In the Jungle the mighty Jungle the spiders come out at night a whimpa wa a whimpa wa la la la

Hola Amigos!

We are now back in Tena in our little jungle atmosphere hotel. This is going to be a long blog since it has been 3 days so bare with us!

Day 1

We left Tena at around 930 am from Kanoa Tours but before then I had to stop off at a bakery to get some buns in case jungle food was terrible. But before i got to the bakery i smashed my head on a big sign that i somehow missed the upside was that my glasses where there to stop me from slicing my forehead open, the downside is that my nice new Arnett sunglasses have a nice big scratch on them. Thankfully there not right in my vision path but i was a little sad for a minute or two. When we got Kanoa we met our guide his name was Patrick and it looked like he just got the call that he was going on a 3 day 2 night jungle excursion because on the way out of town we had to stop at his house so he could grab some stuff and he also had no idea what our tentative scheudale was. We all loaded into a Mazda truck after we got all sized up for our hot new rubber boats (a.k.a Gum boots!). The 4 of us where inside the truck and Patrick was in the back. Our driver was a talkative little Ecuadorian man who use to be a teacher but apparently being a taxi driver gets you more money than teaching.. kind of sad. But we tried to talk back in forth with the little spanish we had.. Tyson tried to tell him that we were Common law.. and finally gave up and said yes ¨wife¨. Wow so now in most countries we go to i turn into his wife but back in Canada nooooo i am just ¨common law¨. I guess maybe we should just live overseas and we will be married. (or we could learn more languages so there isn´t this confusion) what a hoser... anyways.

It didn´t seem like we were heading into a remote jungle because we drove on a nice paved road for quite some time. It wasn´t until we hit a small town where the driver new everyone all his amigos and such that we came to some gravel road down to the Napo River. From the Napo river we took a motorized long boat for 10 minutes to what we thought was our cabins for the night. However we had to lug all the food that Patrick brought for us to eat and our packs. Peter and Tyson had the main packs while Marilyn and I carried the little packs. We had to climb about 200 feet up on stairs until we got to the lodge. We were dripping with sweat by then. We thought we were staying there that night but Patrick informed us that nope we where staying the night in a community village and then the next night we would stay here at this lodge. We hoed and hummed about this for awhile and then decided it didnt really matter and we would just go with the flow which was hard for Marilyn to do.

We hung out on the hammocks for about 30 minutes or so before Patrick told us to load up all the food into all of our packs. So it went like this. Peter had some fruit, some coffee and tea and a little more of something he turned down taking the 3l of Coke because his pack was heavy enough. Tyson had 8liters of water, plus all of our clothes and books, he had the lentils, the jam and the flour. I had 2 bags of rice which ended up breaking so we had to find a ziploc bag to put them in, and Marilyn got the rest of the food. All that patrick had was this little black bag smaller than our daybag and 5l water jug which he carried in his hand. Marilyn thought that was a rip off and that we should have made him carry more but Tarzan Tyson said it was fine. We wanted the extra water so we carry it.

We headed on our 3 hour jungle march with our gum boots on. The jungle is crazy... its hot, humid, bushy, huge, and large bugs. We walked through both secondary and primary forrest. The first thing i asked Patrick was if anything was poisnious to touch.. he said no all the plants where fine but there is posinous spiders, snakes and frogs and if you drank or ate some of the bushes. So we were all relieved when we could touch things and not worry about posion ivy or anything because it was way too damn hot to have your long sleeves down. The primary forrest was wider and quite a bit cooler with little underbrush that it made jungle marching eaiser. Secondary forrest was quite a bit hotter and lots of plants fighting for sunlight we had to use the machete a bit to make walking easier. It was very hot and I have never seen Tyson look so exhasuted in all of our hiking. It was mostly uphill and sweat dripped all over us. We took only a couple breaks however Patrick was great in stopping and showing us different insects, plants, and fruit we could try. We had some Coaco (coco beans which i thought tasted good, not as good as when you dry it and grind it into chocolate), we had a jungle type of avacado, we had some sort of tomato thing i think.. i can´t remember all the different things we ate lol. Tyson got bit on the neck and he was scared.. i said i documented it and if he got sick i would remember where he got bit and the time lol. Patrick said it was just an ant and that he was fine. Tyson also put his hands into a tree where ants where and once you take your hand away from the tree you rub the ants all over your hand and arm and it is misquito repellent.. it was neat.

We arrived in the White Water community at around 230 ish and we were exhausted. The community had about 10 families, and a school. Once we sat down for a couple of minutes the children of course were intriqued by us as usual. You could tell that they had seen quite a few tourists but they were still curious. The village was Quichea and Patrick spoke thier native language as many of them don´t speak Spanish. While the men got our beds ready.. i say beds but what i really mean is a foamy on an old school house floor with a miquito net. The woman got lunch prepared. I was getting bored of just sitting around so I demostrated a soccer kick to one of the kids and they went on a mission to find a soccer ball we could play with.

Once they found it 2 boys and a little girl came out to the soccer field which was in the middle of the village to kick the ball around. Tyson tried to show off his not so impressive soccer skills while the kids laughed, and i also attempted mine Tyson says i was no better but i actually was. The little boy was trying to mimic my moves. I just want to make a note that i should get paid my salary for that day as I was doing Physical Activity and healthy eating with the children of White Water. I expect one more day of vacation at least! After getting tired of soccer our beds where ready so we took all of our stuff into the old school house and then we went to find Marilyn and Peter in the new school house.

Marilyn was learning counting in spanish.. but the teacher and the kids where laughing at her when she messed up. But we can now count to 50 in spanish.. i can´t remember it all though. The school is quite stalked. It had working erasable pens and a white board but it was still a one room school house with one side elementary and one side jr-high school. Lunch was ready around 4pm and we were starving. We had jungle yucca soup a type of root grown in the jungle which is like a potato but way more starchy and bland tasting. The soup was alright. Tyson liked the soup but he belongs in the junlge with the monkey! We also had lentils yuck, boiled yucca, and some sort of salsa thingy. After lunch we headed to a waterfall we were all exhuasted and Patrick told us it was only 12 minutes away .. so we didn´t wear socks in our gum boots! What a mistake that was it was like 30 minutes away and got some blisters! Also Marilyn and i kept switching gum boots and she would complain that i had hers on and i said no there both the same.. apparently one was a little smaller i couldnt tell the difference.

You always expect a waterfall to be some magnificient thing but everytime i get to one it really isnt that magnificient. I mean it was pretty it was a jungle waterfall but just not that big. We went swimming to which i was scared as i am not the best swimmer and there was a bit of a current. The water was warm i thought and it was good to wash the sweat off of us. I warned Tyson not to pee in the water so no penis fish would swim up him and give him a bad infection. We joked about it for awhile, and he told me he didnt pee in the water but there was a warm spot i felt. (I really didn´t pee in the water, because I really do not want a penis fish) After we swam and got cleaned we got our clothes back on and headed back. Marilyn was scared of falling on the slippery rocks that we had to cross to get to the water fall so she wanted a different way so Patrick took us up and when i mean up i mean up this huge cliff which was way more difficult and scary to climb then walking over wet rocks. We were not impressed with the decision lol. But we made it back to the village and we had a little siesta in our school house under our misquito nets while we waited for dinner.

Dinner was not so good. It was plantaine soup(family of the bananas but does not taste like a banana). It tasted more like Sunny boy porride runny and thick and nasty! Peter told me it was good, now i don´t believe anything Peter says! I could only stomach 3 tablespoons of it but them van Leusdens will eat anything and they gobbled theres down. The main course was jungle chicken, fried plantaines, and rice. I had some fried plantaines still gross, and rice. I didnt trust the chicken, but again the van Leusdens ate everyting.

After dinner we watched the stars. It was amazing the milky way was so bright and there was sooo many stars it was quite pretty! I had to pee really bad and it was pitch black so i made Tyson come to the bathroom with me. Since before dinner he was too scared to go by himself when he had to pee so i came with him. When we go to the bathroom I should say... umm more like a toliet in a shed with out a seat and no flush only bucket flush. Anyways I spotted a HUGE ass spider.. when i say huge i mean like the size of my face! We found out the next day it was a scorpian spider!! HOLY HELL I was crapping my pants.. and refused to go to the bathroom! I told Tyson i could wait till morning! He said no that i had to go and that he would keep an eye on the spider while i squatted around the toliet! I couldn´t do it.. i was petrified! Marilyn and Peter came out to see what the commotion was and they had to pee as well and Marilyn attempted to pour water over the spider.. it moved closer! So she went pee, brave soul and i still couldnt. So they left and I peed in the bush where Tyson watched for Creepy crawlies. eeee. I then insisted that i sleep with Tyson as there was beds for all of us.. but i was too scared.

It is extremely noisy in the jungle at night, because it comes alive then. Most things are nocturnal so its just constant noise. We hardly slept from jungle and the mix of crying babies, as well as the roosters started at like 3am and it was super annoying.

Day 2
We woke up at around 7am as breakfast was at 8am. We had jungle bread, fried plantains, jam, papaya, and pinnapple. It was actually the best meal of the trip. Patrick tooks us on an a more unexplored area of the jungle that he didnt know so he had to get one of the community men to come with us. It was more like bush wacking and it had started to rain but only for 10 minutes or so. Tyson tried a lemon ant... eww and they had some sort of palm root from a plant. I was tried and in a hurry to make it back to the lodge that we had arrived in from day one. We saw a massive worm it looked more like a snake but it was a worm and i saw the plant where they get anti venom for snake bites. Good to know! Other than that it was about a 2.5 hour walk. Once we got back to the lodge (sanchi soachi lodge i think) it was full out hammock time! We had a siesta till lunch on the hammocks and then after lunch we went over to this old Spaniard mans house who lived with his son both of thier wives had died and they were on the hunt for new ones. However they didnt speak Quichea only Spanish you think they would have picked up on some local language after living there for 30 years. Anyways they had the best jungle white pinnapple EVER! It was this small little pinnapple that was white on the inside and it was sooo sweet, not acidicy nice and sweet. We ate about 2 of them and had one for dessert later that night. They also had the original banana tree.. the tree that got wiped out from disease.. i dont know how they still have there tree. From there we walked down to the Napo River to pan for gold... no success. we are still poor. Patrick also gave Marilyn and I a new village look. He took some fruit like thing from the trees and it made face paint really and he made me into a village princess. Tyson thought it was funny.

We got back to the lodge and chilled out while we waited for dinner. Dinner was late.. like 9pm we were starving. The only other tourists we met where these 2 french friends a male and a female. They were nice kept to themselves. After dinner we had a vote to see who wanted to go for a night walk.. it was only going to be 30 minutes long so we all decided too although the french girl and myself where apprehensive. We got our gum boots back on and our head lamps and headed out. Patrick led the way and then Tyson and then me holding tightly onto Tyson. we got a little ways in and i was already freaking out. It wasnt until Patrick told us to turn all of our head lamps off.. holy shit was i freaking.. it was PITCH BLACK! Couldnt see anythign and creepy as hell. He wanted to show us this fungi that glowed in the dark on this tree.. it was cool but i had had enough of it. We saw a yellow poisinous spider that freaked the hell out of me, and this MASSIVE grasshopper that pretty much almost bit Peter because he was holding on to him. We almost saw a trantula.. and then i broke down crying.. i was soo scared, literally! The sounds of the mud and thinking of snakes around my gum boots and everything else was too much. Patrick then made the decision to turn back. I don´t think that anyone was upset about it because i think they were all secretly scared too! Tyson said i almost put holes in his hands from squeezing so hard. I would never want to be stranded in the jungle at night time! No jaguars to be seen, or armidillos.

Day 3.
We woke up and it was pouring rain. We had really good weather so we weren´t complaining as today was the last day and we were all ready for a hot shower to get clean! Tyson and I didnt bring a change of clothes so you can only imagine how dirty and muddy and gross we were! We had jungle pancakes and some fruit and a fried egg. I tried to bargin my friend egg to Tyson for his pancake but no dice.. he doesn´t even like breakfast anyways! Since it was pouring we hung around for a bit until 11 or so until we were told to Vamouse and pack our bags. We went by motorized canoe to the other side of the Napo River and it had stopped raining. It was a bird watching Island and Marilyn was estatic.. why i am not sure.. its not like there is a ton of exotic birds here.. not where we were anyways no Tucans ... The scenary was different more jungle grass like that were 20 feet tall and small ponds. We arrived in this little village house that had these adorable puppies. The man and women were friendly and they spoke both Quichea and Spanish. Patrick translated for us and we asked questions. We pulled Yucca out of the ground and helped the woman peel it and prepare it. Marilyn and I mashed it and then she used the water from which the yucca was cooked to make it creamy and mashed. Unlike at home where we would have put a pound of butter in. It was cool to see the house inside and how everything functioned. It made sense. Lots of machedes lying around, and they even had a TV and a fridge. We had some fresh papya as well. They were very friendly. We hung around for about 30 minutes and then we walked over to see this BIG BIRD! I wasnt impressed i didnt even see it i thought they were all crazy. But they said they saw it! It was orange like a rooster. I was getting tired of the jungle by this point and just wanted my sandles and to be clean.

We then went back to the motorized canoe back to the port. We ate lunch at the little restaurant and it was fish from the Napo River I gave mine to the guide and just at the rice and plaintaine. I am SICK of plantaine! We chilled out for awhile while waiting for our taxi ride back to Tena. Patrick had one more stop for us in a small sleepy jungle town called Mishualli or something of that sort. Side note- on our first day we swung on vines like Tarzan did it was pretty cool you have to have good upper body strength though as it was hard for me but fun!) The guide book says nothing about Monkeys in this town.. but when we got there monkeys were everywhere. They are so fun to watch! Tyson had a bad case of BSA -- backpack separation anxiety as we were told to leave our packs in the taxi.. which we would never do but apprently the monkeys grab things out of them on your back. They were halarious they stole a little girls cheezies and opened the chips and ate them, one monkey guarded them from a dog. while the other monkey grabbed the dogs tail and pulled him. They are sooo funny.. i swear humans! The look just like us.. and they can open bags and everything! If only we had tails we could do some awesome swinging.. they even walked on just two legs. I wanted to take one home! To be the next helper monkey!

After about 20 minutes of monkey watching we were on our way back to Tena. It was nice to have a hot shower and get cleaned! We all have tons of ant bites on us, more so me since i cant squat so well the ants attacked me. We also have other bites but were fine. All in all we were quite satisfied with our guide he was really good and fun and had really good english and taught and showed us lots of things. The village was good but they were running it like a business. But we survived the jungle and now we are looking forward to the Galapagos Islands and meeting up with Leann so maybe that she can lose at Yahtzee instead of me all the time.

Today in Tena we slept in, and had pancakes for breakfast i was soo giddy! Tyson even let me have 2 out of the three! We went searching for the market and just looking around. The market was really small and a just a food market. I didnt like the meat part it was stinky and gross as per usual. Peter and Marilyn bought some oranges, and pears. We watched a political rally for a bit, nothing too exciting. Then we had lunch at a really good pizza place. It was a relaxing day for once as Marilyn slowed down.

Tonight we will have some dinner and pack up, we also got our laundry done because our clothes where so dirty from the jungle. We are heading to Quito tomorrow morning on Banos bus and will meet up with Leann before we head to the Galapagos Islands on Monday for 8 days. I dont think we will be blogging unless Darwin brought a computer the last time he was there. Tyson says we will blog tomorrow maybe.

Alright Adios Amigos!

Sara Jungle Jane and Tarzan Tyson.