We arrived in Agua Blanca on Sunday night. This peaceful little village is a short taxi ride away from Puerto Lopez and is home to a mere 280 people and roughly 61 individual families. We were put up in the house of a man named Camilo who is single (but has 22 nieces and nephews!). It’s a modest home much like the others in the area, but the beds are incredibly comfortable, more so than the ones we had at our hostal in Quito I think. And animals roam free around the town as well. Pigs, chickens, goats, horses, bulls, dogs, and one cat; it’s practically impossible to tell what animals belong to who. I’m beginning to wonder if they aren’t mostly communal.
So most days we wake up pretty early. By the way, if you buy into the myth that roosters only crow at the crack of dawn let me tell you: rooster will crow at anytime, day or night, for no apparent reason whatsoever. I imagine the locals are used to it, but I seriously want to wander around with a shot gun and have me some chicken barbaque. Anyways we get up, have breakfast, and then go out to help Camilo in the agriculture section of the village (when I say agriculture I usually mean bananas). This is fun as we often get to use the local all-purpose tool: the machete. If you’ve never used one of these things let me tell you it’s fun. It’s likely swinging a giant sword to chop down whole trees and uproot weeds and all other sorts of stuff. If we could use stuff like this in America I might actually get in to gardening.
After that we teach English to the school children. There is an older class, roughly 3rd to 5th grade, and a younger class. Coming up with lesson plans that actually get the point across but are fun as well is a challenge. I’ve always had great respect for teachers, but I seriously don’t know how they get these little kids to keep still long enough to actually learn anything. It impresses the hell out of me. Sometimes the kids get what we try to teach them (just yesterday we taught them numbers), sometimes it doesn’t seem like anything’s getting through. But still it’s fun especially when the kids participate.
Our time is otherwise spent wandering around the village or swimming in the local thermal lagoon or lounging around in the hammocks. Our primary purpose here was to teach English to the tour guides. So far we’ve done that once as most of them don’t bother showing up for class when it’s scheduled to happen. It’s a little frustrating and hopefully we will be more productive in the coming week. The guides that do show up do seem to really want to learn and pick it up pretty well.
We will stay here probably until next Thursday when we go back to Quito to meet Amanda when she flies down. Also tomorrow we may take a tour to some humback whales too! Love to all.
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After our last big city experience in Lima, Quito was literally a breath of fresh air. We arrived late in the night, tired and weary from 2 weeks of busses, boats, and jungle. As the bus started to become engulfed in the big city lights I looked into the sky and saw something that surprised me. I could see stars. Not just one or two stars, I could see lots of stars. Despite my tiredness, I became excited about this big city. I really enjoy breathing without feeling the need to cough with each breath as my lungs fill with all kinds of toxins. Quito is near the top of my list of favorite big cities. While I still have not explored much of the city, I love how spread out it is, I love the mountainous setting, I love that the weather is about always perfect, and of course I love that I can breathe.
However, my enthusiasm quickly wained as both Adam and I became sick our first full day there. Our bodies, after 2 weeks with little rest, were no doubt ready to crash. I suffered from a headache, stomach problems, congestion, weakness and a high fever. Adam also felt weak, threw up, and could not stop coughing all night long. I had planned a meeting with Jessica, the child I am sponsoring in Quito, the next day but as the night wore on, I began doubting if I could make it. I prayed over the course of the night and miraculously felt good enough the next day to get out of bed and go and visit her.
I took a taxi to the Children Intenational office in Quito and met a friendly guy named Pedro who had been working there for the last 6 months. He took me over to the clinic where I met Jessica and her mom, Maria. I have been sponsoring this little girl since October and have been looking forward to meeting her since I started traveling. She is almost 7 years old. We went to a park where Jessica played as we watched and talked. Jessica was extremely shy as we could only get one word out of her at a time. The mother complained that at home she could not get her to stop talking. Pedros theory was that she was shocked at how big I was. Anyway, after a nice meeting, I went back to the hostel and crashed.
We are both feeling a lot better now and are leaving tonight to go to a small community and volunteer. We are going to a community on the coast called Aguas Blancas. It is 11 hours southwest of Quito which means another night bus ride. We are volunteering for an organization called Ecotrackers that works on developing ecotourism in poor communites in Ecuador. Aguas Blancas is a very new village that Ecotrackers is working with and there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in that community. The major priority is teaching English to guides. We will also probably help with maintenance work as their is still many trails that need to be worked on and ruins that need to be cleared out. There are no volunteers there right now and when we arrive we will be the only ones there. Since this community is really small, there is no internet, and we will probably not be able to update for 2 weeks or so. Therefore, do not worry if you don´t hear from us!
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Before venturing into the great Amazon Jungle we had to get out of Lima, which is easier said than done. We took an hour long taxi ride to get to some dodgy dump that I supposed passed for a bus terminal. After selecting our destination, Yurimaguas, we went and purchased our ticket and waited, and waited. I began suspecting something was up and we found out after talking from guys working at the bus company, that we had been ripped off. The ticket was real, but a guy apparently not working for the bus company sold it to us. This started a 1-2 hour ordeal of following police officers around as they investigated who this man was and wrote their report. At one point there was a large group of people around us and people yelling at us in slurred spanish. We had spotted a man that led us to the man who sold us the ticket and when the police approached him, he got really defensive. After this whole debacle was over we purchased another ticket to Yurimaguas and were on our way. As a result we were robbed of $25 apiece.
We then started our long, long journey into the jungle. The bus we were on had feet room only if you were a midgit and was really uncomfortable. Unfortunately, this was the longest bus ride we had taken our entire trip. It took us 48 hours to get to Yurimaguas! You can not even believe how tired I was of the bus by the end. True, we stopped for 8 hours in Tarapoto (8 hours away from Yurimaguas by bus and 2.5 by car…hmmm) but since we slept in the bus it all felt like the same ride.
We arrived into Yurimaguas exhausted and immediately after stepping off the bus were bombarded by at least a dozen people trying to sell us a ride on their motocar, tour into the jungle, food, and who knows what else. I looked around at the locals and saw absolutely nobody hasseling them. Oh the fun of being a gringo. We got a ride to our hostel and a guy traveled with us trying to sell us his guide service from Lagunas. He was later joined by another guy and they led us to buy hammocks, bug spray, food, internet, and everything. We agreed to use their service and told them we were going to bed. At this point all we wanted to do was sleep.
The next day we got up early and took a boat from Yurimaguas to the small jungle town of Lagunas. The boat was supposed to leave at 8:30 but since everything in Peru always happens at least 4 hours after it is supposed to, it did not leave until 12:30. The boat was stuffed pack with people with hammocks everywhere it was possible to set one up without laying on top of somebody else. Going to the bathroom was interesting as you had to first find a way to get out of your hammock without overly disturbing anybody else. Then you had to crawl, squeeze, and shimmy through a maze of hammocks in order to get to there. After doing this 3 times I began hating my bladder.
We arrived to Lagunas very late, met the person who would serve as our guide (named Genaro) and were put up in a hostel where we would enjoy our last matress in…well we still havent slept on another matress yet. As we were preparing for our nights sleep I went into the bathroom and tried to turn on the sink which somehow resulted in water shooting out some pipe. I tried fixing the pipe and then the pipe broke leaving water shooting out of some random whole and flooding the bathroom. We got the guy from the hostel and let him handle it as we switched rooms.
The next morning, Genero led us to his house where we ate breakfast, met our other guide, prepared, and then headed off into the jungle on our canoe. Genaro is a 63 year old guide who has been guiding tourists into the jungle for 22 years. It seems all the other locals have a tremendous respect for him. I really think we could not have asked for a better guide.
Our 4 day tour is best described in one word, tranquilo. Most of the time we were laying in a canoe as our guides rowed and every once in a while they would spot wildlife out of nowhere and we would be in full alert. Sometimes I would be completely dumbfounded how they found wildlife. One time we were looking for Crocodiles in the night and we were on the far side of the river and all of a sudden they start steering the canoe to the other side. Once on the other side they ask if we can see the crocodile and I still dont see a thing and after closer looking I spot a really small Croc about the size of my hand and I wonder…how the heck did they see that! Anyways, we saw much wildlife on the tour including countless monkeys, many exotic birds, several crocodiles, iguanas, 2 Anacondas, and even a river dolphin! My favorite part of the jungle was listening to the sounds. There is a type of music to the jungle that is very peaceful. You can hear birds singing and whistling, the sound of crickets, and the rustling of trees. I would become fixated on the sounds in sort of a dreamy state and then a fish would jump into our canoe, flailing all about. Why fish would jump into our boat I dont know but this happened at least 4 times during the trip. It was the easiest fishing ever! Speaking of fish, we ate a lot of it during the tour as it was the easiest food to catch.
After the tour was finally over, we had lunch at Genaro´s house again and waited for a boat that was supposed to come at 4:00. But, being in the Peru, it did not arrive until 7:30…the next night! If there is one thing being in the Peruvian jungle has taught me, its that you have to be flexible and you have to wait…a lot. Genaro took us into his home for the night and provided us a place to sleep and what turned out to be 3 meals not origninally included in our arrangement. He had a huge family and a house, like all the houses there, with a thatched roof, mud floor, and animals everywhere. There were chickens, baby chickens, roosters, baby roosters, ducks, baby ducks, dogs, puppies, cats, kittens, and well you get the picture. There was more or less two big rooms where everybody slept (excluding us I think there were about a dozen others sleeping there that night) and each had their own mosquitio net. The family though was amazing and took hospitability to another level…Adam and I defenitely felt spoiled!
We finally got on a boat that next night and slept there on our hammocks. We arrived to Yurimaguas again in the morning and then waited until the middle of the day to take a car to Tarapoto. Then we took an overnight bus to Chiclayo where we are currently. Tonight we take another night bus to the Peru-Ecuador border. So, for the past 11 nights we will have slept: 2 times on a bus, 1 in a hostel, 3 times on the hard jungle floor, 1 time in a strange house (with a paper thin matress), 1 time on a boat, and then 2 more times on a bus. That is one matress in the past 11 nights…You gotta love traveling!
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