It was the best of times…it was the worst of times…

It’s Monday blog time and you know what that means…another crazy weekend adventure. And what trip to Ecuador would be complete without a weekend trip to the Amazon jungle??

Yep. So Friday directly after school, my friend Andi and I set off to the depths of the Amazon Jungle to see what it had in store for us…and let’s just say it had a LOT in store.

I packed up my usual “starvation food” of PB&Js, Ritz crackers and Ziplocs full of cereal and we were off.

We caught the bus from Otavalo to Quito right around 3pm (I am now an expert at hailing buses as they hurl down the PanAmerican highway and jumping in while they are still moving). The bus was pretty nice and like every other Otavalo-Quito bus ride I have been on, showed another Sylvester Stallone movie…gotta love watching Cliff Hanger in Spanish for the second time.

So we arrived in Quito and started wandering pretty aimlessly through the ridiculously overwhelming Quito bus terminal and from what we could tell, the next bus outta there to the Amazon didn’t leave until 10:00 p.m. Now considering it is a 6-hour bus ride, this was not good news.

Luckily for us, some extremely sketchy guy asked us where we were going and took us directly to the booth selling tickets to the jungle leaving in 10 minutes. Where did this guy come from? Is this a scam?? No time to ask questions…

We bought our tickets and were sent to this strange spot on the side of the road where we started to seriously think we had been conned out of our $6. But suddenly, a bus with the word Tena, the city where we were headed, rolled up and we hopped in.

Randomly, Andi got the window seat and I got the aisle. Let’s just say Andi won the seat-picking lottery on that one. About 10 minutes after “take-off”, the bus suddenly filled up to its brim. People completely lining the aisles, people sitting on armrests, you name it.

So, for the next 6 hours, there was a woman literally in my lap. Six hours of winding, dirt roads in the pitch dark. I wanted to complain but then I remembered that at least I had a seat, which was clearly a bonus.

We pulled into Tena around 11:30ish at night. Got off the bus and found ourselves in the midst of a rainstorm. And it was actually really fun! (I think at this point, just not having a woman falling into my lap was pretty fun…)

We tried to stay at a hostel that was recommended to us with no luck so just kind of stumbled into a place that said “HOTEL” and figured, great! We thought we were really living it up staying in a HOTEL and not a HOSTEL (it’s amazing how just one letter makes a pretty big difference). It was a bit more expensive than we had planned but there was free breakfast so we were happy campers.

We got up to our room and discovered that we also had…TV!! We immediately switched on CNN and I think that Andi and I were quite possibly the first people to know about the Obama-Biden ticket at 1:00 am. We felt “in-the-know” for the first time in a long time.

We went to bed and woke up excited to see what this breakfast had in store for us. Well, it wasn’t exactly the Las Vegas style hotel breakfast buffets. Choices included: weird eggs, weird hash thing, weird juice and pretty good croissants. But we ate it and were off to the jungle.

We hopped a taxi to the nearby town of Mishaulli. Before we left, past volunteers told us that here in Mishaulli, there are little boats all over just waiting to take you to the jungle. So we got out of the taxi and headed to the beach.

There at the beach we only found these huge, long canoe-boat things with a ton of locals. Looks good to us! So we went down the rocky beach headed to the boats. Of course, I fell and skinned both knees. Obviously. What is it with these people and their opposition to stairs and handrails??

Anyway, we boarded this boat with actually very little idea of where we were going but we knew we were not leaving here without riding down the Amazon River. So we did!

We rode about 20 minutes or so down the river and it was so awesome. To be honest, if I would have taken the same exact ride down Lake Minnetonka, it probably wouldn’t have been so noteworthy but to say we were on the Amazon River (or an offshoot of the Amazon River…turns out the real deal is in Brazil I think) in the middle of the jungle in Ecuador was pretty darn cool!
Our boat came to a stop at some place so we hopped off (when in Rome…). We went up the beach and suddenly, we were in this crazy little Amazon place where monkeys were EVERYWHERE! And not just monkeys! Other crazy animals too! We happily forked over our $1 and had our little tour.

We probably didn’t understand a thing about what the woman was saying about medicinal plants but we did manage to pick up huge turtles, cradle monkeys, shake hands with a very sad little monkey and watch a little anteater thing eat a sucker from a little kid. The pictures do it way more justice…and definitely check out the video of me with my monkey…crazy!

After our tour of the Amazon, it was back on the canoe to head back to Mishaulli. We grabbed a quick (and slightly strange) lunch and got on the bus back to Tena.

Within 8 seconds of being on this bus, we hit something. I still have no idea what, but this led to several minutes of people yelling at each other and fighting and then our bus going to some strange place (maybe the police station? Not so sure) and moral of the story, it took us quite a while to get back to Tena.

But we did get back and I managed to spend the afternoon doing something I haven’t done in months…hang out at a coffee shop! Andi and I found this place called Sticky Fingers in my guide book and we went there and proceeded to eat THE two biggest desserts known to man. And when Andi finished her banana split with no problem, I knew we had a good thing goin’…
We played cards for a couple hours and moseyed back to the Hotel (note: no “S”) and watched some more CNN. Shockingly, for the entire 3 days we were there, we learned nothing more about our world than the Obama-Biden ticket. If anything else has happened since I left, please let me know.

Then Andi and I went out to dinner to what is considered a very “upscale” restaurant in Tena called the Marquis. White table clothes, candles and even Starbucks coffee. So after looking at the menu, we both decided to get Filet Mignon for a whopping $5.50.
Andi, who is usually a vegetarian, got her steak and said it was a bit too red for her tastes. Mine was a little more well-done so we swapped plates. Now this is where the story goes straight downhill…

We went out for a drink (literally, one drink) and headed back to our lively hotel where we turned on CNN, turned off the light and went to bed.

At about 3:00 am…life went terribly wrong for this girl. I actually woke myself up because I was moaning. Yes. It was my first (and hopefully last) food poisoning experience in South America.

I spent quite a bit of time in that hoTel bathroom but that was definitely not the worst of it. Remember those 6 hours of winding roads that got us here to Tena? Turns out they are still winding and bumpy on the way back even with a plastic bag close at hand. Poor Andi just had to watch while I turned from ghost white to pale green. I just was on a rotation of wanting to throw up, wishing I was throwing up, or actually throwing up. Lovely, I know.

Even though there were some moments when I didn’t think I’d ever see my family or friends alive again, I have managed to pull through and have now held down two meals in a row and honestly feel like a new woman. It may be a while until I can look a rare steak in the face…or at least not one that only costs $5.50…but I have lived to tell the tale.

So, it was the best of times…it was the worst of times. Amazon Jungle…CHECK!

xoxo,
Debra