Advertisement
Published: August 14th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Really i dont know where to start. so i´lll try the beginning. this could be long.
we eventually arrived at our 1st camp in Huaorani territory 16 sleepless hrs after leaving Quito the night before via a shit scary bus ride (in my sleepless delirium i was convinced we were going to fall over the possiblely existent possibley imagined cliff) to Ecuador´s ugly, dirty oil capital of Coca; an ass-breaking truck ride thru oil territory to the bridge over the Rio Shiripuno and a canoe ride thru Shuar land (rival indigenous group) and into Huarani territory. Inside the Amazon, the most bio diverse place on earth, on the edge of the huge inconcievable expanse that is so famous, so endangered and still so unknown.
Our camp was tents under traditional Huaorani palm roof. from there our guides took us on our first walk (welliebooted, a lot of mud) to visit the neraby community of Nekempare. 4 families live there, each house about 10-15 mins from the next. The first family we met had a pet (but free) green parrot, a baby monkey permenently attatched to the little girl´s head and a baby tapir (related to horse but smaller and
with mini, soft trunk-nose. we than met the parents of Moi (the famous Huaorani who is head of the fight against the oil companies). his parents dont speak any Spanish only Huao and have big holes in their ear lobes, a traditional thing to do when they got married.
On our 2nd day we had about 6hrs in the canoe under the beating sun to get to our main camp, near the community of Quehueire Ono. on the bank about 20 metres before the camp was a large black and red snake! so of course we all decided to go bathe in the river... r communal bath for this week, in the most idyllc setting. the bikini and wellie combo is also rather stylish.
Day 3 was the best. We walked to the "centre" of the community where the school is and importantly the footie and volleyball pitch. the school is very basic so quite a bit of the $2000 dollars we have raised for them will go to that. in the school we were greeted by the community. they painted our faces, made us mini palm crowns, sang and danced and gave us all Huao names. Mine
tapir
aka elephanthorselandhippo was "Weika" which sounded hilariously close to "wanker"! but means a women fighter of times past. One of the men was in a wheelchair. he has polio, a disease that 20 Huaorani got when the missionaries came over. Now only 2 r alive.
We went on the rounds of visiting the houses. We saw amounst other crazy shit...
-a jaguar skin
-halucenegenic Huayusa plant used by the Shamans to contqact the animal kingdom
-plant with effects similar to cocaine
-women making handicrafts from 100% natual materials (seeds, palm grass called Shigra and plant dyes).
-blo-guns and spears (the way they go hunting) which we all had a practice with.
Eco-tourism and handicrafts are their only sources of income. it´s either eco tourism or money from oil companies who want to exploit their land. the ecotourism is less money but so much more worth it. they only get tourists once a month in order to keep the negative effects (eg gradual loss of culture) to a minimum. for that reason we were still a novelty and they were so excited to see us.
In the afternoon we had a game of football with the community in the burning
LOST... in the amazon
a plane wreck and unmissable photo opportunity afternoon heat. they were a step up from the standard at SL but it was great fun... they are always giggling and bursting into hysterics at any mildly amusing shot or header.
Day 4 we went for a walk to a huuuuge Ceiba tree, apparently 900 years old (whos counting?!). on the way we saw lots of medicinal plants, the tuna tree (looks and smells just like the real thing), the lemon ant tree (which has lemon flavoured ants living inside the tree as verified by our guide and Ellie who just stuck thier tounges in to taste), a root that looked like a dildo and they call the monkey´s penis!
we got a dugout canoe back to the community... the canoe was wide enough 4 us to sit down in a line between each others knees and try to hold on and not let the thing rock too much coz the water was about 2 inches from the top of the boat´s walls. so tranquill... but wobbley. the serenity did not last long as we headed straight under a fallen tree and got crushed b4 the canoe capsized, soaking us compleatley!!
Back at the community, soaking
wet they greeted us with a handicraft set up and we all bought seeded jewellery, shigra bags, bloguns and spears (will be fun getting thru the US back to heathrow!).
after the mutual thank yous we explained to them about Rumble in the Jungle and how we r donating them some money. its gonna be $2000!!! so huge thanks to every1 who came to Rumble. we r gonna spend the money on a new radio(for communications and emergencies), medicine for 6months and new desk and chairs and reading books for the school.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0473s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb