EUROPEAN MODELS AND A MYSTERY HORSE

    Sunday evening after returning from visiting new friends in Archidona I passed by Jens, the German owner of the company which I did my 5 hour jungle tour. He asked me how I was enjoying my stay in the Tena area. I told him how fun it´s been and how beautiful the trees and rivers are here. He told me I haven´t seen anything yet-- just the run-of-the-mill stuff that is quickly becoming polluted and ruined by tourists and unsanitary habits of the locals. Oooook....But it was still pretty, I said.    For $15, he said, he could take me to a place where no tourists has gone before, an indiginous community where he sends only volunteer European college students to help with reforestation projects. It is an area closed off to tourists, for now anyway. He said the volunteers were going up the mountain tomorrow at 9am and if I´d like to join I could. I quickly forked over the $15 and went straight to bed to rest up for another adventurous day ahead of me.
       I was just sinching up my belt at 8:30am when the phone buzzed in my hostel room. It was Guido, the hostel owner calling to inform me that my ride was already here. He had gotten there too early and in my rush to leave, I forgot my camera and bathing suit in the room. My driver´s name was George, and older Kichwa man in a Yankees baseball cap who was very enthusiastic about teaching me some Kichwa words. We drove 20 minutes up the mountain and then stopped to pick up the 6 volunteers--5 girls and one guy. They were all about 21, from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and all looked like Abercrombie models. One girl in particular named Julia, looked like Angelina Joile with long dark hair, a butterfly tattoo on her neck near her left ear, and a grey tank top on that showed off her killer body. I was extremely glad at that point that I had forgotten my swimsuit.  
                     You can just borrow my other bikini, she said. 
So....nice of her. I wanted to hate her for her beauty, but she was just as kind as she was gorgeous. 
                 You can borrow my camera too and I´ll email you the pictures, she said as she licked her perfectly natural pink lips.
      We drove for another hour up winding dirt paths as George the driver cranked up the tunes through his USB such as Def Leopard, Stone Temple Pilots, and Bob Marley. We had fun singing the words in ENGLISH! Our last stop was to pick up our jungle chef, Karen and her 6 yr old daughter Kelle, and my personal guide, Oswaldo. We then were about to go over a long wooden bridge that swung above the wide river. George made us all get out of the truck while he drove and we walked over it. He thought with all the weight we might snap the bridge in half. On the other side, Jens and George dropped us all off in the middle of nowhere with huge bags of food and supplies and said they´d pick me and Oswaldo back up at 4:30. The volunteers and the cook would be staying the night in the jungle in some simple cabins Jens had built up there. Up there....somewhere... I could see nothing but dense jungle on all sides of me. I had to go to the bathroom...
          Oswaldo put some of the heavier supplies on his horse. (I´m not sure where the mystery horse came from but I´m sure he wasn´t in our truck) The male volunteer, Jaques, took the heavy bag of bananas from my hands and he carried it for me. I´m pretty sure I forgot to say thank you. He was just as good-looking as Julia with spikey blonde hair and emerald green eyes. Ready to go, we began what would be an hour and a half hike into virgin forests. Within minutes all the young European volunteers had passed me by a mile. Oswaldo had passed all of us on his mystery horse. Kelle, the 6 yr old, kept running circles around me showing me where to step around the thick black jungle mud. Karen the chef would stop and pretend to breath hard with me when I kept having to stop because I couldn´t breath for real. It was a humid strenuous hike, mostly uphill with so much mud at one point it sucked in my rubber boot like Jello going down a garbage disposal. The 6 yr old pulled me out.  Kelle and Karen the Chef  were no newbies. Karen had lived here in this jungle with her Kichwa family her whole life and when it came time to cross the knee-deep river during our hike she picked up Kelle like she was a parrot feather on one hip while she had cooking supplies on her other hip. They had made it to the other side already while I was still on the other putting one toe in to test the current first.
              Around noon or so we FINALLY made it to the small clearing of cabins. Oswaldo and the European models were aleady there laying in hammocks with their shoes off playing the guitar. When they saw me they all cheered for me and told me I could wash the sweat off in the cold clear creek nearby. They said Jens had told them the water was so clean up here it was safe for drinking since few humans live in the area. I washed my face, my hair, and took a few licks of the water. It was indeed clean tasting and sweet. But I didn´t drink too much. Americans always play it safe, I thought. What if this river water gives me the runs?
                 Just as I had pulled my socks off and was cooling down a bit, Oswaldo grabbed my hand and told me Jens had put him in charge of me while the volunteers worked. The volunteer´s work consisted of reading books in the hammock, playing cards, and smoking a couple cigarettes. I, on the other hand, was forced to hike some more  being shown every leaf and seed in the jungle and what their medicinal properties are. I wanted to strangle both myself and Oswaldo. I could feel the trees, mud, and vines smothering me. I wanted so bad just to swim in the river, even if I had to wear Julia´s tiny bikini. An hour passed and as Oswaldo was trying to interest me with stories of his Uncle, poisonous jungle animals,  and Shaman ritutals, I rudely blurted out it was time to eat lunch. Seriously.
       When we got back the European models were almost done eating lunch. They laughed at my sweaty, haggard appearance and fixed a plate for me. Jaques poured my juice. I´m sure I forgot to say thank you. After practicing our Spanish together and Karen fixing us coffee, we headed to the cabins to change into swimwear. Julia handed me a rainbow striped string she called a bikini. I stood in the darkest corner I could find and put it on while her and Farhina changed into other, smaller bikinis. I kept my tank-top on over mine. We grabbed towels and our rubber boots and hiked 5 minutes further to the large part of the rushing river. 
          The water was freezing cold but felt good in the sticky heat of the jungle. There was no way to ease into it like the pool at the Country Club. The current would knock you down without hesitation and sweep you into areas where it seemed bottomless. There was no way I´d be doing this unless I was with a group of people--- Americans always play it safe, I thought, as Jaques did a Greg Loughanis-style back-flip off a large rock into the crystal clear water below. I finally got the courage to go down a slippery natural rock waterslide---three times. Julia took pictures of me. I was smiling at her as much as I was shaking. It was great.
      All too soon, it was time to give the bikini back, exchange email addresses, and hike the hour and a half back to the main road where Jens and George would hopefully be waiting to drive us back to Tena. Just me and Oswaldo would be going back.  The European models gathered candles and matches while I was pulling on my heavy boots. It would be very dark soon and it´s all the light they would have.  
            Five minutes into the hike Oswaldo determined I was walking way too slow for his taste and he opted for us to ride the mystery horse. It was waiting for us, tied to a random tree. At first Oswaldo assumed I was going to ride it alone and he would walk behind me. But he read the pure fear on my face and decided to ride with me.  When the horse would get to trotting too fast on the muddy cliffsides and I would scream a bit under my breath and shut my eyes, but 40 minutes into the ride I was an old pro. We rode through clouds of butterflies and through clearings of palm  and cocoa trees. The sun was filtering though the greenery and skipping on splashes of the river below us. At that moment I thought I could never be afraid of anything else ever again. I had conquered all my worst fears, from drowning in roaring rapids to riding untamed wild horses to being inches away from a boa constrictor. I let out a laugh in the face of danger as a touched a spider web that we gallopped under. Oswaldo laughed too.