We arrive at the riverbank across from Shimaa after a hellish four-hour ride in the old Corolla, which has no windows, no reverse gear, questionable brakes and erratic steering. As we slid along high, dangerous roads that had all the consistency of squash soup, the driver, Julio, had proudly described to us how the car recently had been driven off a cliff by a friend. "It fell 100 feet, but the car was fine and the people survived," Julio had said in an attempt to reassure us.

"We don't want to live like this," Cardenal said of his house, which is close to the pipeline right of way. Cardenal wants the consortium to provide bottled water and relocate him and his family out of harm's way.

No roads go into Shimaa, so Julio leaves us near the foot of the river. As we wait on the rocky banks across from this village in the Upper Urubamba River Valley, our guide, Kategari, explains that the Shimaa River is running quite high right now, so it's dangerous to cross. Also, he adds, the regular boatman has been drinking. We stand there for a time, wondering if anyone will come across the river to get us.

Some 600 villagers live in Shimaa, but you'd never guess it. A few houses, a community hall and a school are scattered on top of the riverbank. The rest of the villagers live spread out for miles around the community, as they have since abandoning their nomadic ways and settling down a generation ago.

Because it can take hours to assemble just a few dozen residents for a community meeting, the village has long thought about moving. Also, the rising river wiped out several homes here some years ago. So the villagers are eyeing a higher spot further downriver. And now Shimaa villagers have one more reason for moving -- the destruction accompanying the construction of the natural gas pipeline.

The route of the pipeline can be seen from above ground in Shimaa. TGP is replanting jungle vegetation along the pipeline's right of way, but Walter Kategari of COMARU (Consejo Machiguenga del Rio Urubamba) questions whether the replanting will succeed. After clearing rain-forest flora and fauna for the right of way, company technicians did not preserve the topsoil that supports delicate rain-forest growth, Kategari says. Many Machiguenga rely on rain-forest plants for medicine.

Soon, the backup boatmen -- two Machiguenga boys no older than 12 -- appear, paddling a dugout canoe expertly across the volatile river to ferry us into Shimaa.

Some Villagers Feel the Land Is No Longer Theirs

The next morning, villagers take us on a tour of the 100-foot-wide "right of way" that the companies have built through Shimaa for the gas pipeline. Last January, say villagers, a landslide from the right of way swept down the hillside. Sandoval Cardenal Dominguez, a Machiguenga man who lives near the bottom of the right of way's route, says that the landslide destroyed his coffee and cacao plantation as well as his brother's hut, which had been built right next to his. He also says that thousands of trees and plants (plants he used for medicine, to roof his hut and to make sleeping mats) were destroyed to make room for the oil companies' right of way.

Noise from helicopters has scared away the animals he used to hunt, and erosion has dirtied his water, which he draws from a nearby stream, Cardenal says. "It seems like the company is mistreating us," he adds, while his wife prepares chicha, a fermented corn drink, in large metal pots. "[They're taking] our food, our medicine."

Next to the muddy right of way, hundreds of feet above Cardenal's house, a huge swath of felled trees litter the hillside like matchsticks, apparent victims of January's landslide. A few dozen children, notebooks in hand, quickly thread their way through the mess on their way back from school, which also stands perilously close to the right of way.

In an e-mail sent to us later, officials for TGP, the company responsible for building the pipeline, claim that there is no record of a landslide affecting a house in Shimaa. A company spokesman pledges that the consortium is making every effort to prevent erosion and protect the quality of the water.

Walter Kategari radios from Shimaa to COMARU headquarters in Quillabamba. The radios, installed by Shell before the company left the Camisea, are the chief means of communication between Machiguenga villages.

Later that day in Shimaa, we are watching Machiguenga playing a friendly game of soccer. Players quickly scatter when a bright yellow helicopter swoops down, landing in the field. Two TGP workers -- a man and a woman wearing jeans and hardhats -- climb out of the helicopter to confront the villagers. They tell the villagers that a passing helicopter has reported that Machiguenga had been walking along the pipeline's right of way.

They note that the villagers hadn't asked permission to walk along the right of way and weren't wearing the long-sleeved shirts and boots required by the company. "It's for your own safety," one of the workers says.

"We feel like we're just in the way of the companies," Kategari replies, shaking his head. "That's what someone at the company even told us."

"Oh, no," the woman, a community relations worker for TGP, replies. "If someone said that to you, we extend our apologies."

As the helicopter thunders away with the two workers, Kategari laughs. He doesn't believe the woman. "They're not concerned about our security," he says. "They want to prevent the reality of the destruction and the erosion from being known."

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