A group of travellers spends a night in the jungle beside a river, and the speaker slowly takes in everything around them. The poem opens with the roar of the water and the flicker of fireflies across the bank, which the speaker imagines as fairy lights leading toward "dreams of no return." That phrase hints at a wish to slip away from ordinary life, or at least a sense that this place feels beyond it. A small bonfire, a sky full of stars and a guide telling ancient history in fluent Spanish all add to the feeling of stepping into something old and vast.
The speaker feels awestruck and quietly absorbed, paying attention through the senses: cold stones underfoot, fire warming the face, a waterfall heard far off. In the final lines, imagination takes over, and that sound could be drums from a civilization a thousand years gone. The mood is hushed, magical and a little mysterious, as past and present seem to overlap in the dark.