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Published: October 18th 2007
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Jungle Devil
A figurehead that the natives would carve everywhere. Hello everyone,
I've just gotten back from about 4 days in the Napo Province of Ecuador. This is part of the Oriente region of Ecuador, a chunk of the Amazon to the right of the Andes. All of the YFU students (about 45 or so) met in Quito on the 10th. Buses here are great, you pay 9 dollars for a fare to Quito. The trip is about 9 hours long, but it isn't too bad. The "ejecutivo" bus system means that you won't be mugged, stabbed, have your baggage taken, stuff like that. Plus, there's air conditioning, usually you can have two seats to yourself, it's pretty comfortable. I've found that the roads in the coastal region are the second worst in Ecuador, rivaled only by the roads in the oriente region. The roads in the moutains are really great, once you get past Santo Domingo where you stop for lunch. Lunches in Ecuador are amazing and only 2-3 dollars max. For that you get a large portion of rice, some meat, salad, and sauce. There's a lot to watch during the day as you drive by. There's banana plantations, rice plantations, cacao plantations, and small little plots for
Chicha
Mmmmmm. Masticated, fermented yuca. tomatoes, onions, stuff like that, everywhere you look. As my brother mentioned in his blog, there's stray dogs everywhere, only, in Ecuador it's worse, you'll see about 3 in every place you look. We'll drive by the same dog every day on the way to school, sleeping in the same place every day.
When we got to Quito, we couldn't really find the hostel where we were going to stay. A very elusive hostel, we just kind of found it by driving around a lot, not something you normally want to do in Quito. Hostels here are really cool and everywhere in Ecuador. Small bed and breakfastish places that cost about 5-10 dollars a night. Some of the best sleep I've had has been in hostels. I'm pretty sure that the reunion with my friends was amazing, probably one of the best parts of the trip for me. Being in the jungle with your friends, can't get any better. We basically had a night of freedom, curfew at 12, though, the next day we had to travel at about 7 in the morning, so, 12 wasn't a bad idea. Everyone kind of met up eventually in a
square. We were in the "fashionable/trendy" district of Quito, pretty nice place. We ended up walking to a shawarma stand and sitting down and eating. After that it was discoteca time. It was the best discoteca I've been to here yet I think. Very crowded, cozy, dim, a nice place for dancing. After the discoteca, it was back to the hotel.
The bus ride to the oriente was about 6 hours, mainly due to the fact that the roads into the oriente down the mountains aren't even really roads.... The views on the way to the oriente were amazing though. Lots of mountains, picturesque valleys, stuff like that. The hotel was a 20 minute boat ride into the jungle, Casa Del Suizo, a really nice place. We arrived in the evening, and had the rest of the time to eat lunch, dinner, and relax. There's a pool there, which we all ended up spending a lot of the free time in because it was so hot and humid. Meals there were buffet style and amazing. Food in Ecuador is always so good.
The next day was the first day of the "jungle experience." Breakfast at 7, by 8:30
Painted up for war
I have no idea what I was doing. we were dressed, had little hiking backpacks, and had put on boots, boots are very handy, I'd definitely recommend them for anyone going to the jungle. One time we had to change into our bathing suits, and the girls had put theirs on under their clothes, lucky them. The guys had to run into the jungle to change. We'd gone to a mouth of a stream running out of the jungle, and I stepped into a seemingly solid patch of the sand which turned out to be leg deep, but, my boots saved me, yay. We first went to the secondary jungle, an area that had been logged a long time ago, but had regrown. Through that we took a long path around, stopping at intervals while the guides would point out medicinal plants and practical uses of jungle items to us. We then took the very large canoes to an animal hospital that takes care of animals that were on the black market and sold as pets to hotels. We then got to float back down the river in tubes, very relaxing.
Later that day we got to canoe across the river, ford a stream that fed into
Sunset
Which=mosquitos. the river (a very dangerous undertaking), and then walk to a Quichuan family's hut. There we got to try out the blowgun that was 8 feet long. Very cool. Then, we got to go into the hut to see how Chicha is made and even got to try it. Chicha is an alcoholic drink that is commonly offered to guests in a house, it's bad manners to refuse it. It also could be thought of as the "MGD" of Quichuan society, they drink it at parties, weddings, stuff like that. The women take Yuca, mash it up in a bowl, masticate it, spit it into some water, I think they add something else too, but I can't remember what it was. After maybe, 2 weeks it's fairly potent, containing about 4-5 percent alcohol. Had a sour aftertaste that wasn't very good, but otherwise tasted like Yuca. Not something I'd recommend drinking. Not very refreshing at all.
After the Quichuan experience there was several examples of handmade Quichuan work in the town where we were. There were ceramic bowls that were really interesting to watch being made. The lady took a piece of clay, broke it into 3 pieces. She
Crazy Parrot
That parrot was as spry as a monkey even though it's wings were clipped. It chewed out it's own hole in the ceiling, through which it could get to the roof. The real king of the hotel. In this photo it's on the arm of my good friend, Simon. Thankfully, it didn't tear any chunks of flesh out of Simon's arm. It had a temper. then made a small cup with the largest piece, and rolled out the other two pieces. Then, she layered on the two rope-shaped pieces onto the small cup. Then, very carefully, she formed a bowl from it. She used a piece of shell from a fruit to smooth out the outside and inside. Lots of skill needed. After that, they let the clay dry for a day, then they smooth it for another day, then they paint on the dye another day, then they finally finish the bowls by rubbing tree sap on the outside. Very cool. We also got to see a man make a small carving of a bird out of balsa. Lots of balsa wood in the Napo river region.
The next day we went hiking in the primary jungle area, which is a much older, wilder, cooler area of the jungle, a true heart of darkness. I was with a lot of Belgian friends in the jungle, that's the main reason I kept thinking of the book. I kept thinking "My, we need a Marlow and a Kurtz with us." The area we traveled through was incredibly difficult to navigate. The paths were made of
Chicha
Chicha in the making. Mashed yuca, some sort of root, yeah... slippery clay and I expected to fall a lot, which, fortunately, no one did. We all were soaked with sweat by the time we got out after going up and down steep hills, going over bridges made out of 2x4's, and walking up shallow streams. The streams were the easiest way to get around. We then went back to the beach and rode back to the lodge on balsa rafts, though, ours didn't work very well because we had too many people on it. That really concluded all of the jungle trip. We went to a butterfly house, where there were lots of very cool butterflies, though, butterflies aren't that interesting after about an hour. Going back to our individual towns was horrible. I miss my friends already. The bus ride back to Quito was fun though. My friend Simon and I had quite a lot of fun listening to NPR Food podcasts.
Thus concludes my trip to the Oriente, hope you enjoy my photos.
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vincent
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I also don't now how i slept like that, but I think I was really tired and then you sleep everywhere :p (he tabea) haha... It was a really cool trip and I hope we have a lot more trips like these in our stay in Ecuador... Hasta pronto amigo y nos vemos el 25 del mes de octubre...