

She is a disheveled woman, hair mussed, upper teeth gone, muddy walking cane taped together. But in the Jungle, Maria Esther Salazar is a person to be reckoned with.



Her shelter, supported by tree branches, is a gathering place. Inside, friends huddle around a folding table in armchairs, smoking pot, dozing, sharing stories, arguing. Outside, they squat by her cooking fire frying pancakes or warming soup, handouts from Sunday church groups. Her son Bobby lives with his girlfriend just a few tents away. Her weed connection has coffee ready for her in the morning at his tent.



It's easy to forget that the geeks and Web entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley are making their millions just miles away. In the mile-square Jungle — believed to be the nation's largest homeless encampment — Salazar and hundreds of others live in tents, makeshift shacks, caves and tree houses along polluted Coyote Creek, spending their days and nights under tarps or blankets, in various states of mental confusion and intoxication.





Reporting by Martha Mendoza, Associated Press.