Jungle Trip / Yasuni National Park
Trip Start
Nov 11, 2005
1
31
38
Trip End
Ongoing
Coca,
Ecuador
Saturday, December 27, 2008
It is the greetings time SO :
MERRY XMAs and HAPPY NEW YEAR... ALL THE BEST AND HUGS... :D
As an unusual Christmas time the temperature here is around 25 degrees but as usual at this time of the year I manage to get a cold when coming back from the jungle to the mountains... Cough Cough...
Here is the summary of the 10 days jungle canoe trip... Don't have Xmas pictures... Be patient.
It has been an amazing experience... At the beguening we wanted to cross the jungle on our own and reached Iquitos in Peru but the challenge was (in a question of time) to big... and we would not have seen and experiment as we did...
We met a couple of guide (father and son) that are running a family project and ended up to move with them for a 600km loop through the jungle on a canoe : down stream Rio Tiputini and up Rio Napo...
The whole journey has been amazing with some animals meetings like : Tapir, insects, caimans, birds and an 7m Anaconda...
Our guide, retired commando from the Ecuadorian Marine was such a great source of knowledges and jungles tricks... I have a Shaman book now with medicinales herbs, roots and leaves... We learnt how to find your way back through the green paradise after 2 or 3 hours of hike... Thanks the machete that is use 1st to make your way in the Jungle and then to find it back with the cuts and so on...
We even met a Shaman that spent 6 years of his life under the water of a lagoon, living as an anaconda and learning all his knowledges... Incredible story ;)
How to break a legend...
YOU CAN swim in a river where there are pyrahnas and caimans... We did it 2 or 3 times a day and did not get trouble... We even fished the pyrahnas 5 minutes after the bath...
During the trip we had the chance to meet some of the local colours : different tribes that are surrounding the rivers... and made some business with some people of the famous Huaorani Tribes... Cf text below :
The Huaorani, Waorani, or Waos are native amerindians from the Amazonian Region of Ecuador (in the Oriente region) with some marked differences with the others ethnic groups from Ecuador. (Auca is another, pejorative, name given by neighboring Kichwa Indians and commonly used by Spanish-speakers as well, awka - awqa in Quechua - meaning "enemy".) They comprise almost 4,000 inhabitants and speak the Huaorani language, a linguistic isolate without congeneres. Their ancestral lands are located between the Curaray and Napo rivers, about 50 miles (80 km) south of El Coca. These homelands are threatened by oil exploration and illegal logging practices. They are approximately 120 miles (190 km) wide and 75 to 100 miles (120 to 160 km) from north to south. The Huaorani have guarded their lands from both indigenous foes and outsider colonials (who they sometimes refer to as cowode, literally "nonhuman cannibals").
In the last 40 years, they have become a largely settled people living mostly in permanent forest settlements. As many as five communities, the Tagaeri, the Huiņatare, the Oņamenane and two groups of the Taromenane, have rejected all contact with non-Waorani, and continuously move into more isolated areas, generally towards the Peruvian border.
After the jungle trip Alex and me went for a 3 days retreat to Baņos, where jungle, mountains and volcanoes meet around this wonderful, clean, relax and peaceful little town... Cheese, wine, olives, grappes and good bread as an award for having braved the jungle and easy times in the public thermal bath of the city...
All the best for 2009 big hugs...
See you soon
ju
