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“We would notify this country's foreign office and your family,” he answered.

“And what if it was your son or brother out there in need of help?”

“He didn't reply. Before I stormed out of his office, I asked him to prepare a new passport for me and to notify the Israeli embassy that I was on my way over. Afterward I found out that he never even bothered to make that simple phone call.”

“I arrived at the Israeli embassy. I spoke into the microphone at the entrance, explaining in broken Spanish that I had just come from the jungle and that an Israeli friend of mine was still lost back there. I was aware that I was being observed on closed-circuit television. A door finally opened, leading to an inner room. A security man scrutinised me from behind a plate of bulletproof glass. Then he took from me, through a slot in a window, the documents that the navy office and Father Fernando had given me, and finally I was allowed to enter.”

“The consul listened carefully to my story. I kept emphasising how urgent it was to get a helicopter and start looking right away. Then I spoke with the ambassador and went through it all again. I told him that my brother had a white-water business in Oregon, and I asked him to call your parents in Israel and get them to help pay the expenses of bringing my brother, together with the necessary equipment, to Bolivia in order to