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January 16, 2005
banos, ecuador
yesterday after returning from the jungle there wasn´t time to use the internet before we caught the overnight bus here to banos. on top of that, the atm machine wasn´t working in coca, so we had to borrow money from the guy who set up our tours, and tomorrow we have to deposit what we borrowed plus the tips for our guide and boat driver.
the 5 days we spent in the jungle are hard to describe. on the first day we spent 5 hours on a narrow yet very long canoe as it powered down the napo river. there were several cloudbursts, and while romero our guide hid under some tarps, sleeping, aaron, kristy and i happily got soaked in the tepid rain. after 3 hours we turned off and headed upstream on a smaller river an hour later we arrived and carried our bags and all the supplies into the primitive cabanas, no electricity or running water to be seen. after that we headed back to the motorized canoe, and headed upstream towards the panacocha lake. all around us the jungle vegetation was thick and teeming with life. the fecundity and the rapidity in which life happens and violently ends in this environment left a vibration in the air.
we had an excellent swim in the lake, followed by an extremely close, extremely rare spotting of an amazonian river dolphin. we spotted it coming up for air, and it continued surfacing closer and closer to us, until finally it came up about 2 meters from our quiet canoe. aaron and i both watched it come up, it was a really cool experience. our guide said he had never seen one that close in all his 12 years in that area.
we spent the next couple of days going for long walks through the jungle. the amount of diverse vegetation was incredible and overwhelming. though it is hard to recall all of what we saw, romero showed us a tree that grows above ground roots so that it can shift several feet in any direction in order to have better access to the sun, a species of ant that lives inside a certain tree branch and tastes like a strong lemon, 300 year old jungle trees with eagle nests on top, and a strong fiberous branch that the natives would wind into thread to make hammocks and clothing out of. we saw tons of large spiders and various types of insects, tiny jungle pigs, monkeys of all sizes including the howler monkey, who´s howl is audible for up to 2 kilometers, as well as a deer and some squirrels. on the 3rd day we were rowing the smaller unpowered canoe back towards the lodge in the middle of a lovely rainstorm, and our guide pointed up, exclaiming, ¨sloth!¨ indeed, a giant sloth was moving about in the branches of a tree next to the river, and aaron and i decided to scramble up the tree and take a closer look. we climbed up and witnessed it´s 2 fingers, it´s mullet-like hair and it´s snail lake climbing speed. the motorized canoe came along underneath us, and just as the rain intensified aaron and i climbed out on a limb, broke off a few protruding branches, and leapt out into thin air to splash down in the middle of the river. totally excellent.
some good english folks arrived 2 days after we did, 2 male doctors and one of their sisters. we went on some jungle hikes with them, and had some good chats about politics and the environment and the like. it was nice that the lodge had only 6 of us there until our last night, when 8 others arrived. in the high season up to 40 people can be there at the same time. we preferred the quiet. one of the best canoe paddles we had was when the three of us plus romero fought our way upstream towards where anacondas are known to hang out on a hot day. the stream had a swift current, and when we reached the secluded lagoon, everything felt so quiet, i was sure we would see a snake. unfortunately, that didn´t happen, but as the stream quietly carried us back downstream it felt so still, our paddles making no noise, just the sound of the horrible oil helicopters passing by overhead.
romero was an excellent guide, though i ended up interpreting for him because his english, while capable, made him sound like a chinese man. he spoke at length about his efforts to help local tribes gain the power to negociate with all the petroleum. also working as a journalist for one of the national papers, he has had the distinction of having his life threatened by the government for his political work. good old third world countries. romero hypothesized that in 20 years a good portion of the jungle will have been cut down both for it´s wood and for the oil hiding underneath. actually seeing this region made me wonder what will happen when the lungs of the world are cut down. frankly it´s depressing as hell, and aaron, kristy and i all though that having children right now with the way the world is going is kinda like sentencing them to living in an ever increasing shithole. sorry for the profanity.
all in all, my experience in the jungle was amazing, and hard to put into words. on my last night i walked out with toby the english doctor and stood about 10 yards on a trail into the jungle. we turned off our flashlights and stood, listening to the buzzing of the insects and the crashing in the distant underbrush of animals living, foraging and dying.
we arrived this morning in banos after an horrendous overnight bus ride through pothole alley as some aussies we met had dubbed it. we found a cheap hostel and crashed from 6 until 10 am. after that we went and had breakfast in the market, and now we are heading towards the hotsprings to soak and relax. tomorrow the plan is to rent bikes and go on a 70 kilometer ride, nearly all of it downhill, and catch a bus back up. i am very excited to get on a bike again. when we leave here we are headed for the coast, where we will be meeting matt and denise. then it´s on to their farm, and then north to colombia. life is good.
Posted by bendan at January 16, 2005 07:20 AM
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