The Jungle!

Hey everyone! I am sure it is nice and cold in Wisconsin, but here in Quito, Ecuador it is still nice and mid 60's every day! The sun shines in the morning, but the sad part is that it usually rains in the afternoon! This weather scheme is pretty much predictable every day, so it's kind of like we have all the seasons on Wisconsin in one day! I do think I will still be in a shock to feel the cold and see the snow of Wisconsin when I return!

I wanted to tell you all a bit about my experience in the jungle.
Tena is a city located in the southern oriente of Ecuador, or, in the South eastern part of Quito, the begining of the Amazon basin. I loved the hot humid heat of the jungle. This is what is great about Ecuador. You can travel for a few hours (to Tena, 5) and be in a totally different climate, a totally different world!
We arrived to TENA early friday morning, as we left Quito aruond 8:30. Friday morning after breakfast we met with a guide (we went through a tour operator) and traveled an hour outside of Tena, really in the jungle. There, we met a family, who also works with the tour guide company and houses travelers and tourists. Our accomodations were pretty basic, like camping, but the family was so kind and genuine, along with our guide Fernan.

The first day we hiked for a few hours through the jungle, which included having to climb up some small (15 feet) waterfalls! This was tricky, but really fun and exciting. So much green all the time! We saw a lot of butterflies, the really pretty blue kind you see associated with the jungle. Not so many animals, but sure was a lot of mosquitoes! These are not your average Wisconsin mosquitoes either, but the kind the bite and leave a blood spot, and the itch like hell!! I used a half a bottle of bug spray, but, it doesn't matter. I asked our guide about this, and why he wasn't getting bit at all. "Ohh the mosquitoes love the sweet tourist blood, our blood is more bitter."




Would I survive hunting for myself, using this dart thing in the jungle? It was really heavy!

The next day was followed by learning about gold panning, heading to a waterfall is swim around and then tubing down the river. It was kind of funny how we tubed, because we were 5 people (me, Sarah and Anouk, Fernan our guide and Alberto, our friend from Spain who did the same activities as us, so we got to know him). We tied 3 tubes together, Alberto and Fernana the captain in the front tube, sarah in one, anouk in the other and me in the middle, somehow hanging on. The river wasn't so lazy either- there was so rapids! So, this was pretty fun, if you can picture our situation.

We ate some really good food as well. Yuca, basically the latin american potatoe, is a tuber like vegetable that grows underground, but really tasty! We had it in soup and fried, yum. We also had chicken, that were harvested from the families chickens, that during the day were walking around, but later, well you know. Of course rice with every meal. For breakfast eggs with patacones, which I am currently obsessed with. Patacones are made from platano verde, green banana, and look like a green banana, before it has ripened. You slice the platano and then fry it. Add some salt and this slightly less sweet banana is so delicious. I can't wait to make them for myself! We also ate the sweetest bananans you have ever tasted, the peel bursting because the fruit was so ripe.

Our stay in the jungle was really nice, and I really missed the people and weather when I came back to Quito. You have to wonder about the tour operator though, and how the money the operators gains is divided among all the people who work for the operator. What does the familiy make, who we stayed with, and learned from, and who cooked for us, all day? The tour operator is called Amarongachi tours (Quichua for hunting ground of the anacanda, no we did not see one) We did not investiage this organization before booking the tour.