Affe #217

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Sebastián de Geladázar was confused. Moving north through the jungles of South America wasn't what he imagined when the other monkeys told him they were looking for a fish. Although he was sure that it was a very rare and valuable fish considering all the effort that went into it.

Sebastián himself came from a humble family of farming monkeys and, in his opinion, had come a long way. He had now crossed the ocean and at first, they thought they were in India, but the lack of elephants suggested they had taken a wrong turn somewhere. He had actually only left home because there had been a mishap with the family's donkey, and he wanted to avoid his father for the time being. Anyway, he had ended up here. In the beginning, it was their task to open up new areas for banana cultivation, but a few days ago, all the other monkeys got very excited and since then they had only been talking about a mysterious fish.

Being quite young and small, Sebastián could not carry many provisions. He was also one of the few monkeys who could write his name without major problems, so he was given the task of reading maps. Apparently, they were looking for a town near a famous lake. That made sense to Sebastián, because if they were looking for a fish, there had to be water. However, he had been warned that the maps were not accurate. The city was hidden and protected because it harbored immense wealth in the form of golden bananas. Before them, numerous expeditions by many monkey societies had been made in search of the treasure it represented, all of which failed – but that did not prevent earlier monkey explorers from simply marking the city's location indiscriminately on maps, lest they return home empty-handed. As a result, the marking of the city and the lake on the maps was very inconsistent, and to make matters worse, because of the maps many primates believed that finding the way to the mythical city should be easy. Sebastián now knew that fighting a way through a dense jungle in the tropics was never easy.

Even more confusing than the maps was the legend of the "Nhamini-wi" which, according to the oral tradition of the local monkeys, was an ancient path leading from the Amazon jungle to the mountains to the west. Said path was to start at "axpeko-dixtara", the "Lake of Milk", which should be another name of the lake with the sought-after fish. The thought of milk made Sebastián hungry, but he tried to focus. "Nhamini-wi" in turn led to the "House of Night", a sacred place to where the sun retired in the evening. It all sounded very made-up to him, and he wasn't sure he wanted to walk that far; he would be glad to get out of the jungle first. As he checked their position on the map, he continued to ponder. In general, the stories about the city they were looking for seemed very strange to him. It was reported that the monkeys there had a traditional ritual of first coating a primate with honey and then covering him from top to bottom with ground coarse cornmeal. After that, they would lower him into a lagoon, where he would wash up all the mess and clean his fur – what an incredible waste if you asked Sebastián. And as if that wasn't enough, the participating monkeys also threw golden bananas into the water as part of the ceremony. He didn't quite get it, but maybe this was the way to attract the rare fish. He turned the map in his hands 90 degrees to the right and decided with his gut that the top was now pointing north. Next to the golden bananas they would launch a raft made of pure gold and that was really a stupid idea – of course, it sank every time. No wonder the fish was so rare, nothing was caught that way.

Sebastián yawned. Pointing the way had one advantage, he could always decide when to take a break. Now for example, because he was tired and hungry. It was time for some fruit and a little nap. After that, they could still search for the city, the lake, and the fish.

A good time later, Sebastián was lying under a tree in the shade with a full belly. He struggled as his eyes closed but couldn't quite remember the fish's name; they called it "La Dorada" or something along the line.

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