Trekking in the Amazon

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A few years back, when my parents were still living in Ecuador, my dad got really into "gold dredging."

Gold dredging is a pretty popular thing; there is even some kind of reality show about it apparently.

My dad decided he wanted to take a trip out to the Amazon to scout out locations for the best gold dredging spots. We chose an area called "Yuquianaza." It's an area with so few people and civilization that you can barely find it on Google, and if you do you'll find satellite pictures of nothing but green mountains.

We took a bus out there on the most dangerous road I have ever been on. I would be worried to walk on this road, let alone take an enormous bus out there; adventure is the name of the game isn't it?

We drove over a waterfall, and at one point we had to wait while a bulldozer cleared rocks out of the way from a mudslide beneath the road we were on.

We ended up in a small town about a half hour from the area we wanted to go to in the jungle. The town was very Ecuadorian; fortunately there was one tiny little restaurant that served french fries and pizza (I think I teared up a little when I saw it).

We took a bus out to this little jungle area right in front of the river. When we got off basically in the middle of nowhere we saw this little restaurant area that had a straw cover and little baby chicks running around on the floors. We had to hide under this covering when it would downpour every 45 minutes (there was literally hurricane rainfall every half hour and then the sun would come out right after.)

We walked down to the river and clearly none of us were prepared. I've never seen mud so thick and I was wearing converse sneakers and shorts.

My feet were so wet and covered in mud; on top of that I got so many bites from sand fleas (since when did those exist?!) I looked like I had chicken pox. I spent the next week after the trip applying calamine lotion, Vaseline, and scratching my legs all night.

Being out in the Amazon was an experience I would never take back. It was exciting, and the view was beautiful. I have never seen trees so green, or smelled air so fresh. I never knew trees and flowers could look like that and I realized that I had never been in true nature until I was there.

When we took the bus back to the town we were staying in I looked up and I had never seen so many stars. I felt like I was an astronaut floating through the milky way itself.

This trip really taught me that the unexpected can really create a lot of fun memories, and it's important to allow spontaneity into your life.

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