Jungle Living

Hello friends!

Hopefully you are all doing well. I just had an amazing time exploring and learning about the culture of the people who lived and continue to live in the jungle. Yesterday we took a taxi (which are yellow trucks in Puyo, I suppose to make drives like this one), to a hike, to a canoe!, to a beautiful thatched roof home by the river in the jungle. I had such an amazing time. We had beds above a lower room with hammocks and a long table for eating. I actually got a splinter immediately on the handmade canoe and Manuel, our guide, dug it out with a new leaf just as strong and sharp as a needle. We went on a nature walk both days and learned about medicinal plants (like plants made into teas when babies are sick with vomiting or bark for snake bites.) Then we tried different foods as we walked around. My favorite was a mushroom that looked like an ear. We also tried pineapple of the jungle, heart of palm, a fruit that tasted like a coconut but with black seeds, water from an bamboo stalk, sugar cane of the jungle and actual raw sugar cane. Then I tried a live beetle larvae that are supposedly very good...it was not, the head had a pleasant crunch but a not so pleasant taste, maybe just unfamiliar then the body was chewy. I couldn't swallow it but just spit it out. But I tried it so that is more than the others would do.

Basically I rocked out at the jungle. Our other activities were basket weaving from a palm branch (I thought of Granny, someone please tell her), swinging from a vine just like Tarzan!, playing the flute and using a blow dart gun. (I was the only one to hit the banana that we were aiming at!)

I would definitely recommend this adventure to other people. Our guide had a great sense of humor and his family and kids were really cute! I gave them some bouncy balls. The wife, Vanessa, who I think is only 23 cooked our huge lunches over the fire. They have like a grate with a fire underneath. I can barely cook rice on the stove...but a huge vat of rice over the fire!! Manuel also had made basically everything there by hand from the houses to the roofs to the furniture, to the hammocks!

It was so much fun just hiking around and exploring. It was amazing because I didn't recognize a single tree or plant. Everything was new and exciting. I love the huge leaves of the palms and banana trees. There are palm ferns as tall as 5 people. There are the biggest palm trees you could ever imagine. And by far the biggest leaves I have ever seen. Bear Gryls would be in heaven there seemed to be so much to eat and drink. Yay fun walking around in the wild made me want to come up with a group name and put it on a pillowcase.

Tomorrow is in town at the diabetes clinic.