Into the Jungle, part 2

So, our evening in Tena was spent provisioning for the jungle trek, meeting with the River People to discuss details of the same, and walking across town, across a big suspension footbridge across the Rio Napo, to a decidedly fancy restaurant for dinner.

It rained good and hard overnight, which was a precursor of things to come during the three day trek in the dense rainforest near Tena. I was forced to skip out on this trek due to my nagging and persistently annoying ankle injury, so I´ll blatantly steal some of the stuff  posted on the Springfield group´s blog, located at:

www.renaissancegoestoecuador.blogspot.com

From Aurora, the SRHS teacher in our group:

We left for our jungle trek early friday morning. It was such an amazing experience. As a biology student, I learned so much about the diversity of plant defenses and adaptations that exist. What fun to see so much of what I had learned about. The kids were laughing at my exciting over the ´walking tree´and the leaf cutter ants (yay e.o. wilson!) and the trees with huge spikes and all the rest of the amazing diversity.

Tena is located on the edge of the Amazonian basin -- kind of the highlands if you will. So, it was humid and of course it rained, but it wasn´t terrible. We wore wellies for the mud and to protect against snake bites. Much to my happiness we did not see any snakes, no one got bit, but we did have lots of mud!!!! Including a thigh-high stream crossing!!!

Our guide Gregory, who now lives in Tena, but grew up in the jungle taught us about traditional uses of plants -- both for food and for medicine. It was really interesting to compare it to what we learned in San Clemente -- another indigenous area.

Amazon rainforest

Some of the highlights were swinging on a vine across a ravine, eating sugar cane, the stream crossing, our bbq the last night, seeing the amazing diversity of the jungle and just how beautiful it is. Oh, and the amazing diversity of insects!!!!!!!!!! I loved it!!!!

Eddie doing the Tarzan thing

Aurora is known for understatement--it may not have been terrible, but it rained on the second day in a major way. I was in Tena, comfortably back at the Hostel Limon Cocha, and it came down in sheets. A classic tropical deluge, rain hammering on the sheetmetal roof like someone was pouring out an infinite bucket of ball bearings, the racket so loud that it was literally impossible to carry on a conversation. So the team got more than a little bit wet, and of course muddy, but we´re pretty used to that by now, and everyone returned to Tena in good spirits, full of stories of the jungle and the rain and of Thomas falling into hip-deep mud, and Nikki swinging on a vine and slamming into a gigantic tree, and so on. The group spent sunday afternoon hosing off the tents and laying things out to dry all over the hostel´s driveway and generally having a good time.

Monday we started our actual ´´vacation´´ part of the trip, with a full day of white water rafting on the Rio Jutunyacu, which feeds into the Napo, which eventually feeds into the Amazon itself. This was a VERY fun day indeed, the group split into two rafts with very excellent guides, getting onto the water around 10 in the morning and rafting for hours. The river is rated class III, and it was good and strong and very rough in stretches, the water being pretty high from the recent rains, all of us getting tossed around and bounced all over the place, which is what rafting is all about.

Adrenaline Monkeys say hello to the river

It was an absolute blast, our guides having people taking turns ´riding the bull´ by sitting on the nose of the raft as we did stretches of chaotic, churning rapids, having us do ridiculously fun maneuvers like spinning the raft around in circles as we ran rapids, or running the raft up onto giant, smooth rocks then sliding off..

no piranhas in sight

Some kids took advantage of the chance to hop out of the boats and float down safe stretches of rapids with their lifejackets. Others took less intentional rides outside the boats. All of us had a fantastic time, breaking for a great lunch along the way, visiting with some locals who were panning for gold along the riverside, taking in the thickly forested banks of the river with orchids hanging off the tree branches, marveling in a huge variety of butterflies and bright white kingfishers and giant black vultures riding the thermals overhead. 

Liam rides the bull

So we rafted the Amazon. How cool is that?