Shiripuno

We left for Shiripuno early on Friday morning. I took Dramamine and sat in the front seat by a window, just in case. Luckily, Julio, our driver, was not in the same rush that seemed to possess the last bus driver. It took us over four hours to arrive in Misahualli, where we met our guide, Teo. In a park in Misahualli, we saw monkeys and huge snakes. I saw one monkey steal a kid’s hat right off of his head! We took canoes to Shiripuno and had a traditional lunch of tilapia, yucca and rice. Some people were a little grossed out by the fish eye staring back at them, but I loved it. I couldn’t bring myself to actually eat the eyeball though. In the afternoon we met some of the ladies from the community who run the cabins where we stayed. The showed us a ceremonial dance and taught us to make chocolate. (See the picture below of our group making chocolate- Teo told us that if we didn’t have a coco bean mark on our forehead, that we wouldn’t get to eat the chocolate.) The chocolate we made was used for our dessert that night. And it was delicious! We didn’t have electricity, so we used candles after about 6:30 pm when the sun went down.  Apparently one of the fun activities in the evening is to look for tarantulas… and you don’t have to look far.

Saturday we got up super early because the sun was shinning down on our beds. We ate breakfast and went tubing. We floated down the Napo River, one of the rivers that feed into the Amazon River. The river was fast (we floated 10 miles in about an hour) and we all had to wear lifejackets. The river had tons of rapids and it was one of the best things I’ve done in Ecuador. We floated down to an animal rescue center and saw more monkeys, parrots, toucans, turtles and a type of crocodile. We left the rescue center and went for an hour-long hike in what is the beginning of the Amazon jungle. During our hike, we had to wear rubber boots that came up to our knees- so that if we stepped on a snake it would bite the boot, not our leg. I’m pretty sure that anyone who has ever met me is aware of my phobia of snakes. So this little jaunt through the jungle was not an easy task- physically or psychologically. We only saw one snake though- he was about 3 feet long, hanging out in a branch above our heads. I had a little comfort in the fact that our guide, Teo, was a biologist with a specialty in snakes. (He also had two deformed pointer fingers as a result of his work with snakes.) Then we took canoes to a museum about traditional traps the indigenous people used to catch animals and we ate lunch there (rice, vegetables and chunks of hotdogs mixed together—it was actually really good!).  Then we took a 2 hour canoe ride upstream to get to back to our cabins.

Sunday we left our cabins and walked to the community school where we performed otoscopy and hearing screenings for anyone in the community who wanted to have their ears checked. We saw a lot of excessive earwax, a ruptured eardrum (the guy ruptured it when he was using a Q-tip- see Q-tips are bad for you!), and infections. It was a really rewarding experience. After lunch we got on the road pretty quick because it had been raining for two days and our bus driver was concerned about landslides on the road back. Sure enough a couple of the roads were closed because of the rain and we saw some evidence of landslides, but we got home safe. 

 Our canoes that took us from Misahualli to Shiripuno

 Un mono

 Mehreen, Crystal, Me, Christina the student, Christina the professor

 Our lunch on Friday

 Making delicious chocolate. Teo, our guide, is in the back in the red shirt.

 Floating in the Napo River

 Turtles at the animal rescue center

 During our hike in the Amazon. 

 When we stopped for lunch, Teo picked a flower type thing off of a tree, cracked it open and used the natural berries inside to paint tribal symbols on our faces. 

 Outside of our cabins

My bed with a mosquito net (not pictured: the holes in the mosquito net)