He regresado de la selva ...

Hola novia, familia y amigos varios mios ...

I'm back from the jungle. After being a little puzzled as to why it's called the "rain"forest I discovered precisely the answer to this question yesterday. Now a lot of my clothes are absolutely soaked. But it was a lot of fun.

I apologise for the long delay in writing more on my blog. I went to the jungle last Thursday when normally I would have tried to find an acceptable internet café on the Friday. As a result I missed you all. But I'm sure you don't really mind.

Anyway, since my last post nearly a week and a half ago I've done some cool stuff. I went to Vilcabamba, for a start, and met some very interesting people - Águeda y Pedro, Cristobal (apologies if I got your name wrong), Karl ... it's quite a long list and I'm sure I'd never actually succeed in getting them all on there, but needless to say it was a lot of fun spending time with them.

I met Águeda on the bus almost immediately after writing my last post. She directed me to a lovely hostel in Vilcabamba, El Valle Sagrado, which was a snip at $5 a night and an absolute dream to stay in. I spent most of the first day sitting in a hammock reading, for example, which was truly wonderful. Later on I met up with everyone sitting outside the church where we had some wine and tea, and listened to some Chilenos play some rather delightful music. I never caught those guys' names but thanks for the guitar/pipe music - really rather delightful.

The next day Águeda y Pedro had invited me up to their farm near the Cerro Mandango (a mountain formation which resembles from some angles an Inca person lying down - nice views) and for a walk down into the nearby neighbourhood. Chris is studying Vilcabamba, in the broadest possible sense, so Águeda wanted to explain to him all the problems that are being introduced into the area by people moving in to make a quick buck from the tourists, and screw over the locals and the environment at the same time.

Y'all know me - y'all know how that gets right on my nerves, how I'm liable to get on my high horse about that kind of thing - but really, Vilcabamba is probably heading for a horrific meltdown at the rate assorted gringos are moving in a ruining the feel of the place. Not entirely sure what we, as gringos, can do, but going there and spending money in a sustainable way - oh, and not buying property there - is probably a good way to begin.

On the third day in Vilcabamba I decided to take a little walk, as recommended by the German dude Karl, to a waterfall in Podocarpus National Park, which was a very nice walk except it took me forever to find the place. In the blazing sun and later, in the cloudforest, in intense heat. I never actually made it to the waterfall, as I think I was suffering the effects of a minor flu and possible some heat exhaustion or sunstroke. But I did observe that Podocarpus is lovely and definitely worth visiting. I'll just be more cautious next time. Plus I'll know the way.

The fourth day, after going to bed at 5pm the day before, Águeda and Chris met up with me and took me to Águeda's lovely little house in Vilcabamba. Yes, she has two houses, but she's turning one of them into an open guesthouse, on the proviso that anybody who goes there is not to make money. That's an excellent rule. I apologise for not being able to remember the Hebrew word for such a place, but it is a rather excellent idea that I'm all in favour of.

That day I met the famous Patterson, a fascinating man who is writing a proper history of Christianity - http://www.metalog.org/ . It's interesting stuff, from what I can tell, and it's certainly got a large group of people radiating out of Vilcabamba very excited. Some day I'll keep you all posted.

That night I decided I wouldn't try for my Oriental Oddysey as I had proposed to do, and instead stayed at Águeda's guesthouse for the night, which was wonderful. I slept under a mosquito net surrounded by the noise of the countryside. It was rather wonderful, if annoying to be woken before dawn by the eight thousand cockerels which live in Vilcabamba. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't set the dogs off as well.

The next day I left Vilcabamba and took care of some business in Loja where things are far too hectic and expensive. I was halfway through a phonecall to my parents when I realised I still had something belonging to the guesthouse, so I had to return to Vilcabamba, take it back, and come back to Loja before 7pm. It was quite easy to manage, but terribly dull, hot and smelly. Not the most fun thing I'd done so far on my trip.

That night I spent on a bus between Loja and Riobamba, which took 10 hours and arrived a little before 5am. I hardly slept a wink, since behind me was a young child and in front of me some young ladies insistent on giggling and flashing their mobile phone lights every ten minutes. Needless to say, when I arrived in Riobamba and made an attempt at speaking Spanish, I was barely coherent, but somehow I managed to obtain a bus ticket to Tena where I was hoping I'd be able to arrange some kind of trip to the jungle.

I arrived in Tena at 11am the next morning, after some 16 hours of travelling. Tired, hot and sweaty, all I wanted to do was sleep, but I still had business to take care of. Fortunately, I found a relatively cheap internet café and found out - much to my glee - that my late application for accomodation at Liana Lodge had been accepted! Four nights at a lovely lodge about 40km away from Tena on the Rio Alajuno - bliss. The downside was that instead of starting on the Friday, as I'd expected, I was due to be picked on Thursday, the following day ...

Fortunately everything went to plan, and in fact when I arrived early at Puerto Barantilla the next day I was shocked to discover that the canoa pilot who'd come to pick me up was an hour early. Anyone who's ever been to South America will understand this shock ... normally I'd expect to have to wait at least fifteen minutes for a scheduled event to happen ...

Liana Lodge is accessible only by canoa, which makes it even more wonderful as you can't here any cars or honking horns or screeching brakes at night. It's delightful. All you can hear is the insects, birdlife and lapping river shore as you lie in bed at night. No electricity, everything lit by candles (almost) and a delightful log fire about which to sit and chat at night. The cabins themselves had paja toquilla rooves and where made of wood salvaged from the (illegal) clearance of rainforest to make way for the nearby oil pipeline and associated highway. Okay, so there were luxuries - too much for backpackers, I personally believe - like hot water and comfortable beds, but it was just the right side of rustic to be adorable. Anyway I paid for it all, so more fool me.

Or not. The first afternoon I spent lying in a hammock reading, and thinking how absolutely golden the place was. Pure, absolute gold. The Rough Guide wasn't wrong when it said that staying in a lodge was the most comfortable way to enjoy the rainforest. I just lay there and refused to do anything else for a few hours ... hammocks seem to have that effect on me.

The first day was delightful. We were taken on a (short) tour to a giant tree in the middle of a mix of primary and secondary tropical rainforest a short canoa ride away up the Rio. That was a nice introduction to the rainforest - no hard forest trekking on your first day. Afterwards we were shown around the animal rescue centre attached to Liana Lodge called AmaZOOnico, which was both wonderful and terribly saddening, since all the animals that we were introduced to had very little chance of surviving naturally in the wild. Still, it was great to see some large wildlife since that's not really possible around Tena, and also to see that somebody, the amazing volunteers, still cares about these remarkable animals.

We were taken back by canoa to the Lodge where lunch was incredible. Actually, all the meals there were incredible, and as they gave me the same size plate of rice that was used for groups of up to four people to serve themselves from, I never went hungry ... Anyway, after lunch I wrote some postcards and then went on another jungle tour to a local Quichua community to see their way of life - their plantations, how they used to hunt with blowguns and to sample their drink of preference - chicha de maís, which is ... different.

Day Two saw a much longer (and personally, I thought more difficult) trek through the rainforest. It was about four and a half hours long ... with an additional break for lunch for an hour on the Rio Rodríguez. Good stuff, saw a lot of very cool foliage and insect life, even if we didn't succeed in seeing anything larger than a hunting snake and some apparently omniverous fish which cleaned the food containers and forks for us. Impressive. After that, we walked back to AmaZOOnico and caught some inflatable liferings down the river back to the Lodge, which was a lot of fun. I was only slightly concerned that we'd end up in Perú ...

Later that day a large group of us took a river ride up the Rio Napo, which feeds into the Amazon much further downstream, to a little island where birds nest at night. They fly over the river at dusk from the hunting grounds, and it was at this time that we were waiting. Unfortunately, in my opinion at least, there were too many of us, and they didn't all have my patience, so we failed to see the promised squalls of parakeets who supposedly fly over. Okay, so we did see some, but nowhere near the promised numbers. But there were a few brave birds who crossed the river, and it was a pleasant enough spot to sit and stare at the sunset anyway.

Day Three, which was only yesterday but seems like a lifetime away, saw me taking a shorter trip to a Mirador over the Napo province with Eliane, the Swiss intern from the Lodge and our faithful Quichua guide Edwin, who was a lovely chap. The walk was a lot of fun - we spent the best part of it wading down a small river surrounded by beautiful secondary forest. I saw a lot of cool insects and the occasional bird, but I only have photos of the former, I'm afraid. After the walk we swam the 400-odd metres back along the river to the Lodge, which I can assure you was extremely tiring, even with the current. I must be more out of shape than I thought.

In the afternoon Edwin took me up the river to a beach where we made a traditional Quichua raft out of balsa logs which we used to float down the river to the Lodge. That afternoon, there was a rainstorm, and I got absolutely soaked to the bone, but it was well worth it - so tranquil, just drifting with the current and enjoying the rapids, and actually the rain was rather nice and warm.

But all good things must come to an end, and so this morning I left Liana Lodge for good, hitching a ride back to Tena with a young German couple who I'd done a few of the tours with. It was rather sad, but I feel I'll be back in the jungle at some point in the future.

Ahh, the future. By the end of today I'll be halfway through my trip, which is sad. Tomorrow I'm planning to go rafting on the Rio Napo, but whether or not that'll transpire is another matter and it might be Thursday before I get to go. But I don't mind waiting around in Tena, it's a nice enough town even if it is damnably hot here. After that, on Thursday or Friday, I'll be off for a little R&R in the bizarre town of Baños del Ambato, where I have been before last year, and then off to Riobamba for a ride on el Nariz del Diablo ... the world's most difficult railway track. Supposedly. Then again, maybe they never tried to design the Channel Tunnel.

Right, that's about all I have to say, except - go to the jungle, be nice to animals, don't buy property in Vilcabamba and come to Ecuador to meet me for my last three weeks. Oh, and that I can't upload my photos for at least another week, since no internet café seems to have SD ports. Too sad.

Hasta luego,
Marcus.