The jeep is new but underpowered, the landscape lush.
Coconut palms crowd the muddy rutted track.
Thirty feet above us, orchids grow from the palms' ridged trunks. We pass beneath a tent of vines hanging from trees whose names I do not know. We round a bend and find ourselves under the brilliant equatorial sky. The road climbs so steeply that Somnuk Somsuk, our guide, shifts down to first. The jeep slips, and the two children seated in back yelp in terror.