Aug 2007

It’s amazing how close the jungle is to Quito. The drive takes about 5 hours, but it’s less than a hundred miles away as the crow flies. Quito is in the mountains, and both the native and modern cultures are mountain cultures, so it is amazing that the jungle can be so close. From our home on a clear day, we can see the giant, snow-capped mountain, Antisana, which separates us from the jungle. People normally think of the jungle as being a low altitude place, but I guess when the Amazon River flows all the way from here across Brazil, it has to start pretty high.
For our recent trip to the jungle, we stayed right on the Napo River, which flows into the Amazon. We stayed for three nights in screened-in wooden huts with roofs of palm leaves. Tesha and I were lucky enough to get one of the elevated huts, with chickens roaming around it, so we didn’t have too many bugs (just a few big spiders, a cockroach in the magazine I was reading, and a small scorpion). Our hut was close to the cliff that dropped down to the river, so we enjoyed falling asleep to the sound of the light rapids.
The area of the jungle we stayed in is 10 kilometers from the section of land found by a scientist to have the highest amount of plant species in a single hectare in the world. The plant life looks like what you’re probably imagining the jungle to be – countless types of plants growing everywhere they can, while trying to defend themselves with thorns, giant leaves and poisonous bark. We saw all sorts of poisonous spiders, scary bugs, a corral snake (one of the most poisonous snakes in the world), monkeys, a neon pink dragonfly, and butterflies of every imaginable color. We saw butterfly after butterfly, yet rarely saw the same pattern twice. Around our huts we saw a tarantula bigger than my hand, a moth the size of my face, and a stick bug the size of… well, a stick.
We went to the jungle with a volunteer group that came down to help out at the orphanage. One of the days was dedicated to helping the community there by building a Sunday-School room at a small church and building a fence for a nature preserve. Tesha and I went with the fence building group because most people wanted to build for the church. We were told that our job would be the easy one and that we would be “stringing” part of a fence together. So after putting on our shorts and shoes, we headed off to our jobsite to find out that we would be hauling 8 foot logs on our shoulders ¼ of a mile into the jungle. Once we got into the thick of the jungle we dug holes and set the mini telephone poles in the ground for the fence. If this doesn’t sound that bad to you yet, imagine that we were walking through undeveloped jungle and making our own paths, while carrying posts that will root and turn into trees, and fighting fire-ants. After awhile, one of the Ecuadorian natives asked Tesha why we were all wearing shorts. We went and found boots and pants after he explained that he would probably be dead by now from poisonous spider and snake bites if it weren’t for his pants.
Even though we slept in huts, the jungle trip has been our most comfortable trip. The luxury of riding a private bus, knowing the people around us, and trusting that our things will be safe is more comfortable than staying in a nice hotel.
You can see pictures of our jungle trip at: http://community.webshots.com/user/peteandtesha
-Pete

Well we actually went to Canoa a month ago but then we got too busy to blog about it. Luckily I journaled the trip down so here is our second trip to the beach from my journal.....

July 8 2007

We are off to Canoa with new friends! Pete and I have made friends with a group of college interns who are here for the summer. It is so much fun to hang out with people our own age who speak English. There are 8 of us total who are going on the trip. We are going to a beach town that is famous for surfing so hopefully we'll be able to get in some good waves.

July 9 2007

Well after an all-night bus trip we arrived at Canoa around 7 am dazed and tired. Canoa is a small town with dirt roads and a laid-back feel to it. After finding a semi-shady hostel and having leisurely breakfast complete with LOTs of coffee we set off to explore Canoa's beaches. The weather was a bit cold but the water was warm and we had fun exploring the beach, climbing on rocks and collecting sea shells. Later after lunch we rented surf boards and boggie boards, but I guess this isn't the season for good surf because it was pretty tame. The boys still had a good time trying to surf (with Pete helping to teach them). We enjoyed a delicious dinner of lobster for only $10! After dinner we tried to stay up and hang out at this local pub which was really neat but in the end we all went to bed around 9:45 exhausted from the lack of sleep the previous night.

July 10 2007

Well it was pretty cold and cloudy this morning so after breakfast we decided to play soccer on the beach barefoot. We had a great time until I ran into our friend Ryan's shin with my toe and my big toe was bent back all the way. It hurt SO badly but I tried to be brave and said I'd take 5. Five minutes later however it was hurting worse than ever and I was biting my lips to keep from sobbing. When Pete and the others came to check on me a half an hour later I was crying and my toe had swollen to twice its normal size. Pete gave me a piggy back ride to our hotel (which hurt really bad too to have my foot being jostled around) where we ran into the hotel owner. He looked at my foot and was immediately concerned and said I should go visit the town doctor. I decided this was a probably a good idea so that I could get some pain medicine or something so Pete and the hotel owner took turns giving me a piggy back ride to the "doctor's office." I felt ridiculous being carried by a 50-something Ecuadorian through the dusty street of Canoa, not to mention that people kept coming out of their houses to look at us but he wouldn't let me walk. The doctor's office turned out to be a cinderblock house and an old lady came out. She turned out to be the "doctor," except she wasn't a doctor at all, more like the town midwife. This naturally made me apprehensive but she assured me that she knew what she was doing.

When we got into the sparely decorated house, five children popped up out of no where and gathered around to watch their grandmother (I'm assuming) examine my toe. After gently poking it, she took out some Vaseline and proceeded to rub my foot down. This might have felt comforting had it not been for the fact that my foot was still caked with sand and so it hurt quite a lot to have someone rubbing sand into your foot. Then, without warning, she took my injured big toe and yanked it. I couldn't help it. I screamed bloody murder. She was trying to explain to me that she was trying to put it back into place but I told her, "No thank you I am done here and I will go to a real doctor." All this time it seemed like more and more kids showed up at the house. I was being scrutinized by about 10 little kids now who were laughing as I was crying. The lady told me that "oh the doctors will only give you pills for the pain. That’s all they do." Well right now that sounded pretty good so we paid the lady $5 for injuring me further and left, Pete carrying me all the way to the hostel. Now, as I said before, the hostel was semi-shady, not one of the nicest I've ever stayed in but it felt like home when we arrived. Pete had actually brought some of his pain meds that his orthodontist prescribed for his mouth pain and that seemed to do the trick. I was sad that I was out of commission for the rest of the trip but it felt good to sleep.

August 9 2007

My toe is almost completely healed up now. I saw the orphanage's doctor when we got back to Quito who said that I had severely sprained it but it was not broken. So for the past month I have been deprived of running which I really missed and this is my first week back to normal work out routine.
-Tesha