The Jungle (part 1)

Who wants to hear about the jungle? Well, after two weeks of limited internet access we now have the chance to tell you about it so here we go whether you like it or not.


On Monday April 5th we took the morning bus from Quito to the South East to a city called Tena. It was a winding ride through the mountains and down quite a bit in elevation. It took us from the Andes to the Amazon basin. Tena is a small town at the intersection of several rivers, the largest of which is the Napo and it feeds into the Amazon river. From Tena we took a bus about an hour to the east along the Napo to our volunteer site, the biological reserve called Jatun Sacha. When we got there we saw that we were definitely IN the jungle. Jatun Sacha was founded in 1985 and now has 2,200 hectares of preserved and protected rainforest. The volunteer quarters are set up on a small piece of this land where they have a kitchen and dining room, a few hamocks strung up and several cabañas sitting out in jungle. The rooms are basic, two single beds in each, mosquito nets included, chicken wire on the windows and one electric light. Really just a place to crash, down time mostly centers around the coveted hammocks or the dining room. The shared bathroom is a great place to find bugs and geckos at night, only cold water showers but its not bad considering the jungle is a pretty warm place. Included in our stay are three meals a day in the cafeteria.



On Tuesday we woke up for breakfast which is served daily between 6;30 and 7;00 and then we set out to one of Jatun Sacha's projects which is a botanical garden where there is a showcase of medicinal plants, a small organic garden etc. This first week we did some weeding in the garden, machete-ing, harvesting Yucca and harvesting Cacao both of which are excellent. Yucca is a tuber like a potato but a bit less starchy. Cacao is the origin of chocolate of course which makes it great right from the start but as if that weren't enough, the fruit itself is sweet and delicious despite tasting nothing like chocolate. The best part is you can pop the cacao fruit in your mouth, suck off the sweet outer part and then spit the seed in the bucket to be processed for chocolate, double the enjoyment! You can sell the cacao seeds in town for about $1 a pound. We tried roasting the seeds ourselves to make choolate and I'd say we had a near success. Here are some pics.














Driving the Yucca

Cacao makes Jungle Em Happy

Weekends at Jatun Sacha are free time so along with our new volunteer friends Cathy and Monica from Australia we decided to go white water rafting. Tena has become somewhat of a hot spot for rafting due to the abundance of rivers in the area. The previous week there had been a lot of rain which resulted in major flooding. There was a lot of property damage in Tena and other small communities but from what we heard there were few or no casualties. So, when we set out on the Jatun Yachu river it was much higher and much faster than normal. In fact, when we set out in the morning it was still raining, but as the day went on it just got nicer and nicer until it became so clear and sunny that we gave the tops of our legs enough UV radiation to last a lifetime. Today, two weeks after the fact, I still look like a lizard. Regardless, it was an awesome day. On one rapid we even lost everybody out of the raft except for Emily and the guide after nearly flipping over. How did Emily stay in? Easy, she came flying across the raft and was going to fall out but Kurt broke her fall and went overboard instead.