Friday, November 20, 2009:
Oh. My. God. We went to the jungle. And all I can say is oh my god. If anyone tries to make fun of me EVER again for being a wimp, let me forever remind them that I lived in the jungle for four days and I lived.
We left at the crack of dawn on Tuesday morning. It was a six hour bus ride that was actually really pleasant because it was pretty and the five of us composed the majority of the people on the bus, so we all had our own seats, which was nice. When we got there, we got off the bus in the middle of nowhere (literally) and walked up this gravel road to a town (if you can even call it that). From there, Beto (out teacher) said that we were taking a taxi. And we did, but the taxis in the jungle are pickup trucks, and you have to ride in the back. Also, none of them have shocks that work, and hardly any of the roads are paved. So it was outrageously uncomfortable (not to mention scary! The bridges there over all the rivers and creeks are one lane with two way traffic). We finally got to again somewhere in the middle of nowhere, but this time it was an indigenous village. So then we had to hike a mile or so uphill in three inches of sticky mud to get to our “house”. This house is more like a treehouse than any liveable house that I have ever seen, and they have NO electricity or running water. What do they have, you ask? Why bugs the size of cell phones and more ants that you could ever even imagine exist. Oh, and mud. They have a lot of mud too. So we eat lunch at this “house” on dirty dishes (well, they were washed in river water…) which was probably the highlight of the trip. After that, we are to go on a “nature walk” with a local guide. It starts out easy enough…and we eat different types of leaves and ants that taste like lemon pledge…and it’s a hike, but not bad at all. A side note: this is the first day we wear rubber boots, and I start a blister on the side of my leg. Remember this. Anyway, we are hiking and talking, and then there is less of a trail and more objects to climb over….
And then our guide announces that we are lost. Seroiusly. We are lost in the jungle. And he thinks the he maybe knows, but there is no trail to return. So we are climbing rock faces and into caves and jumping over rivers in these underground caves…like in Rambo. And I am neither exaggerating nor kidding. This is literally the most potentially dangerous and physically challenging thing that I have ever done. And one more side note: At one point the guide takes us into this cave with an underground river rushing through it, and he says he wants to show me something. So I climb further and further on this ledge over this river to see what he wants to show me, and guess what it is??? A cave spider the size of a small dinner plate. I don’t think I need to go into further detail, but needless to say poor Cheryle almost went into the river in my desperate attempt to flee the cave.
In addition to this Indiana Jones like horror story, we are sweating profusely. And it is about 200% humidity, so instead of evaporating, it’s just running in little rivers down our bodies. So eventually we get unlost (after four hours of hiking and climbing and jumping and wading) and return to the house. Where they tell us that there are no showers, only the river. But since it is almost night, and it’s a 15 minute walk to the river, we cannot go because it would be too dangerous to be at the river in the dark. So we sit in our sweat and hope it dries.
We eat dinner there in the dark, which is probably better because you could feel the bugs crawling on you, so you know they were in the food too. After dinner, we had to again hike to another location for our sleeping quarters, which was about a half hour. In the dark in the pouring down rain. And this is how all of my belongings came to be wet. And thanks to humidity, stayed wet through the entire trip. When we got to the building to sleep, there were thre bedrooms, each with two beds. So who gets their own scary room? Me of course.
The girls decide to use the “bathroom” (outhouse) which is in another little building just up the trail from our rooms. And I go in first. And who else might be in the bathroom??? Well of course there is another huge cave spider, but also four cockroaches that keep taking flight when the flashlight beam hits them. So with all the courage I can muster, I pee with cockroaches soaring around me and a huge cave spider two feet away on the wall. I don’t really know how much I got in the toilet, but that is definitely not my problem. The other girls went, and then we went back to the rooms.
And then in the room, I discovered that my bed was covered in ants. Oh yes, it just keeps getting better. So I attempt to shake out my sheets which is impossible because there are a million more ready to crawl in them. So I hang up my mosquito net and resign myself to a night of huge insects and ants, and it was terrifying. Hands down the most stressful night of my life. As I laid on my wet pillow with ants crawling over my face (that thank god I could not see because there is no lights anywhere in the middle of the jungle) I decided that I didn’t care that this was a field trip and that it was part of my grade, I was taking the next bus home in the morning.
During the night I had to pee four times thanks to all the water I drank in an attempt to compensate for all the sweat that I lost during the day, but I could not muster up the courage to go back into that outhouse where I knew that spider was. So I went outside and peed on the ground. Four times. Needless to say after getting out of the net, checking my shoes for insects, going outside (did I mention that it downpoured all night?) and taking care of business, coming back, taking off my shoes and rain jacket, getting back in the net and tucking it back in, I didn’t get any sleep.
In the morning, we got up, and I was told that we were going to a new place. So we eat breakfast (still have not showered and cannot brush our teeth), and leave for our new place. This time, we actually have a hostel and the man promises me hot water 24 hours a day, so I agree to not go home. But we don’t get to shower yet. We have to put on more rubber boots because we are going for another hike. This one is really challenging too because it is up creek beds and there is a ton of slippery mud, but it is pretty and fun. At the end, there is a huge waterfall and we got to swim in the pool below (think Multnomah falls, but the part that you could never swim in because you would be crushed by the water and dragged downstream; but this is Ecuador, and there are no safety regulations on anything). We hiked back out, ate lunch by the river, and then went to the Butterfly Gardens.
This part was really cool. You are basically in a huge netted room with about a million species of butterflies. And they land on you and you can touch them, it was fantastic. After that, we were done for the day, so we took out truck-taxi back to the cabanas (which were cool, like bungalows) and FINALLY got to rest and shower. In HOT water. It was possibly the best shower I’ve ever taken. That night, all we had to do was eat dinner, and it was really good (possibly the best food I’ve had in Ecuador so far).
The next morning, I woke up and threw up, so needless to say I skipped breakfast. No idea why, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it had to do with the insects I consumed…After breakfast, we again put on our boots (oh and remember my little blister? Well now it is a big infected wound because of all the boot wearing and sweating and humidity and lack of cleanliness) and headed down to the Napo river. So what is our method of transportation for today?? It’s not a truck –taxi, it’s a rickety river boat, like you would see in Thailand! No joke, I have pictures. So we go first to yet another village and learn by watching this lady make chichi (a drink from fermented yucca). She does not wash her hands, uses river water, and there are ants crawling all over in the bowl that she is using to mash the yucca. But still, she makes us a bowl to try, and it tastes like rotting bread dough. It is AWFUL…but the natives love it and are sucking it down as fast as she can dish it out.
We leave, and take out boat to a little museum of native traps for hunting, and get to try to use a blow dart, so that’s pretty cool I guess…though I am not really enjoying any of this because I have horrible diarrhea and only outhouses with NO TOILET PAPER to use. Not my best moment.
After that, they pull out some intertubes, and tell us that we can tube if we want to…which of course we do!! This was the best part of the trip by far, floating down the Rio Napo (which is a main waterway in the Orient) and watching the locals do laundry and bathe on the shores. It was definitely one of the coolest things I have done in my life.
After that, we had lunch on the beach, which was the worst idea ever because we were eaten alive by sand flies…so we now all have these bleeding bug bites all over our bodies (because of course we were all in bathing suits) that are like gigantic mosquito bites but with a bleeding hole in the middle.
For our last activity of the day, we went to an animal refuge, which was neat, but the tour was TOO SLOW. It was like going to the zoo and having to look at each animal for 15 minutes…it took three hours to look at 12 cages of animals. Way too slow.
Then we took our river boat back to the cabanas and chilled for the rest of the afternoon, I read in a hammock after showering and it was really nice (and I saw a bug that was somewhat of a cricket that was at least ten inches long and bigger than my flashlight).
We had dinner, went to bed, got up for breakfast (French toast!! REAL French toast!!) and then left the cabanas. We were supposed to go back to Quito, but Beto wanted to check in on two students from Minnesota who were doing their internships in Tena. So the first was a girl at a school teaching English, which didn’t really interest me…I just played with the kids and let them play with my camera (because kids here think that getting their picture taken is the coolest thing EVER). But the second student we checked on was AWESOME. He has a public health internship like I will have, and he works in a hospital in Tena. And he really works. He gets to learn just like the med students, which means that he gets to make casts, do stitches, drain fluids from abdomens, assist in surgery, and all sorts of awesome things. So I asked him about the bugs and he said that even though they were in the jungle, in the middle of Tena where he lived, it was just like being in any other city, but hotter. So maybe I’ll do my internship in Tena….
We took the bus home, and it was relatively uneventful, lots of people and our tire blew up, but it didn’t really cause too many problems. And so now I am home, trying to dry my backpack and other things, and trying to put things away.
I finally got the notice that my package (that my parents sent about six weeks ago) is at the post office, so this week I need to go pick it up. Also, I need to get my CENSO, which is my resident ID card since I will be living here for so long. We also have our final essay due this week for edits, so that needs to be done soon, and then tomorrow I am going to dinner with Marlo, the missionary.
And to cap it all off, I lost my flash drive, so now when I type blogs on my computer, I will have to take it to school to post them.
For the rest of tonight, I plan on doing nothing but perhaps taking off my nail polish and coating myself with another layer of calamine lotion. I just had dinner with my mom because she is the only one here, and I told her all about the orient and how much I hated it, an d she just laughed and agreed that it was an awful place. The more Spanish I learn, the more I like her. I am a little sad that I have to leave in less than a month. But for now, good night to all and be thankful that there won’t be cave spiders when you get up to go to the bathroom tonight
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