Roasting in the Jungle Heat
It was a sweltering night in the jungle. We were spending the night in the Colombian emerald mining zone at the La Pita mining camp near Maripi. I had made the trip with an emerald broker who wanted to show me the operation and was sort of training me in the business.
The complex has rooms in a sort of a timeshare type arrangement where relatively successful miners and brokers stay when they come to the mining zone. There was also a hacienda on a hill overlooking the camp.
Initially I was in a shared room with another miner, it was kind of like an extended stay hotel room with kitchenette, bathroom, and air conditioning. For some reason, I was moved out of that room into private accommodations up in the hacienda.
The room was decidedly more primitive with no air conditioning, only an old floor fan to help cool the room. In this heat it made little difference, it barely worked and made a terrible racket. I really could not sleep with all the noise it made. I found myself wishing I had brought along the small desktop fan I had purchased from http://www.desktopfan.org. I had made the purchase of that desktop fan right before my trip, but unfortunately it had not arrived in time for the trip and I ended up going off to South America without it.
I ended up virtually roasting at night without the benefit of any kind of fan for cooling off. The room I was in was up on the second floor and thus doubly hot as the heat tended to rise and collect in the poorly insulated old house.I don’t plan on ever returning to the Colombian jungle, but if I should ever find myself having to do so, I’ll be sure to bring my own fan, life without it there would be unbearable.
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