Fragments of a Manuscript Discovered in an Abandoned Hospital (part 1)

MARCH 20:
Today, as I and the rest of the party emerged from the undergrowth, I breathed a sigh of relief, one that had been waiting for release for seven seemingly interminable days. Nearly a whole month in the jungle and we had seen no sign of our objective, and now here we were, ragged, dirty and totally exhausted, and not a thing to show for our labours.

MARCH 29:
We are making final preparations for a return to the forest. A week of rest and we feel as good as new, fighting fit and ready to face the rigours of rain forest again. Incredible the resilience of the human body, it never fails to confound me.

APRIL 1:
The fools day and seemingly a day for a new expedition. Marcos feels very ill though, and the doctor thinks it must be the dreaded heat stroke. It's already taken its toll on two others in the course of this venture, they had to be sent back to town by river boat and hospitalised. This is the problem of our over-sanitised so-called civilised world, no resistance to adversity of the natural kind.

APRIL 15:
Well, so far so good. No snake bites, no more illness, and unfortunately still no significant sign of the Cachui. Jose thinks he sensed something last night, like a nearby presence, someone watching us, but we gave up paying attention to that sort of sixth sense stuff a long time ago. Everyone of us has had these feelings in the past, but nothing has come of any of it yet. Anyway we live in hope.

APRIL 23:
At last. We sighted smoke to the West today. On the very rim of the forest. Dr. Villa was the first to spot it. As we broke through the underbrush into a clearing, he shouted loudly, and the rest of us went running to see what was up, and there it was, rising majestically over the canopy, at what the ever knowledgeable Jose estimated to be two miles Westward. We knew of no tribes in this whole section, so there was great hope that we may at last have found our 'Lost Tribe".