Day 6: Adventure in the Amazon Rainforest

Adventure, noun: an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity.

Yesterday, I had an adventure in the Amazon rainforest. Might as well start this entry with that punch line. In writing this I tried to leave out the parts that readers skip, but even then there is so much to say. 

The Amazon, the lungs of our planet. I couldn't tell you the origination of my love of the rainforest. In 2009 I could be found doing my study-abroad in Australia's Queensland rainforest, experiencing land leeches, cycads, huge spiders, and towering strangler figs. Planning my trip in Ecuador, at first I felt frustrated at how tricky it seemed to to get into the rainforest. But now I've decided that it SHOULD be difficult: let's preserve as much of this wonderful incomprehensible place as we can, by keeping out of it. It breaks my heart to think of all that biodiversity being lost, even by the minute. Humans want oil and plastic and beef and hamburgers and coffee and we're progressively devastating this incredible ecosystem. 

After all the David Attenborough and BBC and National Geographic and rainforest novels and imagining, this chronic slow build-up of anticipation for this revered and sacred place, I was actually going to be in it. At least a little bit in it, as much as I could manage without 8 hours of more bussing and boating. I'd done a lot of shopping around at the numerous tour agencies in Baños; all places offered the same menu: for $25 you got to do a little hike, feed some river fish, go tubing, and get your face painted by an indigenous tribe. The photos of groups of white people in adventure harnesses and the indigenous people posing stoically, it made me feel deeply uncomfortable at what I felt was cultural insensitivity. I just wanted to walk in the rainforest and learn about plants. I didn't want what seemed like this prepackaged experience. 

So I found a small eco-adventure company (Akangua) and tried their Wattsapp number posted on their webpage. Almost immediately someone returned my text, and we texted back and forth until 10pm one night. I decided their 1-day forest hike experience might be good for me. Much more expensive than the other generic "jungle tours", and a 4 hour bus ride away from Baños, but something I felt in my gut was a good choice when I read the reviews. 

I arrived at the tour office the morning of and met my guide, a Quechua man named Misael with a long ponytail and an eagle tattoo. I didn't know it at the time, but saying goodbye to him at the end of this day would be like ending a relationship. I was putting my life in his hands. You basically can't go into the Amazon without a guide: because getting lost and snakes and poisonous plants. He was carrying two pairs of rubber boots, one inner tube (?), and a machete. Together we boarded a hot and slow public bus. I liked this already, who needs a private air-conditioned van when buses go everywhere anyway. 

On the bus, Misael and I established that he had some English and I had some Spanish and that we would accept each other as we were, applying charades and experimental incorrect conjugations in each other's languages as needed. I also didn't know this at the time, but my Spanish would improve by about 180% by the end of the day. We taught each other words in our languages and made noises and molded our hands around the air to act out what was needed. He was quiet and introspective seeming, but answered me eagerly as soon as I began with, "una pregunta?" (I have a question?). 

After 20 minutes he asked the bus driver to stop, and we got off the bus at an anonymous place near a bridge. The bus drove off, leaving us on a boring empty road. No signs for trails, no wooden map boards. I followed my guide down into the river from the bridge. 

And it was like entering Wonderland. Or Oz. A different world. A feeling of peace and reverence descended around me, chirping and pipping and chorusing of creatures, rippling water singing over rocks. The sun was made dappled by the canopy and the air was still. Misael was silent and my sense of sacredness was magnified because I felt him manifesting it so deeply as well. 

Misael explained this place was a protected reserve, virgin rainforest, and that only a few guides knew their way around it. He put his finger to his lips in the international sign for "secret" and I felt so grateful to be here. 

I didn't really know what this day would bring, but arriving in this place I was able to cultivate an open appetite for whatever might happen. I put on my pair of rubber boots and followed Misael into the river. The huge glorious leaves draped over the water and he showed me which rocks would be slippery. So much can be communicated without understanding all the words. He produced for me a sturdy walking stick as well. This was all great, rock stepping in the Amazon! 

And then I noticed that Misael was walking unperturbed through a deeper part, his boots glugging up water and his pants capillarying it up his legs. I followed him dutifully, dreading the deluge of water into my boots, and in it gushed. After we forded out, he taught me the yoga move with bent knee and forward lean: Boot Dumping Pose. I asked him, "porque no sandales in el Rio?" And he said his mom and dad (who lived in the rainforest) used rubber boots, and all the indigenous folks use rubber boots, so that's what you do. Go fording along, all glugging, and then traipse around after with plastic marsh foot. 

But the frogs were singing and I was seeing leaves so varied and intricate I could only stare dumbly. Then Misael announced that it was time to change into my swimwear (which the Wattsapp person had told me I would need). The watery path ahead of us was deep and black now, passing through high rock walls, steep sides and impassable forest above. I was standing boot-deep in rio surrounded by impenetrable forest bank. In my awful Spanish I communicated that I couldn't really easily change in this situation, por favor?, if I had any hope of keeping my poor pantalones dry. He took his machete and wacked me some foot holds and a small changing room up on the muddy bank. 

After I climbed back down into the rio all suited up, he produced a big garbage bag to put our clothes and backpacks in. He took off his shirt, tied up the garbage bag, and set that inner tube--which had been with us this whole way--into the water. He sat himself in the tube, put the machete on his lap, the bag on top of that, and launched off through the long channel. I took a deep breath and applied myself, rubber boots and all, to swim behind him. Let me tell you: swimming with boots AND a walking pole is no small feat. But I grew up on Lake Ontario, thank you very much, and I was fine. 

After asking if I could swim, he warned me not to touch the banks and to stay in the middle. Because snakes and stinging plants. A tunnel of water thru an impassable mass of green. I simply cannot describe what all those leaves are like. As if you're used to a single plated serving but offered a full buffet. 

After we docked in a more shallow part of the river he padded around silently looking for rocks that people would use for face paint and cleansing rituals. Red, grey, white clays. He showed me how a certain tree makes a perfect paintbrush because of its porous wood. I made a painting on a rock. It felt as natural and sweetly consuming as playing in "Rockville" down by the lake when I was a kid. He had so much ancestral knowledge he told me about: river spirits, the rituals of the tribes, so many uses for so many plants, how his shaman father passed him all this. He took obvious satisfaction and care in weaving me a palm skirt to try on, like his mom would wear on special days. This took so much time, but I felt bad interrupting him, since he seemed to be relishing the motions of folding fronds over and across each other. So I just stood there and gazed into the magnificent canopy and reminded myself where I was. 

By this point I had become cold (who gets cold in a rainforest?!) and it was time to do more river traversing to move onwards. This time I motioned I was going to take a turn with that inner tube. Misael seemed a little surprised by this, but stacked me up with all our things as I planted my butt in the tube. I paddled easily along (thank you again, Lake Ontario) and watched as he started swimming and then floundering. Oh gad, did I take the tube of a man who cannot swim? But he reached down and pulled off those rubber boots and added them to my lap. Yeah, sure is tough swimming with those, right! 

Everyone arrived safely again on the bank and now the water path had become a land path: a little trail wandered narrowly through the impenetrable squall of green. 

There were flowers that looked like lips and the indigenous women of some groups wear them in their mouths for ceremonies. The balsawood tree all huge and super strong. The round seed with dimples and spikes used as a hairbrush. Smelling the leaves of a cinnamon tree, gawking at an orchid that had fallen off her perch onto the forest floor. Encountering heliconias so vibrant and impossible-seeming, as if someone had planted them ornamentally, dotting around the forest, but they were JUST GROWING THEIR LOCALLY ON THEIR OWN. 

Parrots clacked overheard, monkeys called from the distance and Misael called back to them, an electrically blue butterfly wafted past. He stopped me, machete in hand, to indicate a poisonous snake I couldn't see. An enormous black ant appeared without invitation on my hamstring, and without hesitating, my senses told me to flick it off. "Tengo una pregunta?" I said to Misael once I was clear, and pointed at the huge ant that was now kayaking on a leaf in the water. A conga ant, aka a bullet ant. He mimed chills and a headache and I googled later that I had had the honor of a visit from one of the most painfully venomous creatures on the planet (3 days of insurmountable pain). Horribly, bullet ants are used in initiation rituals for the warriors of some tribes. 

By this point it was 2 pm, and Misael had neither eaten nor had any water. Meanwhile, I needed to extract a snack from my bag and was working my way through my waterbottles. I was also grumpy from swamp foot. My physical needs contrasted with his total unperturbed nature and made it apparent how truly tough those humans are who live in the rainforest, or who grew up in it. I was very pale and sensitive and I felt enormous respect for this incredible forest and the indigenous people who can make their lives in it. For instance, some tribes don't even wear clothes, because clothes get wet and then don't dry. It is wet all the time. Skin dries. 

I don't even know how long we hiked, but we wove up and down and around among huge trees, vines as big as my leg, epiphytes, mosses, leaves shaped with fingers and bigger than a card table. We arrived damply above it all at a lookout point (don't even think lean-to with a picnic table), which was a little cleared area big enough for two people to sit on the forest floor. Misael produced the most delicious tuna-onion-celery sandwiches I have EVER eaten EVER, and some organic yuca chips made by a local indigenous group. The view was through thick air, over treetops, undulating green hill masses, heavy mist weighty. We sat in companionable silence and swatted bugs and ate and gazed. I loved how much this man obviously loved this forest. (There is another man back home for me, who has a similar love for the northern woods, and it is beautiful to witness.) 

We visited caves where parrots nested, and we walked more, and I learned about leaves for stomach upset, for labor pains, trees to make canoes. It was incredible how his people utilize the plants for every single need they have, and with respect, without tearing down the forest, but only taking what they need. 

Then we emerged into a clearing and I sensed a road. We clamboured down out of that incomprehensible world and plunked down at another bridge. We waited for a bus to take us back to town. I ate an apple from the Andes while Misael picked at his un-booted feet. The sun came out. "Sol", he said simply, and we sat and sauna'd together in silence. After some time I was grateful for a bus to come busting past. 

And with that, my rainforest adventure was finished. I nearly fell asleep on the bus, muddy and stinky and damp and bug-bitten and wowwed beyond words. I felt so incredibly honored and grateful to have had this day.  

The clunky city bus arrived into town and I barely had enough turn-around time to catch a fancier bus for the wretched 4 hour ride back to Baños. I said a rushed and somehow also profound goodbye to Misael. What an amazing person, so much knowledge, so quietly caring of me, all while probably being rather surprised at all the Needs I had. 

What would have been deliciously attractive would have been a hot shower, a toilet, a nice drink, and an industrial washing machine. Instead, I squished myself into a groty bus terminal bathroom, still wearing what had become sopping shoes (I gave up on the boots after a while), then went charging to the bus terminal. The bus I wanted had just left. Why the one time I was 2 minutes late, the bus was actually leaving when it was supposed to? There was an enterprising man trying to sell me a ticket for a bus a full hour later, but I wanted to get to my destination with as little festering around as possible. Plus, from previous experience, I had gotten smart about enterprising competing companies, leaving times, and plasticity of drivers. So I went charging wetly across the parking lot and into the street and found the bus barely slowing to have a large package put underneath. I called out "Baños?" to the driver and he waved me on. I felt resourceful and pleased, and took a seat. Silently apologizing to everyone around me, I pulled off my wet footwear. I quarantined my muddy saturated shoes and my spongy socks with my damp pantalones in what was now a truly baneful bag. 

Soon the aisle became packed with others getting on as I had, and as the bus rolled back and forth all packed, black hair fell in my face and a pink backpack shuffled against my shoulder. A girl's sneeze landed on my arm. Then a man in a collared shirt pointed at my seat; he had bought a ticket and had this seat. So I joined the standers. I was able to bolster myself by placing my feet widely and resting my lower back against a squishy seat side. It wasn't bad actually, and everyone seemed used to being on top of each other. I perfected a move also, called the Squeeze-Past; someone would come up the aisle getting on or off and I would pull my backpack up over a seat back, avoiding the sitter therein, and flatten myself facing away from the oncoming human, which seemed nicer than sliding face-to-chest (yes I am that tall around here). This happened a lot and I rather perfected this move. Who knew what skills I would learn to intuit out in this world? 

Rainforest packed with tree species and bus packed with humans. What a day. 

View from the lookout place.

Almost unbelievable, heliconias grow as if someone had planted them intentionally here, but no they are just wild and here on their own.

This fantastical flower, the women of some tribes will wear it in their mouths like fun fake lips.

Gazing upward.

This tree will literally "walk" a couple meters across the forest because it puts out new roots and can shift places in this way.

Misael carrying that inner tube thru the boot-glugging rio.