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Published: April 5th 2008
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Leaving Borbon in the canoe Me, Adam and his friend Matan all set off from Quito at midday to Ibarra. From there we got a front seat ride next to the driver on the bus to San Lorenzo through some great scenery and down through the clouds into the tropics again. We arrived in the middle of another thunderstorm and words of caution from the bus driver (his colleague had been robbed the night before in the same town) and the hotel owner who told us that it was not a safe town to be walking around in the dark. According to the books where we were heading we would be risking malaria, sandflies and river blindness and a friend of Matans had also described the next town as being full of one armed men whose missing limb had been hacked off by a machete, so we were slightly nervous! However we had to get dinner somehow and so we braved the mean streets of San Lorenzo and found a chicken and rice meal and a beer before hurrying back to our rooms. Still in a paranoid state the next morning Matan pointed out a guy carrying a machine gun down the road, on passing the
same guy later we realized that it was actually a car jack and we probably needed to calm down a bit. The funny thing was that after getting some emergency supplies and hopping on the bus to Borbon to find a boat up river, the first thing we saw was a guy walking towards us with only one arm, clearly one of the famed machete victims!
Joking aside though, we never really felt threatened in these places and we figured the locals were just being over cautionary for our sakes. In Borbon we were met by a friendly guy in who took us to where the canoes left for San Miguel. We couldn’t get them to budge on the $10 price despite our best efforts so we loaded our stuff into the front of the boat and stood around taking in the scene and sticking out like a sore thumb.
The riverside port at Borbon was lively and bustling with people, cargo and canoes but we only had a short wait till ours set off and we could settle into our bench seats. Straight off the lady in front of us introduced herself as Merlin and said she runs a
hotel in San Miguel, she had just come the 3 and a half hours down river with her baby to visit the doctor and was on her way back up.
It was probably the most uncomfortable journey of my trip on the hard seats but the passing jungle scenery and small villages made up for it. We arrived at San Miguel to a fairly uninterested reception and headed up the hill hoping the hotel was obvious as Merlin had disappeared. We needn’t have worried as it was the only hotel in the tiny village but was really beautifully located at the top of the bank and had nice rooms, bathrooms and a balcony for lounging on with hammocks looking out over the river. And that is pretty much all we did for the next few days.
We had planned to go further upriver into a national park to do some walking but due to the height of the river in the rainy season it proved too expensive so we went on a short trek around the village and spent the rest of our time watching rain storms, reading and playing cards. Sometimes the village kids would come and visit or
Adam would go and play football down on the concrete pitch, we also went and chatted to the Presidents husband Cristobal and had dinner a few times with Rosio who was running the hotel and her family but apart from that it was very tranquilo.
It was a lovely place to stay, with only two family lines making up 70% of the village members (which might explain the amount of cross eyed kids there), a small school and a church. They were looking for an English teacher to volunteer in the school from April to January and I was tempted for a moment I have to say. If any other passing travelers would like more details let me know.
We were also there for the beginning of the Semana Santa celebrations leading up to Easter Sunday and were invited to the church to see the fascinating ceremonies which were a crazy mix of Catholicism and what must have been African and Ecuadorian beliefs of a more ancient culture. They kicked off on Thursday night with some ritual where they put out all the candles and lights and into the church came two rows or boy carrying sticks or old rifles
which they banged on the floor in time with their stomping feet as they danced up and down in lines punctuated by descansos when they all squatted down on the floor. Very atmospheric and evocative but we had a hard time getting them to explain the significance. I’m not sure they knew the roots of it themselves.
The next afternoon was something they described to us as the coming of the Jews. Where 4 or 5 boys were dressed up in costumes of jungle leaves and reeds with scary masks on and stormed into the church wreaking havoc and dancing around, either being fanned or beaten by other boys herding them and eventually being forcibly picked up and thrown out with the church doors slammed behind them. It was most bizarre and fascinating to watch and I would have love to know where its roots were.
The only thing which spoilt our time here was that during the few days were were there we kept getting visits from people who would say… look its a holy time for us so we are not supposed to swim in the river…but if you want to then you could pay us something and
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This babys just been 3 hrs downriver to the doctors for a fever...I know Pepsi'll cure it. then its fine….or if we wanted to take photos we had to pay an amount because of the value of the information we would be getting…plus if we were interested in seeing the traditional Marimba dance….well then we could pay for a display, but not until after Sunday because it’s a holy time…or actually maybe they could do it on Saturday for us…if we pay.
It was all a bit weird and made us think twice about staying till Sunday and the big party, in the end we left on the boat at 3am on the Saturday morning, slipping off into the night while the singing could still be heard coming from inside the church.
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