Escorted by Macaws on the Way to Cerro Peligro

Omar Enrique Berdugo Cabeza set out on his ATV toward Cerro Peligro while the dawn was still cool, and the trails received him as they always do: with the rough, festive calls of the guacharacas parting the undergrowth before him. Halfway along the path, beneath a thatched-roof structure beside a tamarind tree, he was stopped by a mural he had never seen before. It had been painted by Isabella (@Isabella_GM22), and on that wall stood two sloths and a tití de cabeza blanca — that small, rare monkey that inhabits these lands — nestled among tropical leaves of a green so intense they looked freshly washed by rain. Further on, from high in a camajorú on a neighboring farm, two guacamayas heard him pass. Omar slowed the ATV to a stop. They looked at him. They descended a little, settling into a closer bonga tree, and when he resumed his ride and called out to them, they followed. They flew from tree to tree — noisy and unhurried, trusting — as though they had spent years learning the sound of that engine and that voice. And so they accompanied him, never straying far, all the way to the foot of Cerro Peligro. There are bonds that cannot be fully explained. They can only be witnessed.