Welcome To The Jungle

In 1744, a young geographer living in Spanish-colonial Peru with
his wife and children decided the time had come to move the family
back to his native France. Jean Godin des Odonais had come to Peru
in 1735 as a part of a small scientific expedition and had ended up
staying much longer than expected. He’d married a young woman from
a local aristocratic family and now the couple had two children and
a third on the way. But news from France eventually brought word of
Godin’s father’s death, meaning that there was an inheritance to
sort out. It was time to return. Making travel arrangements from
such a distance, however, was going to be a challenge. Perhaps,
Godin reasoned, he and his family could travel to the colony of
French Guiana at the other end of the Amazon River, then find
places on a ship back to France. In order to establish whether this
was plausible, Godin decided to travel ahead to French Guiana and
make inquiries. From its headwaters in Peru, the Amazon goes
downhill. From this point, virtually everything for Jean and Isabel
Godin did the same. Left behind, Isabel spent years waiting for
word from her husband. Eventually, due to an improbable series of
mishaps and misery, Isabel ended up stranded alone in the middle of
the Amazonian rainforest, hopelessly lost and so far into
starvation that her chances of survival were vanishingly small.