The Amazon

Here in Ecuador, and in all of Latin America, there is a holiday called Carneval that we do not celebrate in the U.S., but is celebrated here with gusto. The holiday comes with two days off from school, and so, our program used the long weekend as an opportunity to organize a trip to the Amazon. Everyone in our program went. I can't do the trip justice. From the outset, I need to lay that out. The photographs I took could bring me closer, but really the Amazon is just one of those things you have to see for yourself to fully absorb. The sight of trees, the sound of birds, the smell of rain. But I'll do my best.

On Saturday we all met at the IES center at 7am to depart. We stood outside the building, bags in hand, eyelids drooping sleepily, until the bus pulled up. We loaded up, and began departed Quito. Most of us dropped off to sleep on the way. The ride there, like all rides through Ecuador, was breathtakingly beautiful, but I've largely grown used to rolling hills, pastures, grazing animals, mountains and little pueblos that characterizes every trip. It's a part of the countryside here. We stopped on our way at a small water park, where we changed outside (that was an interesting and tricky experience) into bathing suits. We were met by a guide who clearly had once been military. He had the buzz cut, the bulging muscles, a snake tattoo on his shoulder, and walked everywhere barefoot without a second thought. We were about to explore some caverns nearby, that delved deep into the earth, and he was our guide. He led us forward, and we walked through a field until we began to descend into a gaping dark hole in the ground.

The caves were small in some parts, and large in others. Sometimes it was dry, other times we were wading waste deep through the water. At one point, we had to swim. We went up and down, through tunnels, and at one point, the guide had us all turn off our lights, and he talked to us about the history of the caverns in a complete darkness. When we finally were finished, we enjoyed a delicious lunch, boarded the bus, and continued on our way.

We made a second stop later, and went on a hike through the forest. At this point we were in the Amazon, and it was humid. But humid is an understatement. Houston is humid, and Houston doesn't hold a candle to the Amazon in terms of humidity. It was very very hot. We trekked tiredly forward, but when we reached our destination, it all was worth it. We had reached a large, beautiful waterfall. Hot and sweaty, we all plunged excitedly into the water, and like insects, began scurrying up the waterfall edge. There we stood dotting to side of the rockwall, and one by one we leapt off back into the pool beneath. The water was cool and fresh and felt perfect in the heat. When we finally hiked back, we did so still tired, but refreshed and content.

We finally rolled into our destination for the day, a small town in the Amazon called Misahualli, at about dinner time. We pulled up to the inn we were staying at, divvied up the rooms, and then met back at the restaurant for dinner. The rooms were hot, and the sheets, like all things in the Amazon, were at their driest still a little damp. It ran on solar energy, so at sundown we lost power, we were sweaty, there was no air conditioning, and the water pressure in the shower was spotty. But we were all so tired, we slept soundly and deeply despite it all.

The next morning I got up especially early to trek into Misahualli. And there, I encountered something quite strange. During the day, the city is full of monkeys, who come into town to eat from the humans' scraps and refuse. It was incredible to see them running around the street. I continued down to the river to see the sunrise. Everyone in the city was already up and already working. When I got back, everyone else we up. We ate breakfast, packed, and then donned thick, rubber rain boots that we had rented to prepare for the next leg of the journey. We were going deeper into the Amazon, and we would have to go by boat.

But they weren't really boats exactly, they were narrow canoes that had motors on the backs. We loaded our bags into them, and, accompanied by some new guides, boarded the canoes and took off down the river. The boat ride down the river was incredible. The view was so beautiful everywhere that it was overwhelming. We travelled via boat for a significant stretch down the river, until we finally reached what appeared to be a random piece of beach. We looked around confused, but soon realized a little ways off on the forest's edge was a path. We unloaded the bags and carried them forward down a path into the forest. Soon, we encountered the cabanas we were staying in. We had two of them. One was filled with girls. The other had two rooms, one of which the guys claimed, and the other of which had the rest of the girls. This cabana was raised off the ground, and had about six hammocks below it that we took full advantage of. If the inn in Misahualli was low-tech, this was even lower. Forget air conditioning completely. Despite the fact that we were sweating buckets and there was no point at which it got cool, even in the middle of the night, air conditioning was unheard of. The lights and water pressure were spotty, and we shared the cabanas with our fare share of insects (and the occasional large spider). The beds were hard, as were the pillows, and perpetually moist. But it was incredible.

After we ate, we got back into the canoes, and went further down the river, where we got off, and travelled through the woods to an indigenous home, where a family lived. We were in the middle of an indigenous community, but the homes were all so spread out that we only saw one. The family was one that opened its home to tourists (and we guessed received compensation for it). The man of the house was also the shaman of the village (though is this day and age the role had clearly taken on a purely ceremonial one). The house was incredible. It was raised off the ground, and was a single room. There were windows, in the sense that the wall did not reach the room. It was made of wood, the roof of large Amazonian leaves. There were shelves in which the family stored things, and a large square fire pit in the center of the home that perpetually sent smoke up, protecting the organic roof by keeping hungry bugs away, and forming a layer of ash that gave it further support. The family was huge. There were at least five children, and a baby. The parents lived in the house, along with the grandparents, and the children's uncle. There were no beds, no cots, no pallets. They slept on the floor, probably on a sheet, but on the wooden floor. Only the baby had a little hammock to sleep in. The poverty, the simplicity, the difference in lifestyle was absolutely incredible. I spoke with the shaman's son, and he said there was a market that was open every friday that they traded at, and every three months a priest would show up to say mass. The next scheduled mass was in May.

We returned to the cabanas, ate, and retired for the evening. We had another great night sleep, and the many bug bites that we had received (and continued to receive in our sleep) did not wake us. At one point I woke to the deafening sound of rain, and was awake long enough to note the weather before I dropped back off to sleep.

The next morning, we ate breakfast, donned our boots again, and set off for a hike through the Amazon. What we took was a path in a the loosest sense of the word, but really it was more like areas that we could step because they weren't overgrown by vegetation. We saw some incredible things. Aside from the towering trees and primitive vegetation, there were dozens of lines of ants carrying pieces of leaves around the jungle. We ate lemon flavored ants at one point. We saw tree sap that looked like blood and worked like moisturizer on the skin. We saw a poisonous frog. We saw blue birds eggs. We saw many things. After many hours, we returned to the cabanas.

After lunch began the construction project. The owners of the cabanas had a variety of large pieces of wood sitting in a little hut on the trail to the river. We carried this wood piece by piece to the river, and once there, divided into two teams, and built two rafts. I say we, but I really mean the Ecuadorian guides, who did most of the work while we did a little helping and a lot of trash talking each other. Finally the rafts were complete, and we set sail. Each raft was equipped with two bamboo poles for steering, and one oar. One of our bamboo poles broke, and our rivals began to pull ahead. So, naturally, we dove into the water, and began to accost their raft. They returned the favor. Pretty soon there was a traffic of swimmers between the two boats trying to best one another. Finally, we stole their oar and one of their bamboo poles, and with those in hand, began to pull ahead of our rivals. We reveled in our victory, and sailed down the river, singing various Disney songs in chorus as we sailed through the Amazon. When we reached the shore, we disassembled the rafts, and loaded the wood into the canoes, which had followed us. There was no room for me in the canoe with the wood where it was, so I volunteered to move to the front of the canoe and sit on the nose of it. The canoe rides were always great, but sitting there, with the river spraying up on me, surrounded by the Amazon, with the sun setting ahead of me, was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

After returning and putting the wood away, we went for a swim to wash off some of the copious amounts of mud. I returned to the cabana and took my first shower since I had left Quito, and we went to dinner. Afterwards, we spent the night relaxing and talking about various things while it rained off and on. We had to do everything by candlelight, because there was no electricity with the sun gone.

The next morning, we packed up, ate, and headed out. We got on the canoes for one of our last times and headed out. We made a stop at a nature preserve, where we looked at the animals and ate lunch, and from there we continued on to Quito, leaving the Amazon behind.

This definitely isn't everything that happened, and it definitely does not capture the majesty of the jungle. But one thing was for sure, we all knew in that weekend that we had chosen to study abroad in the right place. We are all different, but almost everyone shares a version of the same story from the United States: the story of when we announced our intentions to study abroad in Ecuador, only to receive that confused question, "Why would you want to go to Ecuador? Why wouldn't you go to Spain?" Spain, and all of Europe, is no doubt incredible. But after spending the weekend in the Amazon, almost everyone said that they had definitely made the right choice. Those that didn't say so, already knew they had.