BACK FROM VACATIONS

Our cabin, #8 right by the pool. It was nice, but had a bat in it!

Flor de Canela Resort. Puyo, Ecuador

As you know, Joe went on a rafting mancation deep in the jungle more than seven hours away from Tena. When he got back (bruised, bleeding, mosquito-bit and sunburnt), he Google earthed to show me where he had been: about half hour from the border of Peru and a 3 day hike from any close civilization. He had been gone four nights and five days without any creature comforts such as electricity, a toilet, a shower, real food, or Fantasy Football updates. Below, Joe outlines the highlights of his trip:

Me: "So, Joe, give us the ten biggest highlights of your trip".

Joe: "Uh...just ten?! Hmmmmm...".

1. Being launched out of the raft five feet into the air before splashing down and being sucked under the current close to a rock wall and then being trapped under the raft when I tried to resurface.
2. Seeing bats fly a foot from  my face during the day, wild parrots fly overhead, huge kingfishers, and an osprey.
3. Sharing sips of rum and coke out of an old gallon-size water bottle with  eleven other guys.
4. Drinking fermented chicha in a native Shuar indian's lean-to shack with his family.
5. Jumping out of the raft and free-riding a wave chain of 6ft waves without getting eaten by a boa constrictor.
6. Camping in a 400 ft tall canyon during a violent rainstorm that threatened to overflow the river and sweep us all away.
7. Camping under skies so clear, unpolluted, and dark I could see an astroid belt and cosmic dust as if I could reach out and touch it.
8. Laughing at Tim's mancation motto: "What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas" although we were worlds away from any kind of city at all.
9. Learning how to do an Eskimo roll in Pancho's kayak.
10. Being part of the documentary that the tour group was filming.

So there you have it: Joe's top ten.  I'm just glad he survived it to tell the story.

Anyway, after seeing his great pictures and bandaging up his battle wounds, I packed up and left for my much-needed vacation. Joe was too tired to come with us and also had to work. So my friend and I took our kids to a resort in Puyo, a 2 hour bus ride away. It was nice, but I don't have ten highlights about it. I'm not sure I have three. Add to that, it was overpriced and the jacuzzis didn't even have water in them. The best part was when we turned off the lights in our cabin. A bat flew over our heads and in a matter of seconds, all four of us were in the same bed screaming each time we thought we heard flapping.

After a night in the 2 star resort, my friend and I parted ways. I wanted to continue our adventure in some cabins on the river Piatua in Santa Clara that I had heard about and she wanted to sleep in her own bed after the crazy night with Dracula we had just survived. In the end, I realize I should have just gone home with her. My "adventure" consisted of eating a liver and rice lunch at a roadside hut, wading in a river that I had to cross a swamp in my flip-flops to get to, hardly sleeping in a cabin full of jungle roaches that crawled on the walls above my head all night, and waiting an hour the next morning for the bus to hurry up and get us the heck out of there. Carlie wanted to go home too. She was freaked out by the large green parrots in the trees overhead that had listened to our conversations and memorized them. Soon we heard "Hola, Carlie. Hola!! Hola, Carlita, come on. Come here." That, and the fact that the owner had no breakfast to offer us, and we were ready to go home even if it meant by foot. Just FYI, so you can avoid our same miserable experience, it was called Finca Don Napo.

So now that we are back from vacations, we are back to normal jungle life. Life here is now just as routine as it ever was for me back in NC.  However, our friend from the States is visiting us in 2.5 weeks and we'll kind of be on vacation again. We'd like to take him to Papallacta and Banos. We'll see...

By the way, Tena has gotten a new restaurant. It's a Mexican place serving decent chimichangas and  awesome frozen lemon margaritas. Trust me, it's way more fun to eat there than to be on vacation.


 

LONG AWAITED

Here is the long-awaited blog  post about our new life here in Tena, Ecuador. And yet the title also signifies finally begining the long-awaited life we've been wanting since our return to the States in 2008. This post is dedicated to the friends and family I miss so much and wish I could fly (and bus) them here to see what all the fuss is about.

Day 1:
Our hostel provided a private van ride from Quito to Tena. It takes four hours to get to Tena because it's downhill, but five back to Quito. We passed through the outskirts of Quito, the capital of the country, and whizzed passed farms and random llamas. Soon we were in the middle of Mars-like terrain passing nothing but silent paramo grasses and an occasional waterfall. Noone in the van talked, as if our passing up and down these mountains was some kind of sacred pilgrimage not to be disgraced by chit-chat. Over the following mountain we arrived at other pueblos, some with one lone stop-light for the 5 people who live there. (none of whom own a car!) At each pueblo, Joe's face read, "I hope this isn't Tena. I hope this isn't Tena..." Carlie slept most of the way. On the decent of the last mountain before Tena, thick fog lay on our van like a velvet cloak. We had to crawl around steep curves and prayed that we were on the correct side of the road. Sometimes bamboo would jut out through a cloud and over the windshield, knocked over by a previous rainstorm, or we'd drive through an impromptu stream. I began to peel off some of the layers I was wearing. The fog lifted. Palm trees and sandal-wearing locals surounded us.We finally made it to Tena. "So this is Tena," Joe said with a hint of delight in his voice.

Week 1:
For the first week we lived with Jessamyn & Aedyn, a friend of mine and her son, in their home. We slept on the bottom bunk, Carlie slept on the top, and all our luggage slept in the third bedroom. Every night that week while getting dressed for bed we'd run across a huge roach the length of a No. 2 pencil and every morning while relaxing in her hammock on the front porch, we'd spot a tarantula in the grass. The "culture shock" really came when we'd help Jessamyn prepare a meal and have to try to keep tiny ant-like spiders out of the pots and pans as we cooked, or the bigger black ants out of the scraps of food left on our plates. But worse than the bugs was the heat. Never in our lives have we experienced such heat and humidity without any relief from some minutes of AC. Even when we've visited places throughout the Carribean and Mexico, at least we've had an air-conditined lair to return to after hanging out all day at the pool or beach. Tena is the Carribean minus the AC for tourists and, of course, the beach. One morning I checked an online weather website. It was 9am and 101 degrees. And just when you think you can't take the heat anymore and you're about to slit your throat in delerium, a violent thunderstorm will swoop down from the surrounding mountains and cool things off by no less than 20 degrees. Still, daily life in "only" 85 degree weather with no AC, having to walk to the grocery store that's a good 3 miles away and carry all your goods back on foot if you don't have the extra money for a taxi is no picnic for someone used to a two minute air-conditioned drive to Trader Joe's. Near the end of week one, we were all often in companionship of Jessamyn's toilet and I was crying myself to sleep from lonliness. I missed my friends, my family, "normal" food and every convenience under the sun. "These locals have no idea how hard they have it", I pondered. "I think I hate it here", I told Joe. At this point, the only positive thing I could name about living here was that we had lost some weight. Then came Sunday.

Sunday:
We were introduced by Jessamyn to Gary and Eleanor, a couple who moved here from Ireland 18 years ago with their four young kids. Now empty-nesters, they invited us to their lovely home for a gourmet meal , complete with orange-liquour poundcake, outside under a grass-thatched roof. It was 96 degrees in the shade, but as I sipped on the lime-flavored tea, I felt myself not caring so much. Afterwards, a few other friends including a couple of children Carlie's age, piled into Gary's van and they drove us to a spot on the river that's clean and paradise-like. There was about 20 of us in all and we swam the rest of the afternoon under waterfalls and in currents so cold it took my breath away. Carlie had fun learning Spanish with her new Ecuadorian friends and jumping off of rocks into her daddy's awaiting arms. At one point I took her aside and we sat on a rock together looking off into the dense green distance. "We live in the Amazon now," I whispered as I held her wet hand. She simply nodded without even looking at me, as if we've lived here her whole life and I'm dumb enough to just now realize that. She dove back into the water to collect rocks with her new friends and left me alone staring at the flaming sunset over the jungle trees. "It's not so bad here," I thought.

Week two:
By the middle of week two we had found our own home, moved in, and had begun to make it our own. Carlie hung a hand-painted poster on her wall, I folded all my new yellow dish-towels, Joe cleaned out and refilled our landlord's above-ground pool. The days were still hot and hard, but the evenings balanced it out with trips to the local public pool (complete with slides and wooden diving boards) with Aedyn and Jessamyn or our new favorite outdoor restaurant, Iguana, for cheeseburgers and a cold beer. I was crying less, missing NC less, and even making more friends. "I love it here," Joe blurted out one morning as we drank coffee on the balcony off our bedroom. (where I'm still sitting now as I type this) Two parrots and a hummingbird flew by. "It's not so bad," I answered.

Week 3:

It's almost week three. It's still crazy hot, bugs still come in and out of our house like they pay the rent, the food in general is still pretty gross and our feet are constantly dirty from walking in the streets thick with river dust and mud. But today, Sunday, we were invited to another lunch with our other new friends Rita and Woody from Florida. Through them, we met 11 other new friends. Among them was Abbey, the daughter of Gary and Eleanor, who is now a 28 year old adult. She speaks perfect Spanish and guides tourists on river rafting trips. She helped Rita serve the chicken over rice as she told Carlie her adventures of growing up as an Irish blonde girl in the Amazon 18 years ago; stories of being pushed off cliffs into the rivers below  by her two brothers or how she went to public school here and learned to love lemons stuffed with salt as an after-school snack or about the pet monkey named Elvis they once had but had to give away because he kept eating all the family's food out of the fridge.(Elvis finally kicked the bucket when he accidentally ate poison) Then she told us how she earns extra money, working as a kayak guide in western Canada once a year. Of course this led to more stories about confrontations in her trailor with moose, bear and wild squirrles. Carlie's eyes were wide and she hung on Abbey's every word. "I really like it here, " Carlie finally admitted on the twenty minute walk home, dodging huge cracks in the broken sidewalk and dog poop.

 On the corner, I flagged down a taxi and took it to Jessamyn's house. We can't afford a washing machine, so she's been letting me do laundery at her house and I needed to go pick it up. When I arrived, Jessamyn was just awaking from her afternoon siesta and Aedyn was Skyping his grandpa who is coming to visit tomorrow from the States. The afternoon sun was hot, but not unbearable as I gathered my laundry off the line. "I like your capris", Jessamyn said as she handed me a cool glass of water. I looked down and realized I had worn basically pants in 90 degree weather to Rita and Woody's and now, getting my clothes off the line in the sun, I still was not too hot. I guess I'm starting to get accustomed to being baked alive. She handed me her house keys. We'll be house-sitting for her while she's touring her dad around Ecuador next week. Jess is my first really good friend here. She's really helped me to endure these first few hard weeks and I couldn't have done it without her. I picked up my huge laundery basket, about as tall as I am, and walked about a half-mile up the road carrying it in the evening sun so as to catch a taxi on the main road back to our place. My taxi driver was impressed when I told him I was from the States, (just seven hours south of New York City) but that I've now made Tena my home. "Por que?" (why?) he asked with amusement watching me hold my laundry basket in my lap to avoid it tipping out. "Because I love it here", I answered back in his language. The words just popped out before I could help myself! And then I realized I meant it.

And so there it is. We've lived in Tena, Ecuador just three short weeks and we've already fallen in love with a place that has more cons than pros. I'm not sure how that happened, but I feel blessed that it did.