Welcome to the jungle!

I can´t even describe how good it felt to return to Quito, to civilisation, after the coastal phase. We spent our time doing the most Westernised things we could find - surfing the internet, visiting a shopping centre and satisfying our food cravings – before saying our farewells to Jon (who was only with us for the first 2 phases) with Zumir rum and an excessive amount of Mexican food.

The bus journey to the Amazon was very scenic, but also scary - with serious hair-pin bends! However, the minute that we arrived in Chichico Rumi we all felt immediately 10 times happier than we had ever felt in Caimito – the atmosphere is great, the weather is great, and the people are so friendly. We are staying within an eco-tourism/community centre, above a museum within medicinal gardens by the beautiful river Napo (which also happens to be our shower!) and are surrounded by a variety of rescued animals, including a baby ocelot, an anaconda, parrots, monkeys, a possum and many more! The 45 people who live in the community are nearly all related in some way, and will go out of their way to make us feel at home.

Persephone with the Ocelot

Our lovely team leader Kelly (right)

Me and the giant swimming guinea pig!!

Therefore, we have not once been bored here. Most of our spare time has been spent swimming and sunbathing by the side of the river, or relaxing in hammocks or strangely enough, in front of the TV in the community kitchen! The family made the fatal mistake of asking us whether we wanted to watch the series Prison Break one night, and after being deprived of TV for several weeks we immediately agreed and a TV and DVD player was brought in. BIG MISTAKE… we were immediately addicted… no, obsessed… and from then on we spent most of our evenings glued to the screen! Some nights the family even brought us hot chocolate whilst we were watching, it really was luxury.

Of course, we have still made the absolute most of our surroundings in between work and Prison Break episodes. Juan and Hector, the guys who we work with, are very chilled out in terms of working hours, so on a couple of occasions we have taken the afternoon off to go tubing down the river – great fun and suprisingly relaxing – then white-water rafting at the weekend and swimming in a nearby waterfall, and one afternoon Juan even taught us how to make traditional Amazon bracelets!

Tubing on the Napo

In fact, Juan has gone out of his way to keep us entertained for the entirety of our stay. During our first weekend in Tena he insisted on taking us out dancing to a club called ´The Lookout´, which overlooked the whole of Tena – unfortunately I was ill so I had to drag myself home early after 1/2 bottle beer, but apparently the majority of the Chichico Rumi community turned up completely wasted, and the others spent the night trying to avoid being humped by drunken salsa-dancing Ecuadorians… except Brad, who seemed to be quite enjoying his dance with Juan´s pretty cousin! Juan even dragged us up the next morning to visit some caves, which we trekked through in our bikinis and headtorches with barefeet, and at some points we had to swim; it was pretty slippy underfoot and scary at times, especially when we had to squeeze through smalls gaps whilst simultaneously avoiding stalegtites. One night he also took us down the river in the dark to attempt some night-fishing… well we were all hopeless and didn´t catch a thing, but it was a great experience and at least we got to eat Juan´s fish afterwards!

Home sweet home

Thatching the roof for the bus shelter

Our shower block

Even the work here has been great! We have pretty much seen two projects through from start to finish – something which we didn´t achieve in either of the previous phases. The first project was to complete a shower block for future volunteers, as currently our only means of washing is in the river, which is awesome, but we possibly do tend to come out dirtier than when we went in! Whilst this required collecting more sand to make cement like at the coast and in the Andes, the conditions were much nicer as we took a canoe down the river to collect the sand from a beautiful nearby beach, instead of just shoveling it from one end of a work site to another. And this time the builders actually let us helped to put the walls together, brick by brick, which we hadn’t done before. It felt great to actually have an active role in the building process!

The second project was to build a bus shelter by the main road up from the community. This seemed like an impossible task when all we were given to start with was a piece of land, but Juan and Hector have an amazing work ethic and they helped us to see the project through from start to finish. Over the first few days we trekked into the Rainforest to collect the materials – wood for the foundations, bamboo for the structure, and leaves for the roof – before helping to build a basic structure, and then set to work on weaving leaves for the roof, which was really therapeutic. The Ecuadorian guys are also SO strong; on one occasion we had to carry 4 huge tubes of wood for the foundations, and after the first one, even with all 5 of us we just couldn´t make it out of the Rainforest. So we collapsed on the floor, pondering over what we were going to tell the Ecuadorians, when Juan came along, put the wood over his shoulder and strolled out of the forest like a superhero! We all felt a little pathetic after that…

The weather has mainly been very hot and sunny, which is difficult to work in but great for our moods. When the sun is not shining it is usually thunderstorming, and the storms here are epic – so much so that on some occasions we haven´t even been able hear each other over the sound of thunder and rain. The scariest time was on Halloween, when during the middle of a gripping Prison Break episode the thunder and lightening went crazy and the electricity cut out, so we had to spend the rest of the evening in darkness freaking each other out!

Living in the Amazon rainforest means sharing your bed with all sorts!

The only two things that could persuade me to leave Chichico Rumi are the insects and the animals. I must be super tasty because the mosquitos and sand flies seem to latch on to my bare skin at any chance they can get! On one of our first days in the community, I counted the bites just on the bottom half of my right leg and there was 125… I really can´t remember what it was like not to be itchy and to not be covered in scabs and scars from scratching too much! There are two insects that scare me the most, the spiders, just because they´re scary, and the bullet ants – giant ants that hang around the trees whose bites feel like bullet shots. Luckily none of us have had to experience being bitten yet, although there have been a couple of close calls!

The prime suspect...Lucas the monkey!

And when I say animals what I really mean to say is Lucas the monkey. Unfortunately clever Lucas can get into our house even if we lock the door, and so we have had a series of unfortunate incidents where he has drunk our drinks, eaten our malaria tablets, toothpaste and drunk my contact lense solution, and on one occasion he spilt a whole carton of ketchup (yes we have a carton of ketchup) all over Brad´s towel! Now this might sound cute and hilarious but it´s actually really annoying! By far the funniest occasion though was when we returned one day to find him asleep in Emily´s bed curled up in her blankets, and when we shouted at him he pulled the blanket up to his chin and stared at us with his big eyes looking seriously cute and innocent, very much ´puss-in-boots´style. When we finally managed to get him out though we discovered he´d left us a little present: a big poo in the middle of Emily´s bed. Now we know exactly where the term ´cheeky monkey´comes from!

Our final night was one to remember. We spent the afternoon after work making grass skirts in preparation for a traditional tribal dance that we were going to be taught that evening. We were truly terrible at the dance itself, but we all enjoyed ourselves a lot and even sung a few British songs for the Ecuadorians, which I think they enjoyed!

Going native!

So as you can imagine after this lengthy blog, we´ve had a truly amazing time in the Amazon with a bunch of fantastic people, so much so that Brad has decided to stay in Chichico Rumi for another month! But before then, we´re heading to party, surfy coastal town Montañita, to spend our final few days in Ecuador chilling without a worry in the world.