Guest Bloggers: The Brothers and the naked Indian

Where did we leave off ... ahh yes, saying adíos in Cuenca. We boarded a 12:30 bus to the Oriente (the jungle!). For the next five and half hours, we switchbacked across, bumped along, and basically hugged a mountain road until we reached the end of a valley. Whew! This included some beautiful scenery, from 1,000 m grass- and jungle-covered cliff faces mere inches from the road to a tunnel cut straight through the mountain (only wide enough for one vehicle at a time). At the bottom of the valley, we continued up between the two rivers for another hour and change until we reached another Peace Corps member's site.

We hopped off the bus in a little jungle village (just one store) and proceeded to meet (for us) or reunite (for Yoni) the PCV (Peace Corp Vounteer) there. After some quick introductions to the youth sitting outside the PCV's house, Yoni began his consultation work right away for the newspaper that the kids had recently started. From article ideas and layout to selling strategies and goals, the youth questioned the newspaperman. And the newspaperman replied with wisdom from his many years of experience. Afterward, we ate a quick dinner of quinoa, eggs, and papa chinos and passed out.

The next morning, we got a tour of the PCV's personal gardens. This included trying a new fruit, huevos de perro (dog balls). Delicious. Imagine a prickly-fuzzy, sweet, but citrus-flavored tomato the size of a golf ball. Apparently, only the PCV, us, and the shuar (local indigenous tribe) eat these.

Speaking of shuar, the PCV asked who went to the bathroom at 6:30. Ruby did. The PCV said that it was a good thing he didn't bump into his shuar neighbor, who showers naked in plain view of the kitchen with his chicha bowl at that hour. That would have been a little awkward, but a real welcome to the jungle.

Afterward, we took the coconut plants that we had been carrying since Friday to be planted at the PCV's host family. Since the PCV's arrival, the host family has basically converted its entire forty-plus acre papaya, cacao, and yucca plantation to organics ... natural fertilizer, companion planting, greenhouse, organic insect repellents, etc. We helped plant the coconuts and then went on a working and walking tour of the plantation.

(Side note: Ian has decided that whenever he is traveling in Ecuador, he is going to carry large plants with him. They make a great conversation starter. Oddly enough, no one asks you anything if you take a chicken or turkey on the bus.)

We learned how to prune branches for ease of harvesting, how to pop papayas off trees and catch — all with one hand, how the yucca grows and can easily be planted (just cut off a branch and stick it under the soil), how cacao beans are readied for market, and lots more. After some shmoozing and sugar cane-munching, we had a delicious, organic, and completely local (from that one farm) vegetarian lunch with the PCV's host family. The local specialty that highlighted the meal were muchillos, essentially a yucca latke filled with cheese and dipped in sugar cane syrup or salt. In Ecuadorian culture, it is disrespectful to turn down food, but his host mom just kept bringing more muchillos.

We needed a long walk after lunch to digest so we explored the rest of the village, including some of the 700 hectares of papaya and yucca plantations there. Along the road, we stopped at a large aquaculture operation that raises tilapia in the jungle. In fact, the owner of this now-large enterprise that also includes swimming pools and zoo, learned aquaculture from two PCVs in a neighboring village in the late 1980s.

We had a brief siesta so as to be ready for the evening's main event and possibly the most-hyped athletic event in town history: gringos v. the village in basketball. To give you a sense of the height differential, think of Space Jam with us being the Monstars. We Globetrotted our way through the game, just to keep it close. Everyone had a great time. At one point, it was nine on four. One of the highlights included Avery rejecting the PCV's host mom. Everyone just stopped and laughed. It should be noted that in Ecuador, basketball is more of a women's sport and volleyball, a men's sport.

After the game, the PCV made spaghetti with fresh marinara sauce from his garden. We followed that with a giant papaya for dessert (see photo to follow).

The next morning, we explored the neighboring village to get another perspective on jungle life and hopped on a bus to begin our fourteen-hour journey back to Yoni's town. We took a slightly different, but equally harrowing, route up the mountainside, mostly along a jungle- and cloud-covered, gravelly (sp?) one-and-a-half lane highway. By midnight, we were back in Yoni's town and exhausted.