Days 71, 72, and 73: I´m a city-boy, get me out of here!

Day 70 continued 
As explained at the end of the last blogpost, I booked myself into five day survival expedition deep into the Amazon rainforest; just me and a member of the Shuar indigenous community. The Shuar were famous/infamous throughout the Victorian period for their former tradition of creating shrunken human heads and those who have visited the Pitts Rivers Museum in Oxford will already be familiar with their work. Aside from that the Shuar are famed rainforest survival experts and I was looking forward to absorbing some of this skill. For those who are interested in the tribe you can read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuar

The guy who sold me the tour looked very much like this and I have to admit to feeling a certain "Heart of Darkness"/Orientalist glee at the thought of spending several days with this man.

Turning up that evening however I was told my guide instead would be his uncle, Cesar, a jolly enough fellow in his 40s/50s who to my dismay was wearing Western-style clothing! Don´t judge a book by its cover though as Cesar as you will see turned out to be a jungle genius. A bigger issue though was that Cesar didn´t speak a word of English. Looks like I would be needing that Spanish I learned in Cusco for the next few days.

As I had expressed a preference to see animals we needed to go very deep into the rainforest and so began our epic journey that night. We boarded an overnight bus from Baños to take us to the frontier town of Lago Agrio.

This was all we were to live on for the next few days;

Day 71
The overnight bus (10 hours) took us to Lago Agrio, a pretty rough town founded and dedicated to the Amazonian petroleum industry. We then grabbed another bus (2 hours), hitchiked in the trunk of a 4x4 (1 hour) and picked up a hollowed-out tree canoe. We loaded up the canoe and set out into the heart of the rainforest along a river called ´Aguas Negras´.

 We rowed along the river (4 hours) all the while gazing at the immense biodiversity all around us. The trees on each side were massive and so thick you could barely see a meter beyond the shore. The noise of monkeys, parrots and god knows what else was deafening and even though it was the middle of the day, the trees reached so far over the water that we spent our time in a perpetual dusk. At this stage our only insect friends were the many butterflies and dragonflies accompanying the boat and the occassional water spider.

We eventually pulled into a bank and in the process inadvertently crushed a rather ferocious red snake that struggled against its new shackle to attack us. Look to the right below

We had stopped to pay a visit to ´Hombre Grande´, a crazy man living entirely alone in the middle of the forest. He seemed well informed though and was able to fill me in on the finer points of Osama Bin Laden´s death.

Back to the water and after a few more hours we reached the home of another crazy man, Don Ambulo. Don Ambulo had constructed a veritable palace in the jungle and I couldn´t help but marvel at his interior decoration (Shakira posters and religious art everywhere - quite incongruous). Don Ambulo had quite a good farm and he killed a chicken in our honour. We feasted on it for lunch then followed this with the fruit of the Coco tree. The coco beans opened up to reveal several seeds covered in a delicious creamy white membrane with a taste like malted oranges (very Christmassy).

That afternoon we rowed yet further out into the jungle and chose a random spot in which to moor and go exploring. Of note here were the golf ball sized ants that Cesar informed me could kill me with one bite.

Sensing perhaps that I needed to be broken into jungle life, Cesar suggested that we return to Don Ambulo´s house to spent the night. The thought of a roof over my head was very attractive and so we headed back to his. Having finished "The Kite Runner" I spent much of that evening reading Margaret Atwood´s "Alias Grace". I was woken up in the middle of the night by Cesar saying he had a present for me. Through my groggy eyes I focussed on a baby crocodile. It was so cute I refused to allow it to be killed for our breakfast so I merely got a photo and then released the little critter.

Day 72
An early wake up and we waved Don Ambulo goodbye. Setting off once more along the river deeper into the jungle I realised just how precarious a position I was in. We were an immense distance from the nearest town, deep inside a thick jungle along maze-like river passages, with no phone signal or fixed location. If we were to get lost, or even worse if I were to be separated from Cesar, it could take months to be found again and during that time I would almost certainly starve to death/be eaten by the many creatures in the forest. My life was entirely in his hands.

Anyway we eventually found a nice spot to moor and set about creating our camp. It was a peculiar feeling to know that I was personally involved in the deforestation of the Amazon as I cleared the foliage and cut down those pesky trees. Even worse I enjoyed myself as I whacked my machete around without care for nature. My guide did stress though that he was heavily involved in rainforest conversation and for every tree we cut down he would plant 10 more.

(me with machete)

Once we had set up our tents and started the fire I realised that we were almost certainly the first humans ever to have step foot on that precise spot of land. In honour of this fact I decided our little town needed a name and what name could be better than ´New Gants Hill´.

(The view from my tent door)

I then had a bit of fun pretending to be tarzan, swinging from the vines and climbing the various trees.

Of course Cesar climbed much higher than I dared

Now we had to think of lunch. If we were to be true jungle survival experts we couldn´t rely on our stock of emergency food so we set off in search of the palm tree. The palm tree may be recognised by its amusingly rude roots which were not hard to spot

Cutting down the palm trees we would dig through the bark until we found the ´heart´, consisting of a white fibrous goo about the size of a pencil case. A whole tree killed for just that tiny heart.

 

A little bit of salt though and the palm heart tasted so so fantastic that I would cut down an entire rainforest to eat some more. We complemented the palm with some plantains we had foraged and cooked it in a leaf over the fire.

There is no rest in the jungle though and now we had to start thinking of dinner. What better dinner could there be than some fresh Amazon fish. With a machete we slashed in the river until we killed some baby fish (Tilapia Amazonica). The baby fish were then collected and used as bait for our hooks. I have to admit I was not a very successful fisherman as every fish I caught managed to escape, but luckily Cesar was more experienced and we ate a few Barbudos for dinner. Cesar informed me that he had lived weeks in the jungle with nothing more than a machete and a boat.

Cesar made me a crown out of twigs and we went to sleep leaving our fishy leftovers as further bait in an overnight trap.

Day 73
Cesar woke me up this morning excitedly saying that our trap had been successful.  Reeling in the fishing line I was almost pulled underwater by the strength of our caught friend - a massive Manta Ray. I could see its barb being aimed right for my heart and was tempted to dive for cover (I didn´t want to be the next Steve Irwin), but Cesar swiftly dispatched the bugger with his machete.

 (the venemous barb)

A little red onion later and a delicious breakfast was had.

Now the bad part. The days were long in the jungle and my Spanish was not up to lenghty conversations with Cesar, so I spent a lot of time thinking and came to rationalise my experience in the following manner. We have two minds: a higher one and a lower one. The higher one is all for adventure, new experiences and overcoming physical distractions. The lower one though is concerned with survival, comfort and avoiding pain. Alas the longer I spent in the jungle, the more my lower one came to win. The reason was quite simple: mosquitoes.

As it had been raining heavily the previous few days the mosquitoes were out in force and I mean in force. They moved in thick clouds and could find you out anywhere. I remember one moment thinking I had a large brown leaf on my arm, but no it was a mountain of mozzies. My repellent was absolutely useless against this onslaught and the critters managed to sting their way through any clothing. I cannot describe how mentally taxing it is constantly to have to bat away the invaders from every part of your body. It only took one second for the mosquitoes to return and they returned angry. Every part of my body was bitten so comprehensively and frequently that my skin just gave up and I began to be covered in rivulets of blood. I looked like the Elephant Man and my only moments of joy now were squishing the buggers and watching my lovely red blood be wasted against the tent walls.

 (two days later and my arm looks like this)

It was a hard decision but I had to ask to cut the trip short and leave a day early. I had still spent three days in the jungle and had had a fantastic time, but I couldn´t bear it a moment longer. Alas we were very very deep by this point and it was not normal to return all that distance in one go. We ended up having to row at high speed for hour after hour  in a desperate bid to return before sun-down. I realise that I have never done exercise before where there has not been the option of stopping. There was no possibility of stopping here though as the current was strong and one moment´s rest would take several minutes to recover.

Anyway we reached the small town in the afternoon, then hitchhiked and grabbed a local bus to Lago Agrio.  Then I grabbed a 7 hour bus and ended up in Quito, Ecuador´s capital. That morning I had woken up to Manta Ray deep in the jungle and I was going back to sleep in a modern city at the top of the mountains. But at least I was safe from the mosquitoes now!

Now for a list of the main animals we encountered. None of the following photos are my own (as my camera´s zoom is crap) EXCEPT for the one of the anaconda, which we got disconcertingly close to.

Capuchino Blanco Monkey

Ardilla monkey 

The unbelievably cute Chicchico monkey 

The Cusumbo rat-like thing that loved trying to eat my tent

The Aninga bird

The kingfisher

The omnipresent parrot

The Jabiru

The man-eating anaconda

We also saw squirrels, toucans, hummingbirds and the tracks of a puma right outside our tent.