Adventures Ideas Needed for Jungle Travel

Okay, first thing...a 70 year old man trekking through the Amazonia jungle? I'm gonna hit my disbelief button right there- unless he's somehow preserved by a rare peruvian youth-drug, or something like that. First thing I'd do would be to scale his age down a bit- 60's would prolly be pushing it, but eh. :) But especially with the fact that they're hacking through the jungle on foot.

And if they're on foot...what kind of gear are they carrying? Did they have time to prepare for the trip, or are they fleeing some villain? Just what kind of gear they have can determine how hard/easy a time they have. If they're 'well stocked,' I'd say that the bare minimum of gear they'd be carrying would be at least 25-35 pounds of gear a person- and more into the 45-55 lbs range, honestly. Things that they'd WANT to have, just blundering around...

Water (One gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds, by the way)- each person will be drinking at LEAST a gallon a day, and likely more if they're in a hot & humid jungle. Likewise, they'd want to bring water purification gear- either little tablets, or a lightweight pump.

The right clothes: Rain gear for a rain forest, perhaps? Hats and bandannas are always nice- and socks. Lots and lots of socks. You'd be surpised how much of a difference a fresh pair of wool socks can be.

Food: Depending on how wilderness-savvy the characters are, they might be able to forage for various fruits as they go along- or, if they really get hungry, various grubs and other creepy-crawlies.

Tools: Jungles mean machetes, basically. Very useful for clearing brush, and also as an impromptu weapon for fending off Jaguars/Guerillas/Random Ninjas/Etc. Pocketknives, while not as choppy as a machete, can still be quite useful.

First aid kit, matches, camp-stove, and other camping essentials- sleeping bags probably wouldn't be nessescary in a tropical rain-forest, but at least a tarp to use for shelter would be very useful.

Oh, and BUG REPELLANT.

And that's just off the top of my head...So yeah. Just by giving/taking away any of this gear, the journey can be made a lot easier or more difficult- either way, it certainly can complicate things.

On to more...dynamic matters, there's always the option of the characters being attacked by a jungle cat or other particuarly hungry fauna- Jaguars are pretty nasty bastards, as I've heard. Bonus points if you have a character kill a Jaguar- only for some various natives to see him do it, and as a result they revere him as some sort of great hero- but that's just me being kinda pulpy, right there.

Hope this helps!

If you can get your hands on it there is a book by a Brit Expolorer and it's called Exploration Fawcett. This claims to be a true account of his adventures and covers things that your characters might run across, including- giant anaconda as they cross the river, immense spider which drops down from the trees, poisonous frogs, natives who might be survivors of lost civilisations and cryptozoological stuff .

Any help?

actually my grandmother was 73 when she went on a similar jungle treck in New Zealand about 14 years ago, she went on a trek in MesoAmerica 2 years before that when she was 71. She was very active, walking 10 miles every day, went to roller skateing compatitions; roller skated when she wasn't walking or hiking, She ice skated when she was younger but gave that up at age 54 after having her last (and 12th) baby. I based my character on her, cause she was the only eldery person I've ever known, so that's where I got the age from.

They have gone with practicly nothing. They fleed the States during the night, after the professor stole some artifacts from the musemun. They had no time to pack. So pretty much went with just the clothes they were wearing and the things he'd stolen from the museum (a codex-book-scroll type thing, a couple of small carvings, and the 1854 diary of the exploroer who originaly took the trek).

They are pretty much on the run , have no real plan, and "makeing things up" as they go along. Their goal is to find the lost city mentioned in the diary. (the diary btw belonged to the professor's grandfather, so the professor does not feel that he stole it, rather that the museum stole it from his family).

Also, he's got this "I haven't lived a hundrad years for nothing" attitude, where he knows he's old and this is his last chance to do something with his life, so he's going to do it come hell or high water and no one's going to stop him.

the professor knows the area well-enough to live off the wild, cause before he became a professor, he had been an archeaologist in the region, some 30 years prior to this story. This trip, is sort of a hare-brained mad-dash "one last trip before I die" sort of thing.

yeah... I've had the two younger ones complaining about the lack of bug spray, but the professor is basicly giving them the "well when I was your age, we didn't have bug-spray" lectures over it.

actually, this is something that well happen (and I've started writing it, but didn't finish it yet), cause I've got a black jaguar (a were-jaguar from Incan mythology actualy half-demon-half-jaguar) that is stalking them through out most of the story (it's central to the plot)., but the were-jaguar is the "god" of the lost tribe they are looking for, so thier trying to kill it results in all hell breaking lose and the villagers wanting to kill them after.

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You have a bunch of stuff to work witn. The lack of supplies can bring on misery and complaints, and test the characters mettle. They can be astonded by the beauty if the place, and dying of the heat and humididy. Since it's the rainforest, it's likely to rain every day, and they'll have to learn to deal with that (rain could be their water supply).

As for adventures, they could see new animals, be chased and/or have to deal with dangerous creatures (rampaging warthod, poisonous butterfly/frog). You could devote the chapter more to their thoughts and expectations, but you'll have t0o be carefull about clues they find--the rainforest decays everything within days, even skeletons don't last long.

As for what you had planned, they can be elated by finding the valley, wich gives them motivation to move forward, and the parranah attack (you have to have one) could happen as someone slips on some stepping stones. That could be their real wake up call that they acted very stupidly, as they sorely miss their food, supplies, shelter and comfort.

They could be scared of everything, and just as they begin to think they're going to die in the middle of nowhere, natives appear and get ready to attack. Don't go over the top with that like in Pirates of the Carribean, but make it suspensefull, when the 70 yr old (carried at this point?) uses his scientific stuff to get them to talk to each other. They may get a hint from them for where the previous person went, and get supplies--you'll have to figure out what they trade it for.

Once the professor gets the general direction, nothing will stop them, and everyone else is forced to follow.

It was fun making that up :) I hope it helped.

poisonous butterflies? really, I never heard of them... must look that up.

I just got finished writing a scene with poison arrow frogs ... after I get to the editing stage, I've got to go back and find out the Latin-science names for all these things, and than edit the professor's dialouge, cause I want him to be calling things by their science names.

I got a book out from the library about the Amazon, and it said that in the day it gets really hot, and there are two seasons rain season and dry season; during rain season, there are fierce thunderstome every single night. WOW. I didn't know that. I was thinking like just rain; but this book I was reading says that there are really bad lightening storms and that the local tribes often believe these are caused by the gods. It talks about flooding being really bad and streams and rivers being hard to cross. It said that during the dry season it can go for weeks with out rain, and during that time there is almost no food to be found, and because of this the locals stock up on nuts and dried meats so they well have food to eat during the dry season..

Well, once I realized this, I had to figure ot when they'd be down there, cause I was writing in dates and stuff, and I got to thinking: "What if I've got them stuck in the rain when it was dry season?" Well, as it turns out, I have them done there, during the rain season, so I have to make sure that it rains every day! eeek! I had rain here and there, but now, I've either got to change the dates or add more rain. I optted for adding more rain. It ended up giving me more to write about. So, now I've got the girl getting really pissed off about the rain.

I've also changed the professor some. After thinking about it, I think I had him more active than he should be, so now I have their trip taking longer, cause even though he's all ghun-ho about the trip, he can't just keep treking steady none stop. So I'm adding in a lot more "camp site" scenes.

While reading tht book, I also found out.... that it gets cold enough to snow in the Amazon!!! OMG! I was writing it as humid hot tropics all the time. Than I saw these picture in the book... of trees with snow on them! OMG! I had no idea it snowed down there. Now I've got to rethink that. As it turns out, the area that I had choosen to send them to, gets snow. eeek! I'm sending them to the Volcanic region, where the mountains are. I had this point all plotted out before I started writing. They leave the jungle, climb the mountains, end up in the valley.... now I find out that those mountains are snow capped! I've got to got back and rewrite the mountain scences now.

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I was watching some show last night, Man vs Wild I think, and the guy was in a rain forest type location (sorry, missed the part where he said he was). Anyway, he came across a deep pit of vipers. Then found another fifty foot deep pit with a shelf in it. He decided to find a thick vine to use as a rope and wedged it into a crack in a boulder, then lowered himself down into the hole. He complained about how slick the vine was and how even though he was trying to bend the vine over by sort of crossing his feet on it, a technique useful when using a rope, it wasn't taking much weight off of his arms because of the thickness of the vine making it hard to bend. His upper body ached as he lowered himself deeper into the darkness. About midway down, he started worrying about whether his vine was going to hold him or not because their was a loud sound from up above that sounded like it might snap any moment.

Once he made it down to the ledge, he then still had to make it down into the river below, which was his reason for going into the hole. It was about waist deep and he was worried about snakes. As he went down the river, it became pitch black, he couldn't see boulders right in front of his face. He said he had to hurry because although the cavern was very tall, flash floods could fill it twenty feet in no time, drowning him in the process.

At one point down there, there were hundreds of vampire bats which he said could carry the rabies virus. When he came out, he was running his hands through his hair, checking for bites. He said the bats' bite passes some sort of anticoagulant and he knew a guy who was sleeping out in the open once and was bitten in the night without even realizing it. The friend woke up covered in quite a bit of blood.

Anyway, hope that sparks a little bit of new ideas for you. Even if it's too far into NaNo to use now, maybe you could add some in later. :)

I like that vampire bat bit...

nope, not too late... I'm still writing, I don't think I'll ever be done with this! LOL!

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Well what you could do (that's actually what I've been doing in my novel) is to cut up the journey through the jungle in short scenes. Get the overall description of the jungle right and then small "action sequences" of the 3 protagonist trecking through the misty jungle. The river scene for instance could involve a small rescue as the rope breaks... :-)
I imagined a movie script when I wrote my jungle scenes...
JUNGLE-DAY, Sounds of animals and water flowing... Cut to ELDERY MAN hanging over the flowing waterfall... hehe