Chapter 1

Now that I am safely home in Pasadena, California, I can look back on my jungle adventures as something that I experienced in a dream and not a period of my life when survival was my only goal.

It had all seemed so innocent back then when I had just graduated from the University of Southern California to expand my horizons by taking a full tour of the wild and dangerous wilderness of inland Brazil in a helicopter with an experienced bush pilot guide and three other cabin-mates. The entire trip was being financed by the Graduate School of the University to induce us to write papers on the benefits of saving the rain forest and reducing the risk of "climate change". I harbored a secret skepticism about the entire concept but since I was the beneficiary of the largesse of the trip, I kept my mouth shut.

My mother and father were disappointed that I would not be making the trip with them on the "River Cruise" down the Danube River but I thought the cramped quarters of the three of us in one stateroom would be fraying on my recently-graduated and looking for male companionship nerves. So they took my little brother instead and it served him right for teasing me about my boyfriends or lack thereof whenever he was around. I hoped they forced him to listen to classical music and let him join in the shuffleboard on the deck.

Our flight into Rio was more like a "Redeye" ride so we were all a bit bleary-eyed when we de-planed at the airport. The city and the beaches were so delightful that I really regretted we had to transfer up to the jumping-off point near a military installation outside the city limits. The flight school that organized the helicopter tours of the remote jungle locations was located on the grounds of the military base and almost everything they did including flight plans and training was through the base commander. The pilots were all under contract to the government and I thought that was a little odd but it seemed like a legitimate deal and the University was paying for everything. Apparently, they had some sort of arrangement with the military base to help train their pilots and got to use the landing field as part of the arrangement.

My three companions were more into the entire "save the planet" thing than I was but I went along with it all like it was the most important thing in the world for me. The two boys were Michael and Jerry and they were both sort of cut out of the same mold that the "nerd" on campus male herd seemed to assume as soon as they cut mama's apron string. Of course, I allowed them to kiss me occasionally and even feel me up when things got real boring but neither of them was my type and it made me feel a bit like a whore even thought I didn't take any money. I don't like to sound like a sarcastic bitch but the thought of letting either of them into my pants was a fate worse than death or at least that was what I thought when we were still waiting for our trip into the jungle to commence. We stayed in an ageless Quonset hut that even had the comforts of Dish TV and an indoor toilet but with no real windows and an opening at each end with a non-functioning door.

Our assigned pilot was a middle-aged guy called Joe who was looking for his first shot of Gin before lunch every day and I wondered how he had managed to still look fairly attractive at his age. I have to admit he was a capable pilot and he was friendly enough but I suspected he was being charming with me because he know I wasn't sleeping with either of the nerdy environmentalist students who actually wore pajamas to bed at night. The other researcher in our group was called Pamela and she was truly a proper bitch from the get-go. I had run into her back in the University on a few occasions and she had done her best to snub me so that she could rub it in enough for me to really understand how lacking I was on the social scale to associate with her or any of her friends. She was now all sugar and smiles acting like we were "old buddies" with lots of mutual friends. It almost made me want to puke just to watch her performance for the "boys" when it came time to turn in for the night. I had no doubt she was putting out to both the boys but I wasn't certain if she actually ever did it with them both together. I do know those sounds of pleasure were mostly from her because of her whiney tone of voice whenever she got excited.

The thought of Pamela sandwiched in between the two nerds was somehow satisfying to me because they really deserved each other. I think Joe knew my thoughts because he kept dropping hints about how he could "tuck in" my mosquito netting for me to make certain I wouldn't get the "sleeping sickness". I think the only tucking in that he had in mind was to tuck his hairy cock into my snatch when I was flat on my back and unable to deter him. In all honesty, I have to admit if he was a bit more aggressive I would have rolled over for him like a submissive little slut and followed his instructions because I needed some loving so bad it was starting to build-up like a pressure cooker with a faulty valve. I thought it was such a waste to have all those military types crowded into the barracks on the air base and no females to keep them company at night. I was glad we were leaving the next day for our first leg of the jungle expedition because I was afraid I might be tempted to strip down to my panties and bra and see if any of the guys on guard duty were looking for a midnight quickie out near the barbed wire fence.

We all crammed inside the helicopter and it was a tight fit because it was actually intended for four people and there were five of us counting the pilot. I got the short end of the stick and got stuck in the "trundle" seat which actually was not a seat at all but just my body spread across the backpacks behind the rear seat. Pamela, of course, was sitting up next to Joe and I watched him constantly fondle the gears down low between her legs whenever he had a chance. The two nerd boys were in the back seat busy discussing some lame rumor about the ozone layer at the North Pole and I just plugged in my sounds and ignored them all because I was unbelievably bored and we were just starting.

In retrospect, I attribute the fact that I survived the crash to being shoved in the rear of the cabin wedged into the soft and protecting backpacks that acted like a buffer when we went into this silly auto-gyration sequence which was really a nice way of saying we had lost all power to our only engine. It was their screams that caused me to remove the earbuds from my ears because the helicopter was suddenly silent and falling slowly to the rain forest canopy of greenery with such a soft and gentle motion that I was convinced it was all a planned maneuver to save on fuel.