Wednesday, May 16, 2001 --Yachana Lodge

The lodge van picked me up at about 8:00, and took me to the Magic Bean, where we picked up Mel and Jan, and met the other guests. It turned out that two of them, Juan and Carmen, were also from Seattle, and friends of Mel & Jan: Carmen works with Mel, and Juan was about to start in the MAT-ESL program at UW. Mel had told them about Yachana, but didn't realize that they would be down here at the same time. Another person on the van was a videographer from Quito, who was doing some kind of promotional video for Yachana. We had a lot of "fun" being filmed bumping our heads getting into and out of the van, the plane, the boat.... We titled one shot, "gringos get on the plane." We were also meeting a journalist from Spain (he works for El Pais) in Coco. Both Juan and Carmen are fluent in Spanish, which can be very handy.

Airplane, taxi (Chevy Luv, of course!), and dugout canoe (with a 65 horsepower engine) to the Lodge. We had about two and a half hours on the river, where we looked at the foliage, saw people in canoes and panning for gold, laundry drying on rocks, etc. There were several white herons or egrets along the river, and I never quite figured out what they were. Some were egret-sized, and others much larger.

At the lodge, we found out that our guide, Juan, spoke only Spanish (and two indiginous languages we can't hope to understand). He was learning English, his fourth language, but wasn't fluent enough to guide in it yet. Since Mel and Jan had called Yachana several times to ensure that there would be an English-speaking guide, they were disappointed. I had been understanding between 60% (when Jose-Luis, the Spanish journalist was speaking) and 85% (when Juan was giving us basic information), but I worried that once he started talking about bugs and plants, my comprehension levels would plummet. Juan (from Seattle) and Carmen were able to translate, as was I on occasion, but having to translate does change the activity, and Mel & Jan wanted them to be able to enjoy themselves as guests.

Flower at Yachana Lodge

Juan (the guide) took us on a short nighttime walk, where we listened to critters and saw leaf-cutter ants. Yachana is in an area that has been inhabited for a long time, so it is not a lodge where you see a lot of wildlife. It was constructed to support a foundation whose mission is to provide needed support to the people who live in the area. Evidently, Douglas, the founder, came in to the area, brought the different village leaders together, and asked, "what do you need?" After getting past a lot of resistance (foundations are supposed to come in with a lot of money, and plans to build stuff, providing lots of jobs), they listed, in order: health care, the ability to support their families, and then education. Most foundations, like Unicef, come in to build schools, which is great, but if a family's most basic needs are not being met, schooling isn't going to help much.

Thursday, May 17, 2001 -- Yachana Lodge

In the morning, we met Miguel, who had been involved with the foundation since the inception, and who spoke English quite fluently. When we asked him where he learned his English, he surprised us by saying, "Kentucky"! Evidently, Douglas has some kind of connection with the University of Kentucky, and he would send some of his guides and other staff there for several weeks to learn English via immersion. Miguel said he basically didn't eat for the first couple of days because all the food was weird to him, but it definitely forced him to learn English quickly. Not that many people in Kentucky speak Spanish.

At breakfast, I asked, "is that a frog that sounds exactly like my travel alarm clock," and all the guides immediately responded, "the alarm clock frog!" Between that one, the frog that sounds like a cell phone, the frog that sounds like a goose, and an actual rooster, sleeping is quite an adventure at Yachana. Everyone was amused when I said that, despite the fact that I don't eat chicken, I would be willing to eat that one rooster.

After breakfast, we went for a rainy walk through secondary forest up to an overlook where we could see the river. One thing about the rainforest: it really is rainy. And hot. I took two or three cold showers a day just to clean off the mud, sweat, and evil, evil DEET. The nights cooled off enough to be comfortable, though, which was great.

The Rio Napo from above Yachana Lodge

From a distance, we did see a pygmy marmoset in a tree, so I want to share this pygmy marmoset rating from brunching.com

Pygmy Marmosets This is the smallest monkey in the world. It's tiny! Ladies and gentlemen, this is a hand-held monkey! The applications boggle the very mind. To begin with, you could use it to distract anyone from anything. "Excuse me, Mr. Rampaging Killer? Why don't you put down the gun and take a look at this hand-held monkey? Does it not have clever little forepaws? It eats gum and sap!" It would be a lot like those old comic book ads where superheroes defeat one-shot villains with fruit pies, only better. Because it would have a monkey. A-

As we walked through the secondary forest and along the edge of primary forest, nothing was more evident than the land's ability to heal itself in rainforests. We saw one area that had been clear-cut for grazing cows just a couple of years ago. When we were there, it was full of tall grasses and guava trees (which seem to be the first colonizers). If I went back a year later, I'm sure I wouldn't even recognize it as a former field.

In the afternoon, Juanito (our guide seems to be everyone's little brother), Miguel, Jose-Luis, Mel and I took a walk to the demonstration house that Juan was building. Ultimately, they want to have someone doing ceramics downstairs, and carving upstairs. The house was made entirely from local materials, and using no nails.

Juan showed us how to make twine out of palm fiber, and we had a good time getting grass stains all over ourselves and trying to make our twine hold together as well as Juan's did. This twine was used on the hammocks that are on the porches of our rooms in the lodge, for fishing nets, and pretty much for everything else. Juan made both Mel and I bracelets, which was good, because if we'd used our own twine, they would have been a mess.

The view from my porch at Yachana

That evening, we asked them to open up the store at the lodge, where I bought a neat little gourd with a story carved around it. This is pretty much my big shopping event of the trip.

Friday, May 18, 2001 -- Yachana Lodge

We took a trip downriver to would become a marketplace the next day, and every Saturday. From there, we walked through the woods and farms to Miguel's father-in-law's farm and rice fields, and Miguel talked about his efforts to educate people about shade-growing. As we walked through the forest, we saw coffee and cocoa plants among the other foliage. Yachana has recently started up a gourmet food plant, which eliminates the middlemen, and pays several times the going rate for quality coffee and cocoa beans. The deal is that the quality has to be high (middlemen will buy nearly everything), which typically means that the plants must be grown in the forest, rather than in a harvested field.

We ended up at the school, where we were in time to see some of the mother's "day" program (mother's day seems to be a week-long event). Miguel's wife works here, and there were just generally a lot of folks hanging around. Miguel and Juan had a good time introducing me to people as "this is Megan. She speaks Spanish really well." My theory now is that, because I could understand about 90% of what I heard, but didn't have the vocabulary to share my opinions very often, I came across as a great conversationalist.

School in the rainforest, before the deluge

The rain at this point was truly torrential, enough so it wouldn't have been safe to walk through the forest, lest a limb break off and fall on our heads, so we stayed under the eaves of the school for quite some time, until it let up. Mel, Jan, and I sang a little bit, and they convinced me to sing "Song for Judith" (the song I was going to be singing in the wedding). The little kids grouped around us and stared at us like we were complete freaks, but the experience of getting through the song with people around was immensely helpful.

I had been feeling ill off and on since I arrived, and skipped the afternoon activity (visiting the food processing plant) because of this. It finally occurred to me that I might be allergic to corriander, which is in the food and grows wild in the forest. The smell and taste just turn my stomach. On about the last day, I finally figured this out, and asked for food without corriander, but by then I'd already had a bite of soup that did have it, so I was out of luck. Good thing to remember for the future, though.

Sunset on the Rio Napo

 

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last modified: January 30, 2002