Carnaval

Last weekend was the infamous carnaval. In Ecuador, this holiday is marked by water balloons, water guns, and espuma (foam... or in many cases, shaving cream). Jackie, Krysta, Sarah, and I decided to spend our 4 day weekend in Tena... a town about as far east as you can go before you are in the middle of the Amazon. We experienced all that the "oriente" has to offer... rivers, wildlife, food, HOT weather, etc. Between relaxing in hammacks, exploring caves, and dodging water balloons, we also had one heck of an adventure. We got lost in the middle of the jungle. The story goes as follows:

We take a bus from Tena to go to a small town on the river. From there, we hop in a canoe and ask the guy to take us to our jungle lodge.

We go down the river for awhile and he takes us to the opposite bank. We get off and start following him into the jungle. Then, he disappears. We wait around for awhile to see if he comes back, and he does. Phew! So we follow this guy into a different part of the jungle. He suddenly stops at a trail and tells us to follow it straight for half an hour. Then he leaves to go back to his canoe. So we follow the trail, hiking in the woods with our huge backpacks... until it dead ends into the river.

We backtrack to try to find a fork in the road, and we find one! But it leads to an abandoned shack in the middle of the Amazon rainforest... creeeeeeepy. So we head back to the water to try to flag down a canoe.



So a man in a canoe comes to us and tells us that we were on the right path, but we needed to wade through the water. He says the lodge is less than 30 min away. So after a rest, we head back the way we came.

We wade through the water (start humming gospel tunes).



We walk another 30 minutes and finally get to A SIGN for the lodge!



And a man with a machete who tells us to "sigan recta" (continue straight).

So we do... and find yet another abandoned building. 2 hours after we got out of the canoe, we find the jungle lodge. After finding out that it's not all it's cracked up to be, we decide to head back to Tena.


We wait 2.5 hours for a camioneta to come close to the lodge to pick us up. We find a truck who says he'll take us to the closest town for $1 per person. We're in!!



We pile into a utility truck and after picking up 12 people and 10 100lb bags of corn, we go over the rickitiest metal SWINGING bridge known to mandkind. I'm hysterically laughing to keep from crying (and I love hights).

From the town we catch a bus back to Tena in time to watch the sunset.

El Fin!!