Welcome To The Jungle (think Guns n Roses)

The next morning luck (or some other universal force, after reading our experiences, you decide) was on our side and we made our way bright and early to Shell, a neighboring city where the plane would be leaving from. I will admit that I was a little worried when I saw the old 4-seater plane that looked like it could be straight out of 1978 waiting for us. It didn't help when the pilot immediately began praying and crossing himself, but I guess it's always better to have God on your side.

After an hour and a half flight over miles and miles and miles of absolutely nothing (seriously, nothing) during which I began to question my decision, we arrived on a hand-cut landing strip in the community of Juyuintza. The culture shock set in almost immediately as we stood in the middle of a crowd of almost the entire community in the bazillion degree heat (that's a technical measurement) watching confusedly as naked children ran around and the adults had some sort of heated discussion about who would take the plane ride back to the city. We understood none of this, as the community speaks an indigenous dialect called Shiwiar and our guide had apparently momentarily forgotten about us. We were finally led to what appeared to be a community hut (which we found out later was the home of the teniente who was away in the city, but seemed to be a popular place for community gatherings) where we sat down on wooden benches and again commenced listening dumbly to a community discussion in Shiwiar. After awhile our guide told us that we were waiting for the president who lived a half an hour away on foot. We sat like that for another hour or so while the chicha was passed around and everyone talked (except us of course, who probably just stared wide-eyed).

Chicha is a traditional Shiwiar drink that makes up the staple of their diet and their primary beverage. They drink what appeared to be gallons of this stuff a day, drinking it out of bowls that they pass around, and always served to the men by the women. Now I don't mean to sound culturally insensitive, but chicha is quite possibly the most foul liquid ever created on the face of the planet (needless to say, I passed on trying it). Allow me to explain: chicha is made from Yucca, a root plant similar to a potato that makes up the bulk of the Shiwiar's diet. They harvest the Yucca, peel it, cook it, and place it into a huge canoe-shaped bowl to prepare the chicha. Once in the bowl, the women mash it up and then begin filling their cheeks with the stuff after which they proceed to chew it up until it is almost completely liquid at which point they spit it back into the bowl and continue mixing and chewing. Once this step is complete, they allow the mashed up and salivated yucca to sit for a day and ferment (they sometimes let it sit for up to three days if they want alcoholic chicha). Then they mix it with river water (brown, and taken from the same part of the river in which they bathe and wash clothes and dishes) and serve it in community bowls. When the women are serving it, they frequently stick their hands into the middle of the bowls to squeeze the yucca fibers and then run their fingers around the mouth of the bowl before handing it to a man. When drinking the chicha, they sometimes get yucca fibers in their mouths and so they hock massive loogies throughout the whole experience. It's all very appetizing. Chicha is one of the most important parts of Shiwiar life and, as explained by our guide: "Chicha is life".

We were eventually led about five minutes away from the main part of the community to the school, a cement building with a corrugated metal roof and the only closed in building in the community since it was constructed by the government. This was where we would be sleeping. They set up some one inch thick mattresses with sleeping bags and pillows and left us there to rest. It turned out that they actually cancelled school while we were there so that we could sleep in the school, an idea I found to be a little unsettling but didn't have much control over. Overall the mattresses weren't too bad as far as comfort goes (nothing even rivaling a motel 6 but I wasn't expecting much), although when we discovered that they were infested with bed bugs it became significantly more difficult to sleep on them. Still, I was grateful for a little privacy and a bed somewhat protected from the elements. From what I gathered the people slept on wooden planks under their huts, some of them with mosquito nets and a few with sheets. I was grateful we had somewhat better accommodations. I did find it a little weird when our guide told us he would be sleeping in the one room school house with us, but we just went with it. It was a little awkward when my mom asked him where the bathroom was for the school and he looked around a little confusedly and, with a vague motion to the surrounding area replied "anywhere". When in the main part of the community there was a three-sided outhouse with more species of insects than I have ever previously encountered; I learned to prefer the greater outdoors.

After a day or two of sweating profusely and trudging through knee deep mud, we finally brought ourselves to inquire after bathing accommodations. Our guides obliged very kindly by hauling two kettles of river water up to the school for us (these looked VERY heavy). We managed to achieve a mediocre level of cleanliness (which lasted all of an hour before we were just as dirty as before) and even succeeded in washing some clothes in the leftover water as we had already dirtied half of our clothes by the second day. I soon learned to accept the stench coming from virtually everything I owned as inevitable and we just did our best for the rest of the trip.

Well, I think I've at least covered the basics of jungle living, though I haven't even begun to cover all of what we did there. I'm going to have to stop there for now, but I promise to get into some wildlife descriptions in the next post; I can only take so much reminiscing in one day :).