Sometimes the jungle just calls

The jungle was calling me.  I don't have any other answer for why I went there other than that it was calling me and I felt like I didn't really have a say but to just go with it.  There were these really calm, friendly, unassuming guys in Ayampe for a few days that I had met and they had invited me to their home in the jungle.  They were about my age, 2 brothers, and raised as Shamans.  Destined to be Shamans, as their father, grandfather, great...and so on were medicine men of the plants.  They're indigenous people and live in 'no-mans' land in the jungle on the border of Colombia & Ecuador.  When they told me they lived close to Colombia, I had no idea that they lived on a river that IS the border of Colombia & Ecuador and you could row their canoe to the other side and technically be in the other country.  After they invited me to come see the way they live, I felt like it was a good opportunity to go stay with a family and learn something from them or about myself or at least have an experience.  So I agreed to meet them at the bus terminal in Guayaquil when they were planning to make the journey back to the jungle.  I had no idea where we were going or anything and had only talked to them once and then they were gone out of Ayampe.  But I just felt like I should go so I called them and then went to meet them.  When I got to the Guayaquil bus terminal I found Norman, the shaman, and he had me buy my bus ticket for a town called Lago Agrio.  He said it'd be a nice bus but his definition of 'nice' and mine are, uhm, different.  The bus had no A/C and I was seated next to a guy who didn't want to open the window even though there was no air and it had to be 90 degrees outside.  This bus ride took 21 hours.  I wasn't really ready for that and the night part of it was climbing over the Andes mountains swinging back and forth and back and forth around windy roads while trying to sleep and the seats leaned back about 2 inches.  It was a sleepless night passing the mountains until we climbed them and headed down into the hot jungle.  We got off the bus after 21 hours, tired and hot, and had one hour to go find some food for breakfast and buy some snacks that I might want since I wasn't going to be in control of food, I was planning to eat what they ate.  We then got on another bus, this one was only 5 hours long.  I didn't really think much about my visa status, which was expired and I was illegal, when we left on the trip.  I didn't realize that we were literally going into a part of the country that was left for the Indigenous so on this 5 hour bus ride we had to stop at 4 military checkpoints and I had to get off the bus and show my passport, which I kept saying I couldn't find but I had other forms of identification.  The men in army gear and giant automatic weapons let me pass after I signed into a few log books and they accepted my drivers license as ID, thankfully.  Then the bus arrived at a river and we had to take a small ferry across that fit the bus and a truck.  We then continued down the dirt road bouncing along and sweating until we arrived a tiny little town on another river.  The Putumayo river they told me it's called.  I went to a store, also just someones house. to buy some water and they charged me in pesos, Colombian pesos, which I didn't have because I thought we were in Ecuador.
Next part of the journey was to get in a canoe and go up the river a ways until we landed on a muddy bank.  Then we put on our rubber boots, grabbed the bags, the giant sack of rice and proceed to walk into the jungle.  I had no idea where we were or where we were going but it was really hot and lush greenery.  We navigated over small pieces of wood as they went through giant puddles of water and bamboo 'bridges' until 20 minutes or so later we arrived at a house on stilts.  The travel was over and I was exhausted, it took us 30 hours to get there from the time we met up and that doesn't count the 3 hour ride I had to take to get from Ayampe to Guayaquil to meet them.

The entire family was there and lived together.  Grandma & grandpa, the 2 brothers and one had a wife, their sister and her husband and some little kids.  There were also about 30 chickens running around, dogs, a cat, some cows and a horse.  They opened their doors, which they didn't technically have, with kind smiles and welcomed me like family.  I put my bags down in the 'living' room and set up my hammock, which would be my bed for the next week.  I was exhausted from the trip but the guys I traveled with just began doing work and making food right away.  They seemed energized and un-phased by the 30 hour journey.  I spent the day lounging while my new family made a big pot of rice, plantains & yuca.  That would be my breakfast and dinner for the next week, more or less.  Along with some crackers and granola bars I brought.
On the second day I swam in the river and bathed in the river.  It was muddy and dark but nice to be in anyway.  The kids all bathed in there, all of us soaping up and cleaning ourselves in brown muddy river water.  It felt good to get 'clean'.
The water we drank was collected rainwater and the food we ate was grown in the area.  That evening we were preparing to go to a sacred location called "La Maloca" to do a spiritual ceremony with the elders of the region.  So at 8:30pm we put on mud boots, packed a few things, grabbed the hammocks and proceded to hike into the jungle.  After 20 minutes of hiking we arrived at a nicely built wooden hut.  It had paintings all over it that were done by people from around there and all based on visions they've seen.

The elders were already there when we got there, they had some wood/bark burning under the Maloca, which was acting as mosquito repellent (and working).  There was a fire on the side of the hut and they were lounging in hammocks.  I set up my hammock and got myself situated and comfortable.
It was about 9 or 9:30 when explosions sounded, not too far away.  Then again 'BOOM' a little closer and then again closer.  The Shamans said that was over in Colombia, not too worry.  It kept happening, each time a little closer.  And though Colombia was on the other side of the river, I couldn't help but think that all one would need was a small boat and then Colombia guerilla could be on this side of the river.  Anyway it was out of my control at that point, it was dark and I was in the jungle and wouldn't have had a clue where to run or what to do so I just sat there listening to the explosions from the jungles of Colombia get closer and closer.
The smoke was rising from the burning wood below the hut and the Shamans were relaxed and chatting while we waited for the right time to start the ceremony, which for some reason was 10pm.  I don't know how anyone knew it was 10 because I didn't see anyone wearing a watch.  But that is what they said.  A little while later the Shamans, the 2 elders and the 2 brothers, started to put on their dressings - sacred bead necklace things, different clothes, head dressings of bright colored feathers, and the leader smoking a hand rolled tobacco cigarette.  They said blessings, thanking the mother earth and all its creations.  They took turns each giving more thanks and blessings and calling for good spirits and positive energy.  They rattled their leaves and played some music.  The elder leading the ceremony chanted a bit in a foreign language, which I believe he called Siona.  I swayed in my hammock and then he called my name first "senior Yessi" and I walked up to the scene they had created with candles, smoke, the rattling leaves, the beads that sound like rain-sticks, etc.  The Shaman handed me a pottery like small cup filled with a dark brown liquid, I drank it down and it tasted bitter and not pleasant.  I walked back to my hammock and I got this feeling of "uh oh, I'm pretty sure I'm going to throw up in the near future."  I sat upright for a while and felt the liquid fall down my chest and spread down my digestive track.  I laid back in my hammock and sat there with my eyes closed, dozing off a bit as it was late at night and I was tired.  Thats when the worst torrential rain I've ever witnessed moved in on us and along with it came bright flashing lightning and extremely loud thunder.  The rain was getting heavier and the thunder louder, the lightning closer.  It started to seem like there was no way this little open air hut was going to be able to endure this much rain and that we'd be washed away.  The shaman walked by and said mother earth is responding to the bombs and making them stop.  It worked, these bombs of thunder made those other ones seem minor.  The storm was so intense and scary, it felt like a waterfall was falling on our hut and the sky was constantly flashing.  Some time later I jumped up out of my hammock and stumbled to the stairs and realized I couldn't walk out in that rain so slid over and I grabbed the rail and hung my upper body over it and started to vomit.  Over and over and over again until there was nothing left but bile and then a million more times dry heaving.  Thats when the journey really began....

 

Still always the same

Yesterday I drove out of Guayaquil, on a busy Saturday passing police checkpoints, forgetting that my visa had expired the day before.  I felt like I was in the USA when we started the day.  We picked up our trooper and went to MegaMaxi in the city, which essentially an Ecuadorian Walmart, went shopping around, ate some fairly crappy Dominoes pizza and took off driving for the coast.  It felt pretty normal compared to our travel day on Friday where our plane decided to fly to land in Quito rather than Guayaquil and not actually tell us.  We were flying back from the Galapagos islands and meant to fly from the island of San Cristobal to hot port city of Guayaquil, where I had left my truck parked for 2 weeks.  We looked out the window of the plane after 2 hours of flying and saw snow peaked mountains and a volcano that was clearly not the surrounding area of Guayaquil.  We looked at our tickets wondering if we got on the wrong plane.  Our tickets said GYE and we were in the exit row so we were sure this flight was ours.  But they brought us to Quito, which is in the andes mountains and about 12 hours of bus time away from Guayaquil.  It's also cold in Quito and I had on hot Galapagos clothes only - tank top & boardies.  They just told us to get off on the tarmac and go get our bags, hey even said welcome to Quito so it wasn't a mistake.  We went inside the building to baggage claim and the guy working for the airline had no idea that we had rerouted and got blindsided by an angry mob of Ecuadorians.  AeroGal, the domestic airline, took no responsibility for peoples problems, including a guy from Denmark who just missed his international flight and other connections, they just reluctantly after hours of screaming gave us meal vouchers and a new flight to Guayaquil.  I tried to help translate and argue for the Danish guy but in the end they said it wasn't their problem or fault.  A 2 hour flight turned into a 12 journey and an overnight stay in Guayaquil.  So we drove out of Guayaquil with our truck filled with too much stuff from boards to bags, guitar, groceries and started making our way when we passed checkpoints and didn't get ask and I thought I'd get my passport out since it was tucked in my bag in the bag.  I got it out and started my routine; emptied my wallet of money except 3-6 dollars, get a copy of the title of the car ready and my drivers license.  Then it dawned on me that my visa had expired so having my passport available was a bad idea.   So I repacked the passport and got a copy of  the ID page out instead.  We were ready in case anyone tried to hassle but I lost my sense of confidence and security a bit knowing that I had let my 3 month Visa expire and now driving around on a busy Saturday during the summer when everyone drives out of the city and to the beaches for the weekend.  I sort of drifted back into the state of that same driving traveler I was before, aware of my surroundings and prepared for police questioning.  The reason my visa had expired is the laws here have changed and getting an extension requires 3 days of lines, paperwork, copies and small bribes.  I know this world too well and those are stressful days with focused aggressive strategy of finding your way through a non-sensical process and digging for answers on how to get more time in your passport.  Now their policy is if you overstay, they don't fine you and you just get expelled from the country for 6 months but even that is negociable on your way back in.  So I took the risk and realized driving back that things were different now and I'd prefer not to have to show my passport while in my truck.  The police in Ecuador were really easy back when I drove down here in my truck from California.  They rarely stopped and asked me anything then so I knew that was probably the case now with an Ecuadorian car.    The driving is agressive here so you find yourself doing illegal takeovers around buses and slow trucks right in front of police who positioned ahead up the road but you can't see them.  Luckily they never hassled us.  I was ready but we never got flagged over for even a question on the 3 hour drive, we were waved through or never stopped and made it back to Ayampe.

We had to find somewhere to sleep, which proved a bit difficult on a busy Saturday, but we finally got ourselves into a house with a friendly Colombian family.   We were invited to a going away dinner for a guy who's been around for a few months but we decided to go eat at another spot and avoid the gang for the evening.  Its weird, Ayampe is a really small town with maybe 8 different hostal type places to sleep in and about 5 places to eat but somehow I felt like I was in this bizzaro world last night.  It was like we shifted the universe, and instead of seeing the regular people there was another group of gringos that was identical to the other one and talking about all the same small town things - land ownership, who's doing what, potential development - and these people knew all of my friends and all the neighbors and tried to speak spanish and integrate in the community and all that but I didn't know them and hadn't seen them before.  The one guy there was also having a going away party for also being here for 3 months but I'd never seen him and I too have been here for that long.  I sort of listened, or eavesdrop, to this guy talking about everyone I know in this small 2 street dirt road town of the gringo/business side of Ayampe but I didn't know him.  He was talking about how this place effected him, and how he sort of had local family now and didn't want development of this hotel or that.  And then there was a local surf guide with a swedish girlfriend and they were the same just like our friends that come through here that is a local surf guide and norwegian girlfriend.  It was seinfields bizzaro world for me in this tiny oasis bubble.  I sat through the entire dinner hearing the same exact conversation that would surely be happening with the other group at the other place, it was weird.  Small towns are strange but it hit me that there is always another me turning up.  And another and another.  There's a traveling guy, trying to speak the language, getting to know everything about the area and surfing and trying to integrate into the community.  I've gone much deeper than a 3 month traveler but there are these other drifters.  I've spent years trying to think like people here and speak like people here and even live like them.  I've gone around town getting fish soup every sunday for all the months i've been here, I go get it at 630am when everyone is starting the day with soup and beer for  the men.  I've been coaxed into drinking some beer with the men at that time.  Its rude to turn down the offer, I try my hardest to not make eye contact or greet everyone but its not possible.  They pour me a shot of beer, or a little bit bigger than a shot of beer and then pour the next one for the next guy and keep doing that.  Drinking out of one glass, sharing a big beer....the beers here are like 22 ounces big bottles and nobody drinks from the bottle - except gringos.  Anyways I've immersed myself into the culture and I know the body movements, the little funny calls or gestures people do, I know the local slang words and greetings, I have local families like this one that makes fish soup that I just go walk right into their kitchen and hang out.  They smile at me a lot, wondering what it is I'm really doing here living far away from my family.  And no matter how much I change or adapt or integrate, I'm still in the end just another foreign white guy that probably has a billion dollars.  Each new person I meet still sees me the exact as any other traveler, just another gringo with endless money that is traveling far away from their families.  Its always the same, I always meet someone new and try to put on my performance letting them know I'm like them, I speak and act like them, but they just look at me and see the person I really am - an American tourist.

Christmas without marketing

Ready to eat Christmas BBQ 

Christmas Sunset

Chef Home-boy-yar-dee

I'm falling behind on blogs but here goes more on life in Ecuador.  Christmas was something that almost came and went unnoticed.  Its not that they don't celebrate Christmas but being that everyday was a sweltering heat and a 'normal' day down here with no TV and no sales pitches and no kids asking for xbox or iPads it just seemed like another day at the beach in Ecuador.  The ONLY difference was when I went to the tienda (little store) in town they had one string of Christmas lights and it repeated the same tune over and over again all day and night.  I asked the family if the tune was driving them crazy and they said "huh?" as if they didn't even notice it.  The tienda is also their house.  Come Christmas eve and down the road in our town a crew of guys starting building a stage and some tarps covering from one side of the dirt road to the other.   I noticed when I was on my bike looking for some fruits to buy and asked them what was going on and they said it was the town fiesta and I should come by.  So later on Christmas eve night I grabbed some friends and we walked down to see what was going on.  There was a Dj there who was playing music and trying to talk everyone into dancing.  We got there around 10pm and it was like a typical dance where everyone was sitting around looking at each other and nobody dancing.  Guys drinking beers and girls all dressed up.  The families in their entirety where there and everyone looked their best.  Us gringos stood out like sore thumbs and we immediately got called out by the Dj or  deeyay as they pronounce it.  Sure enough as it got closer to Midnight people started dancing.  We joined in and got greeted with stares and smiles and danced for as long as we could until we tired.  Apparently the locals stayed all night because when I woke up early Christmas morning I could here the music still playing.  Christmas day for us wasn't much of a gift exchange other than me riding around the area and collecting flowers for Verity and her giving me some chocolates.  Pretty basic and I wondered if I was back home if I would still have a girlfriend after not buying anything.  Luckily she nor I really thought much about gifts because there isn't much to buy where we are.  We threw a bbq on Christmas day and I made an Ecuadorian version of moms Magic Cookie bar and we had a big group of travelers and friends come by to eat some food.  It wasn't a classic meal but burgers and fish on the grill and some potluck items all seemed to taste real good to us. I think Christmas was so unlike christmas that it made it easier to be away from home than say if I was just in California.  It sure was nice not to be blasted by marketing every day all day leading up to Christmas.

A week later and we had New Years come up quickly and there seemed to be more going on in prep for NYE.  Here in Ecuador they have these paper-mache' dolls or characters all over the place that people are making and buying.  Everyone got these funny things which were all parts of characters of movies from the year or anything really and they told me that at midnight they would burn them as a symbol of a year ending and the starting of a new year.  We decided to go to a nearby popular tourist town called Montañita for the day and saw lots of guys dressed as women and boys dressed as old ladies.  I asked what was up with this and they said that guys dress like widows and go asking for money to all the other locals.  I couldn't quite understand why, but its a tradition here

In Ayampe, our small little town, there was a party on the beach with music, dancing, bon fire and fireworks.  The fireworks they had were professional fireworks that we only see being lit off by city fireworks and here it was kids and drunk dudes lighting them dangerously close to the crowds.  I wished I had bought my own when I saw how giant these fireworks were.  We danced in the rain on the beach with all the locals and watched people nearly get injured with the fireworks until we faded and slipped away after midnight to sleep.  The party went on all night and through the next day.  In town there were local men stumbling around still drinking beer or caña (moonshine).

I think I'm fighting the avengers with my ice cream

Battle of the valley fridge

Well I figured I'd write a blog again because with the lack of internet connection I've had so far its impossible for me to write everyone and tell them whats going on.  With an effort not to drop off the radar too far, I'm back on the blog action.  I blogged before and didn't really enjoy it.  But around here when the tide is high the waves are soft and its a good time to catch up on everything else.
Coming back to Ecuador has been a transition.  After spending a few months in the states and time in Australia, I'm back to being used to having all of the amenities of home.  Yesterday I was walking to the main road to get the bus and it passed just before I got there.  So I sat on a curb and sweated for the next 30 minutes before another bus came and then I jumped on it and continued to sweat.  I rode up the mountain roads a little and then jumped off and started walking down a long dirt road towards my land.  I got there and began to machete down the high overgrowth that was about chest high after it was cleared down over a year ago.  I continued to sweat until the Ecuadorian sun was too intense and I felt tired and walked back down the dirt road.  The surroundings were green and lush with sounds of birds calling, rustling of lizards getting away from me and I saw a dead tarantula that was bigger than my hand.  I got back to the main road and started walking towards town until about 20 minutes later the bus came. By this time I had drank my entire bottle of water and was still pouring in sweat.  The bus came, I flagged it down and sat there looking out the window while holding my drenched hat out in the breeze.  The bus flew around the corners of the mountain road and then back down to town.  I took the bus to another town past mine to visit some people that I had met who are looking for house sitters when they go back to the states.  I was amazed to see how much construction they were getting done considering they spoke very little spanish and I spent my time there translating for them.  Once the crew of workers realized I spoke spanish they all lined up to tell me things that they wanted to say to the owners.  I met a nice local guy working there and we went to the bus stop together and waited another 30 minutes before the bus came.  Another 50 cents and we chatted on the bus until I saw another guy I knew.  He saw my machete and asked me if he could borrow for a night hike.  I left it with him & 10 minutes later I jumped off the bus and walked down the dusty road to my current house.  I daydreamed about an air conditioned car and clean everything.  I wondered what I was going to eat.  I've been using the same few vegetables and trying to figure out different ways to prepare them on the stove top.  I would love a trader joes right about now.  I got to my house right on the beach and looked out over the empty blue sea with the islands out front and the pelicans hovering inches over the sea and in V patterns up above.  It reminded me why I'm putting up with those hot sweaty days.
I went to grab some food out of my fridge and just brushed a part of the fridge that is metal and I was electrocuted.  My arm was numb from my elbow down and I still hadn't gotten the food out because I dropped it and jumped when I felt the shock.  The house is nice but electricity is scary and not grounded.  Getting things in out of our fridge is like playing the game operation except you actually get electrocuted when you touch anything metal and if you're wet you're doomed.  Sometimes I want to grab things and I just can't get myself to do it. I've bribed others to grab things for me like "hey if you grab those tortillas out of the back I'll give you a burrito."  I suck at operation.

Loving the fruit smoothies

Next blog might be about Christmas and New Years!  Feliz Año!