It can happen that way. Six years ago I visited a waterfall in Tarapoto, Peru. Three tourist groups arrived at roughly the same time, each led by a poorly equipped local guide. A few of us climbed to the highest of three cascades on quite dangerous ladders; adrenaline can take over in magical places. One turned to pose for a photo while descending and fell to his death. My travelling companion, the principal witness (because she was sitting beside the girlfriend taking the photo), saw him slip, hit his head on the rocks below, and then roll into the pool beneath the cascade. Of the fifty or so people present, only myself, the three guides and a couple of others knew how to swim. After a few minutes, it was evident that we were trying in vain; it took divers until the following day to find him at the bottom of the pool. The travel company rang my companion that night saying the police wanted a witness statement. But they never got in touch again. At the airport the next evening, we encountered the girlfriend again. The whole thing had been covered up, with the tour company paying for the coffin and the plane fares to make the problem go away. We attended the burial the next afternoon in dusty cemetery high above Lima's northern suburbs. A young woman stationed there all day under a thatched structure said a few words, pausing to ask the young man’s name to insert it into her set spiel. The tomb builders didn’t deliver the cement structure in time, and everyone had to trudge even higher carrying the coffin to an unused temporary niche. A pitiful sight all around.
www.batimes.com.ar
