I notice, from the topographical map, that the cliff that the villagers had to climb in their search for the temple in the jungle doesn't run too far to the East.  It appears that a very skilled kayaker might be able to paddle up the Eastern steam.  Even if he can't paddle all the way, it should be possible to paddle and portage in a few places.

When the supply boat arrives, the witch lady immediately gets into a screaming, yelling argument with the Captain of the supply boat.  I mean the witch tells the non-PhD, lower than pond scum, Captain what she wants (read orders from on high) and the low life guy doesn’t immediately jump to do what he has been told.  How dare he?

Okay, the witch lady has it piled higher and deeper.  However, she overlooks the fact that the Captain of the supply boat is, in effect, a sort of absolute monarch.  His is the only supply boat that regularly plies this particular stretch of the Amazon and the villagers depend on him for the very necessities of life.  He's addressed, by the villagers with respect and at least rough courtesy.

The Captain stoically endures the imprecations of the witch lady until he gets the supplies for the village unloaded and the stuff the villagers want to ship upriver loaded.  At that point, he departs upriver making several motions with his hands and fingers in the general direction of the witch lady.  Some of the gestures are probably local Portuguese or Indian, but some of them are familiar to an American boy.  None of at least the American gestures is friendly.

My kayak is loaded with all of the stuff I need for a trip to search for the temple in the jungle, except for the supplies on the departing boat.  I hop in my kayak and give chase after the supply boat.  I'm able to take shortcuts the larger supply boat can’t take and I soon catch up.  I grab a line dangling from the side of the chugging diesel and gaze up into the very angry face of the Captain.  I shout, “We escaped from the witch lady!”

The Captain then roars with laughter and allows me to hook my kayak to his craft.

I then clamber aboard the supply boat and negotiate with the Captain.  I have the money to pay for the supplies, since I was to have them loaded into my kayak for the trip the witch lady ordered me to take up the western stream.  It's well that I have the cash on hand.  The Captain has a very strict policy about supplies.  Supplies are cash and carry only.  First the cash and only then the carry.

As fellow escapees from the witch lady, the Captain allows me to buy the supplies intended for me and even helps me load them into my kayak.  He also allows me to ride with him until he passes a village further upstream.  He won't stop there this trip but he slows a bit and allows me to launch my kayak so that I may paddle to the village.  I wave goodbye and the Captain and his boat round the next bend and disappear from my view.

I don't paddle to the village.  The supply boat passed the outlet to the Western stream a bit further back and I make for the stream, instead of the village.  The stream I seek is downstream from where I leave the supply boat and I'm able to paddle around the really bad places in the river with the current at my back.  I would never have been able to paddle upstream to get to the same place.

I find the stream I'm looking for and leave the main Amazon river.  My trip up the side stream that may or may not lead to the temple the pilot found is a nonstop nightmare.  The current in the Amazon was with me.  However, it takes everything I have to paddle against the current in the smaller steam.  I have to portage several times and the portages are difficult.  I would have given up, but for a couple of factors.  The season is such that there's a lot of ripe fruit along the stream.  Also I manage to shoot a small deer, even though I have only a revolver.  I dry the meat and I have food to last me for several days.

Suddenly I reach a sort of lake, although it's really just a widening of the stream.  However, the current is less in the lake and there are even calm areas along the bank.  I can hear the thunder of a waterfall not too much further up the stream and suspect that the sound indicates a waterfall of sufficient height that I can’t realistically expect to climb it.

Suddenly I discover something that makes it unnecessary for me to paddle further up the stream.  There are three pillars of rock rising from the side of the stream.  They are of slightly different shapes, but they are too smooth in comparison with the rest of the rock along the river.  The pillars are mooring places.  I discover that there's very little current in the spot in the river where the pillars are located and I'm sure that I have found what has to be the trail to the temple in the jungle, if indeed temple there is.

I paddle over to the pillars and discover that there are groves in the pillars where I can secure a rope so that my kayak won't work loose, even in the turbulence caused by a thunderstorm.  If my kayak works loose, I'm probably dead.  My kayak is really the only practical way I have to reach the Amazon and then a village along the main river.

I moor my kayak to a pillar and then work the kayak over to the bank.  There are also smaller pillars on the bank that allow me to attach a line so that I can pull the kayak back to the shore when I want to leave.  The small pillars on the bank are mud colored and almost invisible from the water.  However, they have the same kind of mooring groove in them that the big pillars in the water had.  I place a cover over the opening in the kayak and everything should be secure unless there's a hurricane strength storm.

Once I have my kayak secured, I find that there's what appears to be a mud path that leads away from the mooring pillars.  The path is mud colored and a bit uneven, but it's not mud, it's pavement.  Pavement doesn't usually last very long in the Amazon jungle, at least the normal stuff they use for pavement doesn't last very long.  The path seems to be in good shape and there's no sign of deterioration, not even along the edges.  The path runs for a way and then ends in the middle of nowhere.

I then back track and carefully investigate what might be spurs that lead off of the main path.  One of the areas where a spur of the path seems to run under a large bush yields another branch of the path, a branch heavily overgrown with jungle bush.  The jungle growth overhangs the path but doesn't grow up through the material of the path.  It takes me quite a bit of machete work, however, I'm able to slowly move along the hidden path.  Suddenly I find myself at a rock ledge.  The path runs into the rock ledge and I can go no further.

It makes no sense that the path builders would have built a path that leads to nowhere.  I very carefully examine the area around the end of the path.  I finally notice five, widely spaced depressions in the face of the rock ledge.  The depressions are in the spots where human fingers would fit.  I'm a large man, but my fingers barely fit into the five depressions all at once.  A door, so well hidden that it's not obvious from even a foot away, opens under my touch in the depressions.  (It's not until later that I realize that the lock can only be operated by a person whose hand is large enough to press all five depressions at the same time.  The local Indians aren't large enough to have hands of that size.)

From the door opening, I can see into a sort of room that's dimly lit, possibly from some translucent rock panels in the ceiling.  The room isn't a cave, it's a civilized looking room.  It's too large and too smooth to be done by locals.  It's nothing the local Indians could have carved out with primitive tools.