Midnight Cowboying – Monster of the Pozo

(demoted & repromoted (testing stuff) – promoted by On The Bus)

Stingray and I had been long hauling in the jungle for a solid month at this point. The mysterious bug bites and shady comidas had been worth it, we had found what we were looking for. But that is easy when you have a map, especially one from NASA. Hidden in plain view in the mountains of their forefathers, there were still Mayan temples with pre-Columbian pottery on the ground. We had not come to loot, we had only come to see, and that’s why we were welcomed. And even lead.

We had met Poncho down in the valley where I do my best work, on a barstool in a cantina. When he saw our map and gear he knew we were serious and lead us deep into vines and history, all the way to his village. All the way till we were the first gringos seen, all the way to the lands where they don’t even speak Spanish.

The funniest part of this trip, before we hunted the monster, occurred 150 feet inside a mountain miles away from anything that resembled civilization. And as usual in this part of the world, it involved gold.

It was your basic Cueva del Diablo story, but deep inside this temple cave was The Slide. Mind you, we had gone through 500 feet of rope to get down to this point, and we just ran out as we approached a whimsical ride that looked like something out of the Goonies. Perfectly smooth granite slid around and down at an angle that lead into deep darkness. A rock tossed rattled along for a good thirty seconds, letting us know that there was no drop off, but it would be a one way trip. Without rope.

According to Poncho, if you slide down the Devil takes your soul and you are never heard from again. That’s bullshit, you just die. I noticed an inscription above the slide and copied the hieroglyph before we pulled out. I would learn later it meant “Virgin Well.” We had been standing in front of a sacrificial pit.

That’s not even the story though, on the hike down, some people came up who knew Poncho. After a heated discussion, he turned from the small group and asked,

“You two wanna go see a monster?”

I am always up for a monster. In my travels, I have seen some very unique specimens, usually just freaks of nature. But sometimes they border on the edge of the mystic. Stingray was more than up for it, having heard my tales of lore, and we started to climb along a river bed in the valley. We had to have climbed straight up a mile along what they called a road, though some might even argue against it’s status as a trail. And coming out of a huge grotto was a waterfall that lead to a breath-taking pozo.

(This is not said pozo, just figured most would need a reference.)

We edged along the tree line and Stingray broke out the looking glass.

“Bloody shit mate, have a look at that!”

I took a look, took a swig of my flask of mezcal, and then took another one. Of both.

Sure enough, there was a damn monster down in the pozo. I turned to Poncho and said I knew what it was, but it had no business being there, or in this part of the world. He asked what it was, and my Spanish failed me. Mainly because I had never said the word before, and went with “Water Horse”, after the Roman name for them.

See, nestled up high in this rain forest in Latin America was a fucking hippo.

Yes, a hippo.

After a bit of explaining to Poncho about the origins of said animal, he tried to explain to the locals the best he could what to the two gringos were talking about. We also stressed the point that hippos killed more people in Africa than any other animal. There was a heated discussion about us being idiots, we didn’t need to understand the language to see that, since common knowledge was that lions were definitely kings of the Dark Continent. Either way, it was time to start heading down to town.

A couple of days later, Stingray and I finally made it to the centro of the big village in the area. After steeling ourselves with some tequila at the cantina we decided to go tell the local authorities that there was a hippo up in the fucking mountains. It seemed like they really should know, but coming from us we hoped we wouldn’t be confused with our drugged up countrymen who frequented their beaches.

Once we cased the place walking in, we decide to talk to the big fat dude, because he looked like he could at least laugh it off if he didn’t believe us. We sat down and calmly told him what we had saw, a hippo in the pozo. He looked up in starry-eyed disbelief and asked, “Where! Where did you see it!”

Turns out a train had wrecked on a nearby mountain pass the winter before, and the train was carrying a full circus. We quickly drew a map to the where the fugitive was hiding out and refused all attempts to give us the reward money. Not because we felt bad about ruining the life of a hippo that had won the lotto and was about to go back to the confines of the circus, but because we always knew when it was time for the gringos to get out of town.

So when you hear a local legend of temples and monsters, never discount them, but don’t trip over yourself to have a gawk. Because out there, the truth can kill you.

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My Top 5 Favorite Things Today:

1)  Shibam, The World’s First Skyscraper City
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2) Desperate Student Answers
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3) Strange Contemporary Furniture
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4) Orphaned hedgehogs adopt cleaning brush as their mother
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5)  Stray Camel
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Pinche Tejano, over and out.