Blisters, Bug Bites and Babies, Oh My!

I will have to write a post about Quito another time because what I have been doing for the past four days is much more worthy of a blog post.

While in Quito, Jose and I were wondering how we were going to spend our three weeks in the beautiful country of Ecuador, especially since going to the Galapagos Islands was WAAAAAY above our price range.  I wanted, no, needed to see the jungle.  We looked into tours into the Amazon and the cheapest one was $240 for three nights, four days.  It would have been wonderful, but also too expensive.  Jose, with his masterful internet seach skills found a site describing a family that lives in the jungle and often has tourists and volunteers come to stay with them: Cinimp Tuna.  It sounded perfect.  I sent an email to the "contact us" address and hoped to hear back within a couiple of days. 

Two days, three days went by and I still hadn´t gotten a response.  We made plans to head south to Baños and then possibly to Puyo in hopes of finding an affordable way to get into the Jungle.  Then I got an email.  Abbie (a former volunteer with Chinimp Tuna) gave us all the information we had asked for, and then some.  And the price was affordable: $25 a day, or if you stay a week it is $75 per person.  We talked it over and then replied to her to let the family know to expect us within the next couple of days. 

A 1.5 hour bus ride from Baños to Puyo, the purchase of rubber boots in Puyo, then a bus headed toward the Chico Copataza Community for 2 hours.  As we are on the second bus we enter the forest.  Granted this is probably tertiary forest (it has been cleared and regrown at least twice) so there aren´t as many big trees, but it is still the jungle.  Around some corners we could see over a cliff and as far as I could see there was jungle.  Green, green and more green.  Different textures, colors and shapes.  I was going to the jungle!  We stepped off the bus in what felt like the middle of nowhere and are greeted by no less tha six people, with at least 4 children watching from a distance.  They shake our hands, the women kiss my cheek, the chickens on the ground dare to venture closer, the children just stare.  They takes us the main house that they use for gatherings and Manuel welcomes us to Chinimp Tuna (named for a bird and a waterfall).  They seem a little perplexed to see us, and then we find that no one told HIM that we were coming.  Huh.  They scrambled to make dinner for us, to prepare two beds upstairs and to clean off the table where we could eat.  I felt kind of bad, but we had no way of knowing that they were not informed.  We were given juice and we both looked at is skeptically.  The water here was definately NOT safe to drink, but what were we to do?  The family obviously drank water and it was rude to not drink it.  We looked at each other and drank up.

We went up to our "room" which was filled with 11 sets of bunk beds and two of them had been made up for us.  No mosquito netting, the rooms were far from being sealed from bugs and the beds shook a little whenever anyone walked up the stairs to the second floor.  This was going to be an experience! 

After a dinner with rice, noodles, tea and fish:

we went back upstairs to relax.  Soon we began to be attacked by bugs.  Josè went down to ask for a "mosquitero" (mosquito net) and they only had one.  He, awesomely, let me use it the first night and it was a god send.  Lulled to sleep by the jungle symphony of insects, frogs, toads and the occasional unknown sound, we fell asleep in the Jungle.

The next day we were greeted by a lazy rooster (he crowed maybe twice), a hen that wanted to be a rooster, and the sound of a crying baby (which turned out to be the pet parrot).  Our first task after breakfast was to snort this liquid up our nose, which would help us have a better experince in the forest, clean our our sinuses and I´m sure some other benefits. It was water that had tobacco leaves soaking in it.  There may have been other things but I am not sure.  Josè went first, fearlessly and I hestitantly followed.  Its an adventure, right?  It burned, making my nose tingle and my eyes water but eventually that went away.  Then there was a little dizziness and the colors became a little more vivid.  Hrm.  I think I was a little high. 

We ventured into the forest with Dario yeliding his jungle sword (machete) and followed by 5 children.  About 5 meters in we were very thankful for the rain boots as the ground was extremely muddy and more than once the jungle tried to claim our boots for itself.  Our entourage soon ventured off without us, climbing trees and following paths that only their experienced eyes could see.  We tasted fruits and vegetables from the forest as well as seeing brightly colored as well as huge spiders, millipedes and a lot of evidence of monkeys. 

While walking along the river bank I slipped and fell on the rocks banging up my knee, my ribs on the left side and my finger.  My camera was safe though.  Phew!  We finally reached our desitnation and I discovered the real reason the kids came with us.  There was a beautiful waterfall of clear cold water.  The kids had already stripped down to their skivies and were jumping and diving off the rocks into the pool below.  Following their lead I got down to my bathing suit and after some hesitation I jumped into the water.  Cold, but when I lay back to float on my back I saw sunlight, green all around and butterflies fluttering overhead.  I quickly forgot the temperature of the water. 

I swam over to the base of the waterfall (only about 5.5 feet tall, so easy to climb and not too powerful) and tried to climb up the rocks the same way I had seen the kids doing it.  I guess they just knew where to grab because I must have spent a good minute or two struggling to get up.  The kids laughed at me and finally one girl, Yocanda, offered me her hand.  Now Yocanda is 11 years old and skinny as a stick.  I didn´t want to risk her falling down if I slipped so I hesitantly took her hand. 

Carolina (left) and Yoconda (right)

It wasn´t until one of my feet begin to slip and I felt her arm pulling me up when I realized how strong this young girl was.  She grew up in this forest, climing trees, swimming, fishing, running.  When I looked at her again she was skinny, but ALL muscle.  She had a six pack!  Yet another lesson in "first impressions are often wrong".

Carolina helping me up

We all swam and jumped and climed until it was time to go. 

Yocanda, me and Carolina

Yoconda, Josè and Carolina

The girls (Yocanda, Nelba and Crolina) were especially fascinated with my skin, especially the back of my hands that were sunburned.  They would touch them and watch them turn white then back to red and ask me how it happened.  I would try to explain to them that it was the sun but it was such a foreign idea to them that I don´t think they understood what I was talking about.

On our way back home we ate grubs (I ate the small one but the big ones, the ones that were bigger around than my thumb, I couldn´t do it.  I did try though!), watched the kids climb different trees to gather palm fruits and papaya, Yocanda cut down a palm and extracted the heart of it (I had NO idea how much waste went into that little bit of tender food!) and once again the girls helped me through the forest, telling me to watch my head or to look out for the spider web.  

Back home we had lunch and a rest, then Dario took us to Rio Grande (the big river) also called Rio Cotopaza.  He painted our faces with the pigment of a fruit saying it keeps away the bugs, fish and alligators.  At the river we found the children with inner-tubes, playing in the water and in the sand on the other side of the river.  We once again bathed/swam in the river and when the sun started to go down the three of us dried off and went home, the kids stayed to play until the sun was gone.

The next day, Sunday, Jose learned to fish with a net, and I did a lot of holding the machete and watching.  I don´t have time to go into it all right now but it was a fascinating day watching them complete tasks that are hard and frustrating to me, but they have grown up doing it and it is part of their life.  That afternoon and into the evening we both learned how to make the jewelry they wear in that community.  I was in heaven!  There were kids ALL around, mostly watching Jose and I to see (I think) if we could do it.  Another falling down incident occurred when I tried to jump for something while wearing flipflops, on slippery rocks that were not flat and I landed almost on of one of the kids hitting my knee (the same one I banged the day before) and jamming my right pinky when I fell.  The kid started to cry but I learned later that it was probably mostly out of surprise.  The kids have fallen from the second story and are totally fine.  Wow.  

Yesterday we joined Manuel and three of his sons for their daily work in the forest.  We were all given machetes and we were told to cut down everything within a certain area, except the palm trees.  I know what you are thinking.  “YOU CUT DOWN THE RAINFOREST?!” but these people use it for their livelihood.  They are not commercial growers and they don´t do mono-crops.  They plant three or four things in the same plot of land and cut down only as much as they need.  It was hard work and José and I both had blisters by the time we quit for lunch.  Cutting open an orange for a snack (energy to get us back to the house pretty much) we then began the trek back home.  Lunch was wonderful soup with the best papaya I have EVER had.  It was amazing!  Then we had rest time for an hour, then back into the forest to plant things.  We gathered bags of sticks and took them to a cleared place that they already had yucca growing in.  The two men sharpened stick and used them to make holes in the ground where José and I planted the sticks.  The plant was something that they used in fishing.  The mash it up and put it between rocks and it, essentially, drunken the crabs and kills the fish so they can just pick them up out of the water.  Interesting.  Then we planted the jungle version of potatoes.  We finished rather quickly and then had more papaya as a snack.  We trekked back to the house and had a couple hours to bathe (in the river by the way) and then rest until dinner.

Today our hands are sore and we have more bug bites than we can count but it has been so much fun so far!  Tomorrow we are going to do another type of work and then on Thursday (our last day there) we will hike to the big waterfall where the water is so clear you can see the fish when you swim in it.