

Hey, Tom, Tom, step over here for a second with me.

We were all having a really good time with the Pinterest wedding and the white people.

If these people die, you have to let me go back and delete my drugs.

You have to let me go.

I stand by mine.

That's right.

20 more minutes, Louise says.

By hour five, everyone stops talking.

I love this so much.

The only sound is our sludgy trudge and the rhythmic

sludgy trudge.

Come on.

By hour six, I stopped thinking.

My quads and calves scream and fire on autopilot.

Bugs can't get traction on my skin, glazed in a slime of sweat, sunscreen, and deet.

No mind, only motion.

Jungle Talk is brought to you by Policy Genius.

Anyway,

let's keep going, everybody.

One foot in front of the other.

Keep going.

Another sardine on the skillet.

Another date.

Another injection.

Mimic the manicured hands.

Don't stop.

Left foot.

Right foot.

Left foot.

Melissa, you have a lot of unresolved issues that a hike is not going to fix.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, either that was a mid-story psychotic break or a really lazy attempt to squeak past the minimum word count.

Hours or minutes later, our troop lands on a rare, dry patch of dirt.

Bodies bend over knees, hands clasp the backs of heads, lungs suck and exhale.

Alejandro slices a bamboo cane and guzzles water from its hollow core, then offers it to me.

Even he looks cooked.

Tent dog is dead last.

Her soaked shirt slings from the angles of her frame.

Her face glows with a ghostly yellow tint.

Luis shirt off, smile force, can't resist.

Only 20 more minutes.

Till I say that again.

Rage boils up my throat.

But before I can release, Ashley, our gummy bear of light and positivity, beats me to it.

She wheels on the group with bulging eyes and clenched fists and screams, you can't do this to people.

Followed by a shriek that would appall a howler monkey.

Okay, the only thing whiter than thinking the Mayan spirits bless your gay wedding is having a customer complaint for the jungle.

On board.

Who is she yelling at?

Luis?

Angela and Suli for bringing her?

Perhaps she's yelling at the jungle itself, but the jungle can do whatever it wants to people.

As far as the ticks and the scorpions and the ferdelance are concerned, we're just another soft-skinned mammal, another body to swallow in the mud, another city to devour.

I dart my eyes away from Angela's and choke back a giggle.

Someone snorts and tries to cover it with a cough.

I stare at the ground, but it's too much.

The group erupts into laughter.

Resistance is futile.

Resistance is suffering.

The jungle will eat you, so be eaten.

We have fun, don't we, guys?

That snort was me shitting again.

This is so us.

My future is a cloudy mess, but I know this.

I am an adventurer.

And an adventurer is someone who surrenders to the unknown, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it's horrible.

Because once you've been absorbed, nothing else will do.

That's not what adventurer means at all.

You're just bad at decision making.

When we set forth this time, I feel a new sense of calm.

It is only 20 minutes before we happen upon a small, bright clearing and turn right to see beautiful Carmelita with its rusty corrugated roofs, dirt roads, and a single horse in a pasture.

We have been released.

The group's mood soars into blue skies, hugging, singing.

Blood rushes to my head and washes the backs of my knees down my stiff calves between my toes.

Tent dogs remaining kidney explodes from her body like a firework.

After Cervezas and Enchiladas prepared at Alejandro's home by his wife and daughters, we pile our smelly bodies into a passenger van and head off for Flores.

I sit shotgun and hold the muscles of my thigh.

Shotgun, I yelled, and everybody respected the shotgun.

Everybody has liked me this whole time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The jungle whips past my window at impossible speed.

Who are you thanking?

Or were you just still four words short after all this?

Sulie taps my shoulder from the seat behind and points her GoPro at me.

My hair is wild.

My face is dirty.

I'm proud of looking this bad.

I tell the camera.

I quit the podcast.

I just feel alive.

I'm a thousand feet high and flying in this magical old van.

I am LaDanta and the rolling green ocean and the scorpion lurking in the muck.

Hey, is weird list going?

Wrap it up.

You got a weird one going.

I am a tick on the cosmic vagina.

There it is.

You chop it.

A sentence I didn't think would be recorded by me.

Oh, we got to get that shirt.

It makes one of us.

It feels like I am a tick on the cosmic vagina, was like written down, and then it was like, How do I make an experience happen that I can write an article that goes before that?

I don't know how

to do it.

I'm not going to get bit on the vagina by, God damn it.

I do not fear not finding love or missing out on motherhood.

There's nothing I cannot do in this life.

It will be a few days before the Giardia sets in.

Cue the circle of life from Lion King and run credits.

We are done.

All right, Tom, if you had to summarize what we've learned in one sentence, what would it be?

Nobody wants to go to your shitty destination wedding.

That's correct.

Correct.

All All right.

Are you in Scotland?

Are you ready for the quiz?

Absolutely.

Tom, they made a horror movie about the tick encounter.

What was it called?

A Vampire Hunter V, B,

let the Might One in.

C,

Salem slot or D,

oh no, cracula.

Fantastic.

Oh, Crackula.

It's so good.

Let the might one in.

I love that one.

That's great.

Ah, you are correct.

All right.

As loath as I am to do movie puns right after Cecil did, what was the romantic comedy version called?

A, you've got male area.

B, when Harry met a tick climbing all up in it.

C,

Pyramidsummer Night's Dream.

fantastic d mama maya or e

mama maya mama maya's fucking cold dude thank you or e

maya more

maya more is very good mama maya though that is so good they didn't make t-shirts that say maya more for their whole family

so i it is d it is in fact d i thought i was gonna trick you with e there but you got it

all right tom melissa ended that by saying, I am the tick on the cosmic vagina.

I didn't have a question.

I just wanted to say that again because it's amazing.

That's factual.

We just

experienced experience.

That's like, that's some shit that like Pacino should have been saying in Devil's Advocate while he's giving it,

but it's like on the cutting room floor.

They were like, all right, Al, time for a nap.

Settle down a little.

All right, chewing up.

I was about to say, I am the tick on the cosmic vagina, so he wins.

All right, next week, let's hear from Noah.

All right, well, for Tom, Cecil, Noah, and Keith, I'm Eli Bosnik.

Thank you for hanging out with us today.

We'll be back next week, and by then, Noah will be an expert on something else.

Between now and then, the ancient Mayan spirits want you to listen to our other podcasts.

And if you don't, you're homophobic.

Jesus Christ.

And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com/slash citationpod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes, be sure to check out citationpod.com.

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