La Amazonía

This blog is really about my trip to the Amazon last weekend, but first I have a bit of advice: at some point in your life, I would suggest that you have a Latin American lover. Now, I do not have a Latin American lover and thus cannot speak from experience per se, but I can tell you after going to a discoteca last Wednesday (we didn’t have classes Thursday, don’t worry Mom) that hearing about your smile and name and such in romanticized Spanish sounds quite nice. I do not intend on actually having a Latin American lover whilst here, but still, I’d recommend it. Anyway, this blog is about the Amazon. First: look up Yasuní. This is [basically] where we stayed and long story short it is arguably the most bio-diverse spot on the planet.

What an adventure. I hardly know where to begin. The first thing that strikes me when I think about the Amazon (aside from the densely humid heat which I am already semi-used to from living in St. Louis) is the views. We passed by constant luscious green growth sprouting out of a brown river popping with almost unreal colors and the occasional visible animal as we boated into the depths of the jungle. As we got deeper into Ecuadorian Amazon, I couldn’t help but think of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the feeling began to hit me that this wasn’t really a place for humans. As amazing as it was to be there, that feeling never really left. I was more of a foreigner there than in any other place I have ever been. The jungle is the domain of the animals and plants; it isn’t for my tramping around. Even so, I loved getting the opportunity to be there. 

Within four short hours of arriving to the Amazon, I had seen many birds, the elusive Amazon River Dolphin, some monkeys, and a sloth. A SLOTH!!! Sloth in Spanish is “perezoso” which also means “lazy” so a group of sloths would be called “lazies” and I just really love that. Anyway.

We arrived to our lodge just in time for dinner and after eating some delicious food and hearing about our 6am meet-up for the next day, we headed to bed. Although, let me say here that “heading to bed” is not quite as simple in the jungle as it is in most circumstances. Brianne and I, who were sharing a cabin typed room, walked in to our room and then our bathroom only to find the biggest, most terrifying and simply odd-looking bugs I had ever seen up to that point in my life. I don’t consider myself much of a shrieker, but I will admit that there was some shrieking done upon entering the bathroom and having one fly too close my face. Once braving the bathroom to brush our teeth and such, we then had to maneuver within the bedroom without stepping on any horrifying creatures and make it into our net-covered beds without letting in the hordes of mosquitoes that were assuredly awaiting their chance to attack. To make this more difficult, there is no electricity except from 6pm-10pm and it was past 10pm. Finally we did make it to bed and juuust as we were drifting off to sleep, between the loud chirppings of various bugs and calls of animals, we began to hear a deep and ominous breathing coming from underneath our lofted cabin. Obviously, we chose to hope that our door lock worked against jaguars and went to sleep. I certainly did not sleep well, but when I woke up with there was only one cockroach on my pillow, so I was clearly overreacting. (I'm just kidding, the cockroaches didn’t make it onto my bed- or at least that I know of). 

Our days in the Amazon went something like this: canoe, eat, hike, eat, canoe, eat, hike, sleep, eat, boat/swim, eat, hike, eat, canoe. So we had a fairly even balance of land to water activities. I’m going to group them together as land vs. water to make things easier to describe. First, land.

Our land adventures were fascinating. Our native guide, Livio, stopped and taught us survival tactics along the way. He showed us how to make poison from the bark of a tree and then had us all try it. It was horrendously bitter, but no one died, so that was good. I should probably mention here that it’s poisonous to all animals except humans and chickens ;)
 
As we were hiking along we came to a clearing in the trees where one solo tree was growing. Livio asked us why were thought that might be and we all gave varying responses, to which he went up to the tree, pulled off a pod typed thing and opened it to release a swarm of ants. Then he told us to stick our tongues into it. One by one he held up a new pod of ants to each of us and we hesitantly (or not so hesitantly*Brianne*) stuck our tongues into it. Wow. That was weird. My brain was sending so many “NO!!” messages to my tongue and mouth, so very cautiously I moved my tongue forward and then at the last moment stuck it fully in and then lunged away from it. I could not only feel them, some still crawling, in my mouth, but I could taste their burst of lemon flavor. Yes, lemon. They were actually pretty good, a natural lemon flavored (ant) snack to brighten up your day, but when someone told me one was crawling onto my lip from my mouth, I recalled exactly what I had just done and was sufficiently creeped out again. 

Our other hiking experience was done the second night we were there after dinner, in the dark. We were told to gather our flashlights and wear our rain boots because “you could get bitten by a poisonous bug!” I was dubious about whether I wanted to subject myself to something that involved poisonous creatures sneaking around in the dark, but I had no choice. The first thing we saw was a nice little frog. The second thing, however, was a gigantic tarantula. I was done after that, but no, we needed to press on deeper into the Amazonian jungle and into the darkness of the night. We saw very odd-looking insects and creatures and every time a new one had light shone upon it by Livio, Marley and I would look at each other, horrified. To be honest though, it wasn’t so much the things that we were seeing that were bothering me (although I certainly lost some sleep that night after knowing that there are such things as scorpion spiders and that they are bigger than my face), what really bothered me was the question that kept coming to my head: “if this is what we are seeing, what are we NOT seeing?” My worries were eventually interrupted when something very bit my hand quite painfully and I had a minor panic about whether it had been something poisonous and my final moments would be in the dark jungle until I saw a tiny ant crawling away from the spot that felt like fire was burning off my skin. Thanks little guy.

So that was that for land adventures until the last day when we went to a tower in Yasuní and climbed up… I don’t know… 12 flights of stairs? In order to see the spectacular Amazon from above the trees. That is not a view I will soon forget. There were monkeys hanging out in a nearby tree and just beyond that tree was the river. If you can ever get above the canopy of the Amazonian Jungle, do it.

As far as water adventures, we were in a boat for over four hours the first day and then nearly eight the last [no there is no bathroom on this boat and it isn’t highly suggested to go in the water due to a certain fish that may or may not exist, but anyway], as well as many canoe escapades, including a 6am one. In the canoes we saw many types of birds and monkeys and even a sea lion (river lion?) and a crocodile, but predominantly we got to enjoy the tranquility of the calm river as we navigating through the trees that grow from the ground beneath the river so that it appears as though their thick trunks are growing from the water. They also reflect perfectly down onto the still water (in day and in night) so that a disoriented person could easily mistake the water for the sky.

The second morning of our stay, our first activity was fishing for piranhas. Our lodge is located on a lagoon part of the river called “Piranha Lagoon” if that tells you anything. There are vegetarian piranhas there and there are also carnivorous piranhas. We all fished unsuccessfully for awhile – though we did get a few bites and definitely lost a few chunks of the raw meat we were using for bait. To be honest, I was exhausted from having stayed up too late the night before and decided to nap in the slowly rocking boat rather than attempt to catch fish (and I regret nothing). Finally Livio caught a carnivorous piranha that we later ate for lunch. Piranha is delicious. 10/10 would eat again.

The point after finishing fishing was the point that I had been looking forward to all trip. We would get to swim in the river and lagoon with the piranhas. Although I wasn’t thinking about it at the time (thankfully) this river is also home to anacondas, boa constrictors, and crocodiles, among other things. Luckily however, I wasn’t thinking about those things so once I saw Livio and then Sebastián jump in, I stripped to my bathing suit and followed their lead. I did not get attacked by piranhas. Sorry to ruin the myth, but even carnivorous piranhas don’t eat humans – well, at least that’s what Livio, Viviana, and Sebastián told us. It was actually quite lovely. The water is refreshing, but wasn’t too cold. Slightly more disconcerting, however, you can’t see your feet if you look down and your whole body is tinged with a brownish-orange hue. Eventually everyone got in and we began our swim back to the lodge. I swallowed a ton of lagoon water, but didn’t have time to dwell on it in the magnificence of the moment. This was another one of those times that I will simply never be able to describe sufficiently. As Marley, Ami, and I neared the lodge, rain began to fall from the humongous Ecuadorian sky and I looked up to see Marley and Ami grinning genuinely and oh-so-happily at this beautiful moment. I know my face reflected theirs and, as I had thought many times throughout the trip, the words “que rica esta vida” popped strongly into my head. Because it’s true, what a beautifully rich life to be living.