Just got back from our amazing and long trip (backpacking in the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle) late the night before last. We had a very long day Thursday as we left the jungle at 7am, started a 6 hour hike through rivers and mud sometimes up to our knees, then a two hour car ride in the back of a work truck to return to the closest town, stopped briefly to eat a late lunch, and hopped on a bus to return to Quito for a 6 and a half hour ride! We made it safe and sound though and got in about 1am, thoroughly exhausted.
So, now the story of our trip:
We left to go to Dureno, which is the topic of my next blog...We then returned to Lago Agrio by an hour and a half bus ride and started to make preparations for our next trip into the jungle. We were there for one day and one night. We stayed the night at the local office on bunks with only boards no mattresses. That made the third night in a row of sleeping on a very hard surface (we slept on the floor in Dureno) with only the cushion of my very lightweight sleeping bag.
We didn't eat a real dinner that night, only snacks, since we were on the outskirts of town and things were not very clearly arranged ahead of time. The next morning we woke up at 5am, which had become about typical at that point... We sat through a park guard meeting, which was conducted almost all in Cofan and once again just had some snacks for breakfast, since the people who were arranging everything were busy with the meeting and kind of forgot to check to see if we had everything we need. Normally, this wouldn't have been much of a problem, but we left around 1pm to head off to the jungle and had pretty empty stomachs at that point, with a 6 hour hike ahead of us. It started pouring that night and although it let up a little bit, it rained all day. We had no idea what we were in for, as the hike was much longer and extremely harder than we had been prepared for. We also got a much later start than we had hoped, due to the meeting running over. Since we are on the equator, it gets dark at around 6pm every night. We had two park guards that were coming with us, but once again the whole thing was extremely poorly communicated and planned out. There were two local Cofan men that were helping to carry our heavy packs, which was lucky, because with all the surveying equipment and our food for two weeks, our bags weighed over 65 pounds each. We also had some smaller daypacks with some other supplies in them, that we carried ourselves. We were told to follow the two men that had our packs on, rather than to stay with the park guards, which we later realized was a mistake, as the two guys pretty much took off running and it was nearly impossible to keep up with them for the entire hike, as they were extremely well trained and in good shape for the harsh conditions of the trail and we were obviously not. So, we struggled to keep up with them for the 1st 3 hours of the hike and would periodically see them when they would stop for a rest (2 times the entire 1st part), and other than that we were hiking by ourselves, as the park guards fell far behind us. Luckily, for the first three hours, the trail was rather easy to see, so we weren't to worried at that point. We all reached a large river at several intervals and crossed in a small wooden canoe. Only several could go at a time, as the canoe was very small, very prone to tipping (we had to crouch down, there were no seats, and stay as still as possible) and it had several holes in it. We reached the other side and everyone immediately took off again. That was the last that we saw of anyone that we started out on the trip with until 4 hours later. This was a bad time for this to happen too, as the trail got extremely smaller, was not well marked and barely visible at times, with several forks along the way. We also were already very tired, as the way in thus far was extremely thick with mud, it had been raining the whole time, it was very rough terrain (with many hills), and we had been required to keep up a pace that was probably 2 times as fast as we were comfortable with. We stuck together, with no way of finding our way, or knowing for sure that we were going the right way, and only a GPS, that would have helped, but not much, since some of the ways were impassible and we did not have the coordinates of where we were headed and my map, which was not very specific anyhow, was in my larger bag, that was now somewhere in the forest with the people that had our bags. At this point we were starting to get a little worried, as we reached a large fork in the trail and each way apparently went a very different direction, and it was already starting to get dark. Luckily, I had one power bar on me, a little bit of water left, a raincoat, another jacket, a GPS, a compass, my pocket knife, and a head lamp, but that was about it. Scott had nothing on him, but his large professional camera. If we would have had any idea that this would have happened, or that we would be hiking part of the way at night, I think we would have packed our bags a lot differently. So, I decided at that point that we should wait at the fork, as we hoped that the 2 park guards were still somewhere behind us and we were sure that the already indiscernible trail would become impossible to see at night, even if we were going the right way already. Luckily, not more than 20 minutes later, we heard some voices coming. We saw a horse (heavily loaded down with supplies) and 3 people ( 1 man, a little boy, and another little boy strapped onto the mans back). I decided to head them off and see if they could help us, hoping that they spoke some spanish. I was very lucky, as they spoke enough to communicate and they said that the trail to the community was straight ahead. With no time to waste, we immediately started following them. Once again the pace was pretty quick, since these people live in the jungle and are in amazing shape, as well as used to the conditions. Luckily the little boy who was on foot was very nice and kept stopping to look back and make sure that we were still there.
"Eddieson" -the little boy from the 1st nightAt this point, I was barely able to stand up straight as we had been hiking for 5 hours straight, it was now dark, and we had stopped to take only several breaks thus far. I was dizzy and felt like I was going to throw up, but I kept going out of fear that we would not make it if we lost our new companions. I was a little worried, as I wasn't 100% sure that the people we met up with were Cofan and there are several other tribes that live in Ecuador, some of which have been known to be cannibals and are not friendly to tourists. In addition, the Cofan Bermejo Reserve is right on the border of Colombia and although there have not been any major problems in the lower part of the Reserve, there is a known presence of Colombian poachers and otherwise within the top half of the Reserve. At this point, we just had to go with our instinct and try to stay with the people we had just found as that was our best bet to getting somewhere. I figured two things, since he had 2 kids with him and since he told me that the community was about an hour away (which was farther than we had estimated, but still about right), I figured that we were probably safe. It was strange though since it was dark, we never could really see his face. He periodically would offer to take my back pack (even though he had a 3 year old baby) strapped onto his back! I tried to say no, but he insisted as he could tell that I was barely able to stay upright. We later found out that the guy who helped us was one of the parkguards fathers and was probably in his early 60's-the people are truly amazing how strong and of the land they are! We quickly figured out that the community was actually more like an hour and a half away-and that when told a Cofan amount of time, you always had to add a half an hour or more. The trail was wet, full of deep, sticky mud, up and down many steep hills and there were many roots and chopped off small stumps that I kept tripping over. We were sliding all over the place. I wanted to cry several times as I was sure that I could not go on any longer. We had to cross a long, skinny log crossing that was about 13 feet of the ground and slippery with moss. I was sure that I would fall as I could barely stand upright, but the old man firmly held my hand and took my backpack the whole way. We finally arrived at the first house in the community to find our bags and the guys who 1st carried our stuff sitting outside waiting. At that point I was delirious and my leg had cramped up so bad, I could hardly move it. I was so thankful to be somewhere and that our stuff was finally with us. I had resorted to praying several times along the trail that everything would be okay. Originally, we were supposed to stay at the other house that was still another 45 minutes away, but we stayed at the first house (the house of one of the men, and his family, that carried one of our packs). The wife made us a koolaid type of drink and it tasted like the most wonderful thing that I had ever tasted at that point, since we were so dehydrated. I still felt sick, but knew that we had to eat something, since we had only had 1 granola bar and a small piece of bread all day. She offered to make us some of the rice that we had brought and I managed to force it down. We immediately layed out our bags and fell asleep on the living room floor.
The park guards came to meet us the next day around 10am and we were told that we could stay at that house for a couple more days to regain our strength, since moving to the other house meant that we had to carry our heavy bags over similar terrain. We went on a short hike and did one survey that day. We ate our rice that we had brought for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as that was what was prepared for us and we were just happy with anything. The family was very nice and we were glad that they let us stay for a few days to recoup. The husband spoke a little Spanish and the rest of the family, hardly any. This Cofan community was much more what I was expecting, no electricity, and other than minimal supplies like rice, living almost completely of the land. We did two more surveys the next day and when on a slightly longer hike through the mud. On the 3rd day, it was time to move to the other house, where we supposed to be headed initially. I had been dreading the move, as our packs were still very heavy. We set off early and arrived at the other house around 45 minutes later. We later figured out that this was the house that Eduardo's (one of the park guards) family lived at, including the man that had helped us the first night. It took us until that day to realize who it was that had helped us that first night, since it was so dark already when we met up with them. The only clue was finally that I recognized the little boy and his name "Eddieson" that we now saw again at this new house and when we met up with the old man the first night, I had asked him if the two kids were his and he had said that they were his grandkids. Things were now starting to make a bit more sense. We took a short rest and then set out with the park guards again for two more surveys. The other parkguard that we were with was the shaman of Dureno; The little boy came out with us for this trip. Both of the parkguards knew an incredible amount about the local flora and fauna and were telling us about all the different medicinal plants along the way. When we returned, we know gave Eduardo's mom (Eddieson's grandma) our other bag of rice as well as some pasta. She made a fantastic soup for us for lunch. The surveys would take about 2 hours each and the hiking several more hours, although we were now moving at a more manageable pace. Our routine was generally to leave at 9am and return around 3pm for lunch. For dinner, we had rice and pasta and goat meat, which was amazingly good. We brought soy sauce and butter for the pasta and rice. They make this really different banana drink, called Choucoola, that they drink often. It is basically bananas and water. We would read and write in our journals when we would return for the day, as well as bathe and wash our clothes in the "Chandae Nae" river nearby. It was the first time I felt really clean in about a week-fantastic. We would generally read for about an hour after it would get dark, until we couldn't stand the large roaches, mosquitoes, and spiders anymore. Then we would go to sleep on the living room floor, me in my bivy sac and Scott in his mosquito net. Generally, the bivy sac worked pretty well to keep the bugs out, although I did find a medium sized roach in there one morning (Gross-I have no idea how it got it as I was extremely diligent about keeping it closed at all times) and the little chigger type mosquitoes that were eating out feet and legs alive. I was jealous as Scott had a sleeping pad to lay on, which helped to combat the hardness of the wooden floor boards. My body got somewhat used to sleeping on the hard floor and using only my jacket as a pillow, but I was still extremely happy to sleep in a real bed once we returned.
This schedule generally worked out okay, as we would be tired from all the hiking in the day and would wake up around 5:30am anyhow. For breakfast, we would generally have rice, sometimes pasta, and the local sauteed bananas and sometimes fish (rather strange for breakfast, but we didn't complain). The family would all wake up just before 1st light to the sound of the roosters around the house, so we did too. They would start the fire in the kitchen for cooking and begin doing their daily work for the day. The houses are all open air with windows cut out, but no screening or glass (thus the insects in the house). The kitchens were really interesting too, with a large platform for building a fire in (not an actual stove, but just a platform) They had tow sets of three large river rocks propped up on the platform for cooking on and they would start the fires underneath the rocks and set the pots on top. They had a little bit of running water outside for drinking and washing plates. (This was actually pretty high tech, as many in the community had no running water). Still no "bathroom", as was expected, but that was just fine and they washed all their clothes and some of their pots in the river, as well as themselves. There are no showers or baths. For dinner one evening, we were served a whole catfish with our rice (kind of looked just like those sucker fish in the fish tanks).
The next day that we went out to do a survey it was dumping rain again (apparently it is winter down here right now and that means rain almost every day, and in the Amazon, downpour almost every day and night). We went out anyways and did one survey, although everything got completely soaked, so we decided not to do another survey that day. The next day, the sun came out for the 1st time in over a week and we were very happy. We did one of our longest hikes yet (other than the 1st day)-around 12 miles and two more surveys. We swam in the river (our bath) and washed some clothes later as it was really nice that afternoon. The little boy-Eddieson-came with us. He was a very smart little kid and his skills in the forest, for such a young age-10, amazed me. He could catch fish using rocks and local vines with grubs.
The next day was also nice, but we decided that we needed one day of rest, since we were planning on hiking out early the next morning and heading to the other part of Cofan Bermejo. We had planned on spending 1 week in the one part and around 1 week in the other part, but we 1st wanted to leave on a Sunday (around 5 days in the 1st part), but were told that we wouldn't be able to leave until Tuesday (which was exactly 1 week from the day we had arrived in the part of Cofan Bermejo and a week and a half since we had left Quito and been staying with the Cofan. We were told that we had to do both hikes in the same day, since we only had access to transportation for that one day. That meant a 6 hour hike out on the same trail and another 4 hour hike back in to the other part, with no time to rest, as we would be fighting nightfall once again. That night we went to bed early and set our alarms for 5am. It began pouring as soon as it got dark and rained harder than I have ever heard rain fall in my life. It rained that hard for the entire night and was still pouring hard when we woke up the next morning!! I had a feeling that this meant that we would not be able to leave that day or anytime soon, just judging by how much the rivers had risen from the hard rain the other day. We were supposed to leave at 6am, but the park guards came by at about 6:30 to tell us, as I had expected, that there was no way to leave for at least 3 or 4 days. We were really ready to move on at that point, because we still had a lot to do and I had resorted to reading my Spanish dictionary and writing in my journal for several hours a day to pass the time. Since our bags were already so heavy and completely overloaded, there was no way to bring a book to read, so I had left it in Lago Agrio at the office there. It poured all that day and the next almost non-stop. We went to look at the river that 1st day and it was amazing how much it had transformed. The day before, we were swimming in it and could see the bottom, and then the day after all that rain, it turned into a chocolate mess, flowing like a raging river with huge waves and entire trees floating by, heading downstream. The water level had probably risen almost 10 feet over night and even the best of swimmer would have been hard pressed to make it across to the other side. It was incredible. Even the smaller creek nearby that we had walked through the days before with our rubber boots on, was now probably flowing up to our waists. We weren't able to do much except sit inside and continue to read the Spanish encyclopedia, talk to our host family (a little), and write non-stop in our journals for the next 2 days, as the rain trapped us in on almost all sides. We were told that we would have to wait until Friday (yesterday) to leave and we had only brought enough food with us for a little over a week, as we were planning to resupply before we headed back in the second time. We felt that we would definitely have enough until Friday and maybe Saturday, but we were starting to get a little worried as the rain seemed as though it would never stop. We knew that we probably wouldn't starve, with the Cofan being so resourceful, but they did not have much and we did not want to get to that point. There was a little break in the rain for 3 hours, finally, on Wednesday and we went out on a short hike on our own and did one last survey. When we got back, we found out that there was a chance that if it cleared up for the night, we might be able to hike out early the next morning. We decided that would be best, as we figured we better take the first chance we had, in case we got stuck out there again, with no way to return for several more days. It rained a little more that evening, but nothing significant. We got up at first light the very next morning to get ready to head out and were served a nice rice and pasta breakfast with the last of what we had brought with us. The hike took us about 6 hours and we left at 7:30am with the two park guards that had been our guides for the last few days. It was very exhausting and difficult again, but we had better circumstances, as there was plenty of daylight left, we had eaten a real meal, we had guides actually with us, and we were in quite a bit better shape than when we first started. We made it out to the pickup point and returned to Lago to jump on a bus back to Quito. That is where the adventure ends. My body was happy to sleep in a real bed last night although I had almost started getting used to the hard floor.
We each have about 50 or more bites, mostly on our feet and legs, even though we wore pants and socks almost the whole time. The little chiggers or whatever they were would go right through our socks. We saw a whole lot of amazing plants, and some interesting insects (especially me, got bit by a rather large spider when I grabbed my sock of the drying line and had another large one in my raincoat-that luckily I shook out 1st), many cool butterflies, caterpillars, centipedes, and some cool birds. We saw one dead poisonous snake (not sure how it died), and several monkeys in the trees from a distance. The people had lots of farm type animals for pets. They all had many chickens, there were 3 horses total, several wild boars that had been domesticated, one pet tapir (for food), many ducks, a lot of pet turtles (also for food), and a few other strange type birds, one pet parrot, one pet rabbit, and one pet monkey-all caught when little from the wild (other than the chickens, ducks, and horses). When they serve you soup, it has all the bones in it, same with the fish. They would usually kill one chicken about every 2-3 days for food and the goats live wild in the surrounding mountains. The material for the jewelry all comes from local seeds and materials. We found that they eat a lot of yucca, plantains, rice, and bananas.
There were many things that I found to be really amazing about the Cofan people. They have an extraordinary sense of family and community, and reverence for the Earth and nature. The families all live together, generally until they are married and once they have kids, then the mother of the people who are married goes to live in the new family house with the couple and their children. The families spend a lot of quality time together and the training of the children starts early on. The men are taught about all the different medicinal and food plants, as well as how to hunt and fish from an early age. The woman of the family are all very close and work together to make things that are needed for the family, arts and crafts, baskets, clothes, and the food. The parents and grandparents are extremely active in the children's lives. They only take and use what they need and live an amazingly sustainable lifestyle. They are very warm and wonderful people and offer their houses to strangers (without thinking much of it) and take very good care of their guests. Everyone has time for everything and everyone and it seems to me that they are living about as close as it gets to what life is really meant to be all about.
I had a lot of time while I was there to contemplate life and to really reflect on everything. It was very good for me and I found that I felt a lot more whole and grounded by the time that we left. It made me long for more time to spend with friends and family and reminded me of my original vision of living a more sustainable lifestyle, close to the Earth, and with a strong sense of family and community. In general, I would say that they are a very happy people and do not have so many of the modern distractions in life to pull them away from what is really important.
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