Enough for excuses.
I have been doing well. I am just finishing my first Semester at La Universidad de San Francisco de Quito. I have all A's so far and have two more tests tomorrow and Thursday. The test tomorrow will determine my grade in Grammar as it is worth 25% but I only need to get a 66% on my final in my Indigenous Literature class on Thursday in order to get an A. I was sick for about two weeks with an intestinal infection. I got on antibiotics and am much better now. I lost about 10 pounds during my sickness but now am both feeling 100% and am regaining weight. I was however sick during the festivals of Quito which include parades and the running of the bulls, so I missed out on that and Thanksgiving.
I have tentative plans to go with my friend and his family to Columbia this weekend but it will depend on if they are going at night or not. If they go at night it isn't safe for me, being a gringo, to travel across the border. After we or they get back I have plans to spend Christmas with them and see the mixing of both the indigenous and Catholic traditions of the holiday, or at least that's what I hear. After that my next semester will almost be starting up. It will start on January 5th. I won't be taking any more conversation or Spanish grammar classes as I am now done with all of the classes that they offer at the university. I will however only continue taking classes in Spanish. My classes for the next terms are Latin American Boom (a literature class), Latin American Philosophy, Anthropology in the Andes, French, Latin American Literature and Cinema and possibly a Guitar class. I am also going to try and audit German and Quichua. I will be very busy again, but that's in large part why I'm here. I had plans to travel what is called The Route of the Sun but I am waiting on my loans so I can't take that journey yet. Anyway, there really isn't too much I can share from daily life without you guys living it too. I encourage everyone to travel at some point it really is quite remarkable. Now I hope you all enjoy the photos and facts of my adventure in Ecuador's part of the Amazon Basin.
This is a town called "Lago Agrío" which translates "Bitter Lake." We arrived here at around 6:30 in the morning on Saturday the 1st of November. We left Quito at 11:30p.m. on Friday the 31st of October. Our friend Dani who helped us put together the whole trip told us that we had to go to some hotel and meet a guy named Hector at 9:00. So we asked two guys on the bus if they knew how to get around Lago Agrío pretty well and they said yes. We asked if they knew where the hotel was and they said they did and that we could go there together. We walked for a while around the town and arrived at the hotel. We ate breakfast with these strangers and talked and joked with them for quite some time. We found out that they were waiting for a van to pick them up at the same place and take them to Cuyabeno, which is the reserve that we were going to. Then we learned that they were guides in Cuyabeno and that Rodrigo, one of the gentlemen owned a lodge called Jamu Lodge. Anyway, we asked if they knew Hector and they said no and they said that they thought that they were our guides. We were quite confused but eventually excepted it as the truth and made a lot of jokes the whole trip about this non-existent Hector. We remained unsure whether they were honest or not until we got to Cuyabeno.
This is where we stopped. I still don't know why we stopped. The following pictures were taken from the van as we traveled, excuse the fact that some are blurry we were moving the whole time.
If you click on the picture to the right and look at the orange building you will see posters of Ecuador's current present Raphael Correa. The posters are propaganda for the new constitution that was officially accepted on Sunday the 28th of September. In this particular poster it says "Dále sí a la Patria." Which basically means "Vote yes for the homeland" I translated Patria homeland here because there is no literal translation that would make sense. It literally means earth or place where one was born but carries a sense like the Russian phrase motherland. I didn't translate it motherland because of its obvious connotations. Also "Dále" translates more give than vote, but we just don't say that either.
To the left is Ali, she is a very funny and chilled out friend. To the right is a photo that I thought was interesting as it shows the obvious mix between what is culturally theirs and what is Western. Also if you enlarge the photo you will see more propaganda to the left and also a little store where they charge you to use indoor phonebooths (Cabinas) and to the left you will see a general store.
On these two buildings there is old propaganda and painted on the one to the right is "Vota Sí"
To the right is our junior guide "Mocki" I am unsure of his real name but that is the nickname that our official guide Rodrigo gave him. The following picture are of the town of Cuyabeno.
To the left is the gym of a school. The murals are serving as both advertisement for the Rainforest and propaganda for the Mayor of the town. To the right is graffiti, which is quite common, I don't remember what it said in it's entirety but it is a revolutionary quote written by "Los Guerreros Jumandy" which translates "The Warriors of Jumandy." He was a famous leader of rebellions against the Spanish in the mid 1500's. It's significance might be to say that such oppression by other races still exists, which it does.
Teenagers walking home from school.
In the background of the picture to the left you can see that there is a Catholic church in the center of the town. This is normal just as Protestant churches used to be in the center of our towns.
To the left a house covered with more propaganda. To the right a sign that says Welcome to Putumano which was the little tourist stop, border check, and dock for the river Cuyabeno. It is where we left by canoe and where we ate lunch. The following are of our first day on the river.
Above is a howler monkey. We also watched spider monkeys cross the river. I have it on video but wasn't able to upload it to this page.
Here is a picture of the spider monkeys. If you look real close you can see one to the top left and the other to the center left.
This is a fallen tree that was in the way of the canoe. Our solution was to ram our way through it. It actually worked.
Here is Rodrigo spotting something in the trees.
Can you see it? Don't worry neither could we. The next picture is and closeup of the center of this picture
Yep, he saw a bird. We were much in debate about what bird it was. I am not sure we ever came to a sure conclusion. We sat over a bird book at the lodge and none of them looked the same.
If you look in the center corner you will see a medium sized colorful spider (wait until you see the big ones).
This is me and my friend Alia. This was before I got sick (in case you might be thinking this is what I look like now)
And the weather changes. An amazing thing about Ecuador is that you should always be ready for the weather to change within an hour. Normally it starts out sunny and nice and ends rainy.
Ok, list of friends. I am in the front row to the right, as I am sure you could tell. Alia is to my right. Nadia is in between her and me. Behind Nadia is Jenn. Behind Alia is Angela. It is too hard to see Ali, but she is behind Angela. And Edmundo, who was our canoe captain is in the very back.
And we arrived at Jamu Lodge.
The beds with mosquito nets. Very important.
Below are pictures of our first night
Here is our friend Sapo that just kind of hung around the coffee the first night. (Sapo means frog)
The dinner table. Amanda, Jenn, and Ali. There was no electricity so we used candles for everything.
A sunken canoe.
A river hut
We are heading to our first jungle walk. It was a twenty minute boat ride to it, it was East of the lodge, the dock was west. It took almost two hours by boat to get to the lodge from the dock.
The bird to the left (it looks small) is called a "monja frente negro" or black fronted nun bird.
To the right is a Greater Ani or a garrapatero
This is a Paraguacus Monkey
These "jungle turkeys," as our group renamed them, are called Hoatzin.
These two guys are called Bat Falcon's or (Halcones caza murcialagos)
The frog both above and below is called a leaf frog.
This leaf has been and is still used to write messages with. The messages disappear in about 16 days after written. It is called a Panga leaf.
Here is the biggest ant that I have ever seen in my life. It looks normal in the picture but it's huge. These mushrooms are used by the indigenous as a form of medicine and hallucinogenic which I will come back to later in this Post.
Above and to the right is Rodrigo's knife with Magnesium Milk on it. The tree below and to the left is called a Lechero in Spanish which has its roots in the word Leche which means milk. It is good to eat and to use as glue.
The sticks above and below to the right are warning signs given by the local tribes. We were allowed to go in any direction besides there.
The tree to the left is called a Bomba tree. It is called the telephone of the forest. With a type of Morse code a lost native will pound on this tree and it makes a tremendous sound. The surrounding tribes will then come to where he hit the tree and take him home.
The vine that is strangling the tree to the left is called a killing vine or "Liana asesina"
The plant to the left is called a platanillo. To the right you can see a swarm of bugs.
To the left is a lemon tree with ants on it. We are picking the ants off and eating them. They tasted like lemons.
The three plants above were a type of phenomena. They were all isolated in a certain region and they had red coloration. It seemed completely normal but the rest of the plants that are exactly the same didn't have that coloration. Mocki and I guest that it either had to do with sunlight or these particular ones were expressing flowers in this way.
To the right you can see the leaves with which the natives make the textile to the left. This is used for hats, roofs, mats, covers, and I am sure many other things.
The picture to the right is of the vine that we swung and climbed on.
To the left is called a walking palm tree or "palma caminante"
Here I am, swinging.
This is kind of a neat thing. This is an ant nest. We walked over to it and all yelled at the same time, the ants then came out in hoards and then we put our hands on the nest. The ants climbed over our hands to attack them and then we killed them. The smell that the ants leave after you kill them is a natural mosquito repellent that the natives use.
To the left is Mocki with the ants on his hand and to the right it a huge lemon tree from which we ate more ants.
A Scarab beetle
To the left is a cool plant to the right is Rodrigo with an Orchid which he is going to plant at his lodge.
A cool Caterpillar
To the left is a little caterpillar thing.
To the left is a jungle grasshopper. They eat people. Just kidding.
And then we left.
To the right is a guyganaso he didn't know the name in English.
The following are photos of our break in at the lodge before we went Piranha fishing.
Yep, those are my mismatched socks. Man that was a comfy hammock.
A termite on my friends'T bed
The weather that we felt shortly after.
A yellow and blue cardinal. I was the only one to catch a Piranha. We fished with chopped up beef. It was like Bass fishing, you just waited for them to bite and then you pulled hard.
Not the clearest picture but those are his teeth, he ended up biting the stick.
After we went swimming Rodrigo and the helpers at the lodge wanted to use their cellphones. This is the cellphone tree, it is the only place around the Cuyabeno river where they can get a signal. That night they didn't get one.
The above picture is of us going back to the lodge.
The Next day we went to a community called Puerto Bolivar which produces Coco, Yuca and Platanos. Our guide tells us that in the past they were two people groups (Siona and the Secoya) but after they modernized they started working together in the city and with the tourists that have obviously come to their land. Their language is Paicöca.
This is a picture of a weird spiky tree and a giant termite nest which makes the sound of soldiers marching when you yell at it.
These are owls. I forgot their name. It was something moon in Spanish.
The following picture are of us learning about the production of Yuca (a root that is used with the same frequency and very much in the same way as we use potatoes) Coco and Platanos, though we really didn't learn about the Platanos.
One woman and her machete
Now this might be difficult to believe but both the picture above and the picture below haveThe the fruit from which we get our chocolate. The outside is a sweet soft and smooth white sleeve that covers the dark seed which is it's center.
This is an ortiga plant. We know it as a stinging nettle plant. What they do is lightly whip another person with it in order to improve the circulation in that part of the body. It also supposedly cleanses that part of the body. It may be true that because of the irritant of the poison more defenses and blood are sent to that part of the body. These nettles have spikes though, unlike ours and the irritation goes away faster.
And you thought chocolate doesn't grow on trees.
Another Platanillo (It's not fruit or anything, it's just cool looking)
This is my arm with little blisters from the nettles. They went away after about an hour.
This is a Yuca root. What the lady did was cut off the upper part of the tree which was only about an inch thick in diameter and then she stabbed the tree into the ground so that it would continue growing. In order to get as much Yuca as we got from one tree you need to wait about 16 to three weeks. It's incredible, and it needs no care in the humidity and heat of the rainforest.
Here she is starting to peel the crust off. It was our job to do the rest.
Then we carried it away in this sack.
This is a jungle chicken, It hunts tigers.
These are bananas growing randomly on the ground. Yep, they just grow.
When we got back we had to wash the Yuca
This is a stove.
Here we have a spatula, a bowl, and a strainer that doubles as a cooling instrument.
That's the strainer/cooler
In the past they used a really spiky type of tree bark to grate their yuca, now they use these sharp metal graters. Three of us cut ourselves, including the lady.
That's me noticing that I had cut myself.
This is a very traditional alcoholic drink that is made from fermented Yuca milk. If you were to think of how a liquor made of potatoes would taste, then add to that a little bit of sugar and some type of citrus flavoring, then add to it the texture of chunky pineapple juice (not the flavor), you would have this drink. I don't remember what it was called.
She is now straining the grated Yuca.
This is the milk that is later fermented to make the drink.
Dried Yuca
We then strained it until it was fine.
She then put the powdered Yuca on the stove and started cooking Pan de Yuca (Yuca bread). It is more like a Mexican tortilla the way that she made it. In Quito they are little round pieces of bread, and are more flavorful.
And that's what we ate for a snack, we ate it with black Ají which is a type of root or pepper depending on where your from. You can see a little bit on my thumb. We weren't exactly eating with forks and knives.
This is a giant tree.
All jesting aside, the Natives would use and I'm sure that some still use this as a house, the different walls of the tree marked off different sectors of the house. Bathroom, kitchen, bedroom etc.
Below is some additional information about the tree, it's in Spanish above and English below.
I climbed the tree a little ways, that's another vine.
Rodrigo was officially an orchid thief.
Here we are. Right to left we are: Angela, Jenn, Alia, Nadia, Ali, and me.
After the tree we went to a Shaman's house and ate lunch.
Here is a greenhouse
Here is the Shaman's house.
And below is information about the culture of the Shaman. I forgot to take a picture of the English.
Here is my Translation the words in italics are my own for clarification:
Language: Siona or Paico'ca, which means "towards the orchard" (sio=orchard, na=toward)
Territory: Today they have a territory delimited to 127,028 hectares (the equivalent of about 10000 meters) in an agreement signed for ecological use and management of a sector in the Cuyabeno Reservoir.
Population: approximately 115 inhabitants live in the community.
Present situation: Their way of life still is based in short cycle cultivation located in farmhouses very close to their homes. The reuse of seeds and fruits serves as their natural medicine, they are also the food used for cultural rituals and the making of handy crafts. They hunt and fish for substance. One of the typical and ancestral customs is making cazabe (another type of bread) which is prepared with a the type of yuca (Manihot Esculenta, Latin Name) They also manufacture canoes from large trees like cedar, cinnamon, chuncho (one of their types of trees), and mulberry trees.
The Siona culture uses a type of bejuco (a vine that is reputed to have curative powers) called Yajé (Banísteriopsis caapi). According to them the Yajé is the fountain of knowledge and it teaches them about good and evil. The ceremonial use of this sacred plant permits one to see and understand that there doesn't exist a division between what is natural and supernatural but that there exists an animated (in the sense of living) universe by the spiritual forces that subject it to changes, transformations and fusions, which are the essence of life.
This is an old Siona explaining how amazing this piece of fruit is. He also explained how he fishes and talked to us about Spanish.
Here's the man. He is just sitting there. He explained that he has many students who life outside of Ecuador. He has a French one and a Russian one. He also teaches the young children that run around the place, that was how he learned. He is currently making a listing of all of the herbs that he knows and their medicinal uses. He said that there are many that are now unknown because they used to only use oral tradition and the Shaman would be too old to remember them when they were teaching their students. He said that the way that someone becomes a student is he drinks the Hallucinogenic Yajé and then they will be overwhelmed with the strongest spirits of the strongest animals (Tigers, crocodiles, snakes etc.) and if he looks them all in the eye and they leave him alone he has a strong spirit and can be a shaman. It also depends on what their god says who has the same name a s the Yajé. If their god tell the shaman that it is alright to teach the young person as he is under its influence then it is alright. He also said that their religion had a lot to do with the stars. As he would be drinking Yajé it would take him up into the stars where he learned all truth. That is their dogma as explained by him. The practice is similar, he must be using the Yajé when he is giving a ceremony, he will give three chants, one to determine what is the physical problem of a person and the second to heal it, the third is a chant against spiritual infirmity and against the evil Shaman who only exist to be necromancers and not to heal anyone. That is the spiritual battle of their religion as defined by this man. Now, please remember this is not the religion of Ecuador but is the religion of a group of 115 people that was developed before modernization. Their herbal discoveries have proven helpful in quite a few treatments, however it cannot perpetuate life as the Shaman has tuberculosis and will soon die of it.
This is another treatment with Ortiga (nettles) This was my guides back after the treatment, think acupuncture and this whole thing might make a bit more sense. These bumps went away by dinner that night.
Ecuador's jungle is full of neon colored butterflies. They come in all different colors, the ones around the Shaman's house were Orange and Green. The ones around the lodge were blue. I know that you hate butterflies mom (Cheryl) but I had to include them.
The following pictures are from a night jungle walk. All of the animals we saw were alive and as dangerous as they generally look.
This is a wolf spider, they jump and their venom is fatal to humans. (About 3-4 inches long)
This is a little frog that we saw he is not dangerous (crested forest toad)
These are ants carrying leaves.
This is a spotted thighed Poison frog. It is very dangerous and the venom on it's skin is used for poison darts.
A medium sized spider (about an inch long)
This is just a mushroom on a tree
This is a leech or sacasangre
Another medium sized one
A centipede that looks as if it is ready to have out flashlights turned off so it can sleep.
This is another large wolf spider
This is another species of leech
Another medium spider
Chaco treefrog
Tarantula, only hurts when it bites you but won't kill you
A closer view of our friend
This is a small spider
This is a leafbug
This is a Cocha chirping frog
The following are pictures of staff and family at the lodge.
This is Edmundo with his daughter.
The following are from our fourth and final day in Cuyabeno and our trip home. It rained the whole trip back to the dock.
To the lefthand side of this map you can see a map of Ecuador, it has Quito marked out and the path to Cuyabeno by plain, we went by bus so it was a bit less direct. As you can see Cuyabeno was in what is called the "hot line" which is the border between Colombia and Ecuador. We covered the entire map of Cuybeno represented here.
Turns out there was an ambulance all the way out there.
The following are pictures of a clever little monkey having lunch in the same restaurant as us.
The following are picture of what Lago Agrío is like. We arrived there by our little van again and drove a little while through the streets. They were full of water and were not well kept up. I just wanted you all to see another side of Ecuador.
I hope you all enjoyed this post. It took me all day to organize and write. Please let me know how you all are doing. I look forward to hearing from you.
