Boo! How quick was that!
Straight after returning from Baños to Quito we took a 10 hour overnight bus ride to the horrible town of Coca in the North Eastern region of Ecuador known as the Orient. The town is the home of the natives that work for the companies that exploit the region for it`s oil supplies. Oil accounts for over 50% of the country`s exports, and it's difficult for the government to protect the jungle for future generations when the economy and the people have basic needs that need to be met in the here and now. There are big, ugly pipes along side the road, and next to the hacked up jungle approaching the town, it really is an eye-sore.
Coca was only a meeting point for our jungle tour though, so we were only there for a few hours before being whisked off on a motorised canoe down the Napo River. After about 5 hours, we reached our destination lodge called Yaturi, which is renound among bird watches, as 450 different species of birds have been sited in the region. Apart from two Swiss girls, the same age as us, we were the only ones there. The lodge was basic but lovely. The living huts all had a private bathroom but no hot water, the beds were covered by a mosquito net, and there was only electricity when the generator was on between 6 and 10pm. The huts were made of local materials, namely Bellypalm tree, which is a hardwood, and bamboo. There was a central eating/social area. The maximum capasity of the lodge is only about 35 people. We had a native guide called Hyme, and a translator guide called Juan Carlos, who we all, including himself, joked about as looking like Osama Bin Laden.
We spent 4 days here, going on walks and canoe trips and playing either soccer or volleyball (with a soccer ball... ouch!) each afternoon, even in the pouring rain. Whether to call this lucky or unlucky, I can't quite decide, but on one of our walks Hyme and one of the Swiss girls saw a large puma jump off a tree and vanish into the jungle. The rest of us only heard it but didn't see it. On our first night walk, we saw the reflective, marble like eyes of an oscellot, also a large cat. Hyme had never seen either of these two animals with a group of tourists before. There were many different birds and insects, and Hyme and Juan Carlos pointed lots of things out that we would have not seen due to their fantastic camouflage. Many of the jungle plants have healing properties, and I used the sap of a tree known as the "Dragon`s Blood", because of the colour of the sap, to treat my multitude of itchy bites.
On one of the walks we came across a caravan of Leaf Cutter Ants, native to South America. Thousands of tiny ants, carrying in their font pincers, and lifted above their backs, a leaf which each ant had nibbled to roughly the length and width of double themselves. Among the ants, and sometimes hitching a ride on one of their leaves, were soldier ants, whose job it is to protect the carrier ants. The nest can be up to 25m away from where the source of the specific leaves they need is. We didn't see the nest, but waiting inside it is ants with another job. The leaves that are brought to the nest can't be digested by the ants, so the ants in the nests chew them into small bits and spit them out inside a compartment in the nest. Here a fungus grows on the leaf mulch, using the nutrients from the leaves to harbor it's own growth. Then, all the ants in the colony can happily digest the fungus.
And then there are Surgeon Ants, that the natives use as stitches for wounds. They put the ant over the wound, and it's defence is to pinch with it's pincers. Once it has secured it's pincers and squeesed them together, they wrip the ants body off, and leave the head, with the pincers in the patient.
Another strange insect nest we stumbled on belonged to a colony of Marching Wasps. When they hear a loud noise, each individual wasp in the colony beats it's wings, perfectly syncronised with the rest of the colony such that from outside the nest it sounds exactly like a platoon of marching soldiers. And then, in the primary forest, where the older and larger trees grow, is the Jungle Telephone Tree. With huge roots above the ground, when the top of a root is beaten with a stick or the blunt edge of a macchetti, it eminates a great boom which can be heard at great distances in the jungle.
On our first walk, we went to Juan Carlos' favourite place which is called the tree of 1000 roots. It's a massive Capok tree, possibly 400 or 500 years old. But the tree is hardly visible, as it has been engulfed by a Strangler Fig tree. Stranglers start from the top, having been dropped by a bird, and it fixes itself to the top of the tree where it is dropped, and sends a root down to the ground. When the root touches the jungle floor, it fixes itself, and generates other roots into the ground. Eventually, when it has established a strong enough base, the strangler starts growing upwards, and uses the host tree for support. It surrounds the host, and it's far reaching network of roots deprive the host of any nutrients from the ground, thus eventually killing the host. After many years, with help from the humidity and termites, the host will rot, and the Strangler will fill in the hole in it's crescent shaped trunk where the host used to stand. Juan Carlos climbed the roots 1/3 of the way up the tree, which is quite high, and not to be outdone, Nicko followed. In gumboots. He scares me some times.
We also saw 6 species of monkeys. Howlers, Squirel, Saki, Goldern Tamerin, Cappachino and Wooley. Sometimes they'd be hard to see, but Hyme was great in spotting them. He'd stand and listen, and wait for movement, and then he'd dart through the jungle following them, whilst they swung up in the canopy. Sometimes we didn't even see the monkeys, just the trees moving around them. The Wooley monkeys on Monkey Island was probably the best and closest sighting.
We spent 4 days at the Yaturi Lodge, and then another 4 at the Yarina lodge, which is only 1 hour from Coca. It was a lot busier than Yaturi, where we, and the Swiss girls were the only guests. At Yarina, there was a conference of about 30 people and another 10 or so guests. We got on particularly well with an Aussie/French guy, Stu, and his friend Mayya who is Lebanese/French. At Yarina they have a 40 metre high bird observation tower built around a massive old Capock tree. We saw lots of little birds called Tanagers, and a few other things, but nothing overly exciting. Yarina was a lot muddier than Yaturi, and also not as flat. Most of the walks we did here were through swamp areas, and yes, I did fall into a very watery section. I was horrified, 'cause of this fear of water and things that are in it, but Nicko had a good laugh. And rightfully so, because unlike him, I thought it was absolutely hillarious when the previous day, whilest we were playing volleyball, he overly-ambitiously dived for the ball and landed and slid right through a puddle of thick mud behind the court.
On a night canoe trip in the lagoon near Yarina we saw the reflecting eyes of Caimans, which are similar to crocodiles. And the larve of Fire Flies, which glow blue in the dark. In the lagoon and the river you see lots of bubbles bursting to the surface. This is probably oxygen rising from all the decaying plant matter underneath. We went fishing for piranhas. Sort of thankfully we didn't catch any... fish are disgusting. But Hyme and Juan Carlos caught 4 Dogfish between them.
Another activity we enjoyed was shooting the blowgun. This is a tube about 2 or 3 metres of wood, constructed by gluing two half pipes together, and sealing it with bees wax. The darts are just like wooden kabab skewers with a piece of cotton wool on the end. There was a foam target, and we didn't use poison on our darts, even though we did see a few Poisonous Dart Frogs, from where the poison is collected, but we had a lot of fun. Nick and Andrea, one of the Swiss girls were the best. Pia and I had pretty pathetic aim. We had a competition, and Hyme made us all a beaded bracelet for the winner, and second place, and even the losers. To shoot a dart out of a blow gun, you take a deep breath and then a single short sharp blow down the tube with the dart in it. Everyone had a good laugh when I took my deep breath with the tube held to my mouth, and accidently sucked the dart into my mouth. Hyme, a true Native, had never seen this technique before and thought it was particularly funny. I was just gratefull that there was a wad of cottonwool at the end of the thin stick of wood.
We tried several types of jungle fruits too. They all seemed to have a funny, slimy sort of texture, but tasted okay. Most of them were very small fruits with several seeds inside, and you just suck the slime off the seeds. And I should mention, so I can try to make this at home, a delicious and simple desert that was served several times, which was just Star Fruit in a Cinnimon syrup. Delicious. Most times for desert was Papaya, which is really plentiful, but I don't like Papaya. After dinner, we'd usually read, talk or play backgammon. Sometimes Nick played his Didgeridoo, which everyone, except for me, enjoyed. Sorry Chook.
Both Nick and I enjoyed the jungle, but eight days were enough. I was so uncomfortable with so many itchy bites that I just can't leave alone. I don't quite understand, because I used insect repelent, but I guess bed bugs and flees or whatever little critters that got me don't respond to that stuff. It's very frustrating being totally at the mercy of some thing so small you can't even see it. I don't like seeing any animal, bird, reptile or insect killed for any reason, but Mosquitos and now BedBugs and Flees are an exception.
Back in Quito we stayed at the same place as we'd been before. Tortuga Verde (The Green Tortoise, in English). Carlos, our Chilean buddy, a spray paint artist, who had previously sprayed Nickos Didgeridoo was still there. We went and watched him do his art, which he does on the pavement outside a shopping centre. He painted one specially for me, and it's amazing the effects you can get out of a spray-can using a few basic tools. The transformation of this paper was incredible. Everytime he'd spray a blotch of paint somewhere, I'd think "Don't do that, what are you doing that for?", and then he'd blend it in and smear it and whatever you call his techniques, it always came out looking fantastic. It's not one of those typical spray papers, with the surreal scene of pyramid and sun and dolphins. It`s an Amazonian type landscape.
On a final note, Mum has asked me to include something in my diaries about the South American people, and Tucki has asked me what I've learned and how I've changed during my travels. And unfortunately, niether of you will be satisfied with my answers. To be honest, not speaking Spanish is a huge set back, and it is for this reason, plus travelling with an English speaking friend, that I haven't really gotten to know any South Americans. I suppose when you're on your own, you have no choice but to mingle with other travellers and locals, but when you're travelling with someone, the tendancy is to hang out together, which is exactly what Nicko and I have done.
Also, I regret not learning Spanish when I was younger, after or whilst I was staying with the Predencio family, who are Hyspanic, in New Mexico, USA for 5 months as an exchange student in 1992. I probably should have picked up more Spanish on this trip than I did. My brain doesn't have much of a knack for retaining stuff, and I never wrote things down when I learned them (except for in the jungle when I took a pen and notebook on all our walks). Stuff just went in one ear and out the other. I keep referring to the phrase book, rather than understanding the roots of the words. I haven't made any effort to learn the gramma, but I never really did that in English either. And that's the most important part. Not being able to recall words, but being able to string a sentence together. And I can't.
It's frustrating, and trying to communicate to someone in a language that you can't speak and don't understand is too frustrating and too difficult. People talk fast, so even in reply to a question that I ask, I probably won't understand the answer. That's why, even though I've loved this trip, I`m ready to leave South America now, and head for the States.
I have three weeks left in South America, on my own, in South America. I'm spending them in a Sanctuary for animals in Bolivia. I found out about this place on my first day in South America, from a tourist in our hostel in Buenos Aires way back in early December. And now is the first chance I've had to go.
So this is where the second part of Nicko`s and my adventure ends. I`m off to Bolivia next, then the USA and Canada, and he's off to Turkey and possibly Northern Africa. Then, around July he should be in the UK, and I`ll be there early August. Chook, once again, I want to say thanks for sharing the adventure and taking care of me when I was sick in Peru, and putting up with my strange eating habits and all the rest of it. We've done some great stuff together, and perhaps we'll climb Cotopaxi or some other mountain another time. Travelling with you has been great. And as you know, before we left, Mum said to me that if we had an argument or disagreement or whatever, it was my fault. Because you're such a nice guy, and easy to get along with and I'm such a pain in the ass, and difficult to withstand for long durations of time. Well I can now safely say to you Mum, that I`m blame free!
Ciao for now,
Nique
|
|
|