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sloth by the scruff of its neck and picked it up. The animal batted at Karl's hands clumsily but struck only thin air.

'It would be a shame to waste a shell on it,' Karl said, while Kevin photographed the cub for posterity.

Karl threw the animal down on the ground, pulled the machete from his belt, and raised it over his head. Marcus looked away, horrified. Karl brought the machete down on the back of the sloth's neck, and it sighed its last breath.

'We finally got some game,' Karl observed proudly, tying the carcass to my pack.

Before another hour had passed, we heard sharp cries.

'Shhh, shhh.' Karl waved us back. 'There are monkeys coming this way.'

A family of black monkeys appeared in the tree-tops. They swung from branch to branch like acrobats. Boom, boom. Karl fired the gun, and a monkey plummeted to the ground. Karl ran to it and fired another shot from close range. The monkey let out a gurgle, and Karl smashed the butt of the shotgun into its head until it was still. 'A wounded monkey can be very vicious,' he explained. The monkey was quite small, weighing about twenty pounds.

Karl suggested that we make camp. It wasn't yet growing dark, but we had a lot or work to do. We had to clean the animals and prepare them for cooking. We chose high, dry ground, as Karl