The border between Peru and Equador is a weird one. There is quite a long stretch of no mans land between the exit border for Peru and the entry point of Equador - there is a sizeable town which you drive through between the two countries. The sign above the Equadorian checkpoint ominously was riddled with bullet holes like some wild west gunslingers haunt.
After getting our passports stamped and filling in the entry cards several of us thought we would utilise the stop and find a baños. We were duly pointed in the direction of a small outhouse behind a kiosk next to the checkpoint. I had been aware of some shrieking and as I ventured around the corner of the kiosk I spotted one of the girls in our group looking out from behind the toilet door with a panic striken expression on her face as she surveyed the yard infront of the toilet. Her relief on seeing us was shortlived as the biggest turkey I have ever seen paced threateningly infront of her toilet door like a caged tiger before spotting a chicken to torment a few feet away.. On tiptoes from behind the wooden door she explained that the turkey had attacked her as she crossed the yard, chasing her into the loo and she had had to bang the door on its head to stop it completing its strike maneuver with her standing on the toilet seat. She was now to scared to come back over the yard so she stayed where she was whilst two of us ran over to her. We used the loo in turn before the two other girls, holding hands ran one way across the yard, and I ran the other, hoping that two opposedly moving tagets would prove to much of a diversionary confusion for the turkey brain. It did momentarily. Then he was hot on my heels and striking out for my legs as I hurtled past a forlorn and harassed looking pig that shared the same yard as Tyson the turkey. Having made our get away there was relieved laughter and back at the truck tales of similar attacks emerged from other companions.
Our first night in Equador was spent bush camping on a dusty school playing field up in the cloud forrest. We then headed to the town of Baños. Though this is the word used for toilets across South America its litteral translation is Bath and similar to its namesake in the UK it is famed for its healing waters. It also lies at the foot of an active volcano and has thermal springs which people, including us, flock to. In fact we were surprised that we were able to drive into Baños. The foreign office has only just said that it is safe to go to the town as the volcano last errupted in August of this year killing several people and creating a lot of destruction with the lava flow and ash. In turn the people of the town had been blockading the road until about a week before we arrived in protest at their taxes. I still struggle with the South American logic sometimes but the argument went something along the lines of the people of Baños should pay lower taxes to compensate them for living with this grumbling belching lava beast - hey any excuse for a good old blockade.
We hooked up with another Drago truck with 2 drivers and 4 passengers.After an evening spent alternating between the hotsprings and freezing plunge pools, getting increasingly light headed, we headed for bar owned by a close friend of one of the drivers where we continued to get even more light headed learning several new drinking games. One of these, "The Statue of Liberty" entailed dipping your index finger in a flamable alcoholic beverage of dubious origins, setting fire to your alcohol covered finger and holding it aloft (hence the statue reference) whilst downing the shot and then setting it on fire in your mouth with your still flaming fingers. Some people ended up almost literally getting light headed as the rounds of the game progressed and the evening finishing with everyone, including the owner dancing on the bar.
Some people spent more time in the baños of Baños than others but we left slightly sore headed next morning and headed for the rainforest. The nearest place of consequence was the town of Mishualli but we had several hours of driving deeper into the lush green jungle eventually arriving at the banks of the Napo River where we left the truck and caught a small, low set, narrow boat down river to Anaconda Lodge where we would be staying for the next 4 nights.
The lodge was basic but wonderful. It is run by a guy called Adonis {his mother must have had high hopes for him when naming him but he was certainly pretty big. The wooden huts on stilts were scattered amongst the trees and have no electricity so by night they had the flickering warm glow of candle light. The shower has only cold water though in the heat of the jungle you don´t need anything else. The toilet clearly appeared to use pumped up river water and I had my suspicions that so did the taps, judging by the dubious murkyness of the emanating liquid. But still I loved it from the start.
On our first day we had breakfast, donned our issued wellington boots and then took the boats down river to go on our first jungle walk. We trekked for about 2 or 3 hours whilst Fausto, our guide, pointed out flora and fauna along the way as we went deeper into the lush green surrounds. My first surprise of the day came when Fausto picked a young giant millipede up from the leaves on the forrest floor. He explained about how you sex a giant millipede before passing the writhing critter around. Whilst I am not squeemish about spiders, something with that many legs I wouldn´t normally choose to pick up. Even at home if I find the smaller cousins of these beasts in the garden the most I could do is flick them away from behind the protection of a gardening glove with an accompanying shudder of disgust. Yet here I was, quite happily volunteering my hands and actually allowing this creature, which took up most of one palm at a time, to ride roughshod over my bare skin. I didn´t shudder and even poked it into action when it curled up into "South American blockade position" and ceased moving.
We continued on climbing up hills to vantage points where we could look out over the top of the tree canopy and up the river. Fausto fashioned traditional ceremonial hats out of palm leaves so their wearers looked like jungle princes and princesses. The only other person we saw during our walk was a lady accompanied by two young children, all three clad also in their wellingtons. Slung around her chest was a blanket and nestling amongst her cargo of limes was another young baby, which intermitently fidgeted, sending limes scuttling out and across the floor for the other two children to chase after and reclaim. As Fausto talked to her, he interpreted back to us that apparently she had 11 other children. Compared to the weather beaten women I had seen in remote areas of Bolivia who prematurely aged at an alarming rate, it was unbelievable to think that this sprightly, smooth skinned smiling lady had already born a sizable sporting team of her own.
My second surprise of the morning came when Fausto stopped and pointed out a particular tree. As he broke off a branch and began to open it up with his machete he explained about the symbiotic relationship between the tree and the ants that lived in its core. As he opened the branch up to reveal its centre which was a black teeming mass of small ants, he proceeded to put his tongue into the black core, licking up some of the ants, before offering the branch around. Whilst I don´t know anyone that is squimish about ants, I have never felt the slightest inclanation to eat them before. Though I accept that maybe in my life there could have been occassions when I unknowingly ingested them on some unwashed lettuce leaf as an unintended protein addition to a salad, I didn´t ever see them as a culinary entity in their own right. Yet here I was again without the slightest doubt, happily following the actions of our jungle guide and licking up a tongue full of black scurrying ants. Wow! They tasted amazing. They were lemon ants and tasted like little citrus lemon bursts on your tongue. They were actually refreshing and even more amazingly I was going back for second and third helpings. Please sir, I want some more sir - Oliver had the short straw with his gruel, he should have asked for ants.
Another slightly less tasty edible offering was in the form of a lichen that came from a particular tree. Fausto scraped it off and told us to chew a little bit and rest it on our lips which duly started to go numb. He explained how the hunters use the lichen on their traps to paralyse prey.
Every now and again we came across vines and following Fausto scrambled up banks to swing through the trees in Tarzan fashion several feet above the heads of our companions like over grown children fulfilling a playground fantasy.We finished the trek with a 45 minute river walk which at times was waist deep. It was refreshing to walk through the cool water. In the banks we spotted a couple of snakes and we watched as we sent huge water spiders bouncing across the surface in their rush to get out of our way.
We took the boats to another lodge to have some lunch. As we were finishing eating Fausto reached into the rafters and pulled down a huge tarantula spider which had been watching us. He explained that they are relatively safe to handle but you just need to make sure you don't scare them, before passing it around to those who wanted to hold it. It was surprisingly heavy as it crawled over my hands and having held it I was slightly less worried about stumbling across one of these in my hut. Having said which one of the guys the following morning had put his underwear on and was cleaning his teeth before he looked down and noticed a very large arachnid of some kind makeing its way casually towards his crotch. There are close encounters and then there are close encounters.
We spent the rest of the afternoon at a local village where we saw all the different types of trap that are used to kill various animals. We also had some blowpipe practice using pipes which people use for killing birds and monkeys in the trees. They were about 6ft long and though I'm glad we weren't relying on them for providing dinner, even a gringo like me managed to be remarkably accurate, hitting the outer edge of the small bird target which we were aiming at on a narrow tree trunk. We also visited an animal sanctuary where all sorts of creatures that are seized by customs and the police are rehabilitated with the aim of rereleasing back into the wild.
After dinner Adonis had arranged for a local shamen to come and carry out some cleansing rituals on a few people. We all sat around a huge campfire whilst the shamen, stripped to the waist wearing strings of beads across his chest like bullet belts, chanted in the firelight, waving a bunch of leaves over the participants heads whilst blowing smoke from a cigarette over them and then sucking the bad spirits out of the tops of their heads. If the setting had been different {say Kilburn High Road} and someone had said that an old bloke who spends his days pretty much whacked out on halucenogenics was going to blow fag smoke over you whilst mumbling an incoherent song and shaking a bunch of dry leaves over you, people might have been less willing volunteers. However it was evocative to sit by the crackling fire under the jungle canopy and once attuned to the song it was really melodic as it wafted through the darkness. Whilst those being cleansed said they felt relaxed though at times somewhat itchy, which we put down to bugs dropping from the leaves, several of them claimed to have bizarre nightmares that night. Maybe it was the bad spirits clambouring to evacuate their skulls afterall?
Day two took us to a local village school where we watched the lessons in the two school rooms before the kids sang us a song, first in their local dialect, then spanish and then english. In turn we were asked to sing a typical English song for the kids. For many of us karoke is symbolic of hell so the idea of singing in public sent shudders down spines. Not being a particularly musicly talented bunch and realising that there would be a limited number of songs which we all knew the words to, I suggested a rendition of "Heads, shoulders, knees and toes". So, we performed our song, complete with actions, to a rather non plussed bunch of five year olds. On completion of our rendition which had remarkably been almost word perfect and as much in tune as possible, the teacher explained that the children already knew that number. So she suggested we all joined in for another round and duly the bunch of gringo's accompanied the 5 year olds, in English, in the jungle for a very animated and loud rendition.
Further up river we visited the house of Fausto's grandmother. He took us around the small holding explaining the uses of all of the different plants she grew from ginger which is used for stomach complaints, through to casava and even datura which is used for its hightly hallucenogenic properties. Though my own grandmother in Spain used to grow datura I don't think she was ever aware of its hallucenogic power, she was more a gin and tonic woman. Faustos grandmother was an amazingly sprightly 88 year old with jet black hair. She trotted down from her house and proceeded to show us how she makes chicha, the local alcoholic drink, out of ground casava and sweetened carrot juice. Maker of alcohol and hullucenegic drugs, jees, just imagine if everyones grannies back home were such open minded
liberals...
After having our faces painted with red paint from a spiky fruit, we crossed to the opposite bank of the river where we made rafts by lashing together bolsa wood logs and spent a couple of hours floating down river, intermitently diving off and swimming in the cool water. We also visited another village to see some handicrafts being made before returning to the lodge where a few of us continued our shooting practice with our blowpipes. Our target from 20 paces was a pink fruit hanging from a tree which looked like a pair of monkey testicles, not to be confused with the real testicles belonging to the monkeys which were continually playing around the lodge and unkowingly even jumped within range of our realistic looking target.
Our final full day in the jungle was spent white water rafting. We had a 1.5hr journey sitting on the metal corrugated floor in the backs of pickups over unsurfaced potholed tracks at the end of which my backside felt like a piece of tenderised meat. When we arrived at the river I chose to leave my flipflops in the pickup, not realising the walk down to the bank involved walking through undergrowth which contained huge bullet ants. The safety briefing in the sand took ages and the ants continued to bite my feet, drawing blood as they did so despite my continual dashes to stand in cooling rock pools.
We chose a low streamlined raft which was offered to those looking for more adventure. In the biggest rapids of the day we all fell out and were dragged along through the crashing rapids. There was one cut lip and we all swallowed loads of water but once the spluttering and fear of drowning had passed it was exhilerating. We spent most of the day in the glacial waters until we joined up with the warmer waters of the Napo river. Along the way we swam, mutinied, stormed each others boats and even found delightful ammunition in dead birds floating downriver.
Back at the lodge that evening 5 of us skipped dinner on our last night in favour of taking the hallucenegenic drug, AyaHuasca, a jungle plant extract which the shamen all take. The shamen start taking it in their teens and drink it everyday, living in a permanently trip thus generating their "powers" to see the past and the future. We drank a small cup full of the white liquid which tasted bitter with a flavor that combined leather with the smell of band aids. We washed it down with firewater which is a local form of raw alcohol before taking mats out to lie under the jungle canopy. It made you feel in an altered state, a bit like being stoned. It was also incredibly relaxing, lying out in the darkness staring up at the stars twinkling through the the odd breaks in the canopy, whilst listening to the unique jungle sounds of cicadas, monkeys, frogs and insects. We had another couple of cups of the AyaHuasca throughout the evening and watched the "visions" that the lodge staff kept refering to as the trip played out its course. All in all it was an interesting evening and a good way to finish an amazing jungle experience.
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