El Oriente, una Broma de los Dios...

Finally getting back on track with the blogging... I´ll explain why I titled this post the Amazon, a joke from God throughout...

There´s some background info. on the Amazon or Oriente here in Ecuador. While the Amazon river does not run directly through Ecuador there are several rivers and tributaries that empty into the Amazon. The Amazon is home to Ecuador´s largest indigenous population and second official language Quichua. At USFQ I am taking a class on Quichua so it was interesting to be able to use it a good bit this past weekend. Quichua became the official language of the Incan Empire at the height of their campaign across South America. Because Quichua is not a written language there are several differnent spellings for it. In the the southern bordering coutnry of Peru, the official second language of the country is Quechua. Throughout the Sierra, Oriente, and Costa you´ll find different dialects of the language and Quechua is one such different dialect.

A Brief Lesson in Quichua from a student...not professor....

So far we´ve mastered several common questions and responses in Quichua, such as,

Pregunta: ¿De dónde eres tú?========>¿Maymantatak Kanki?

Respuesta: Soy de Birmingham========>Nukaka Birminghammantami kani

So for this one you would respond with Nukaka, then whatever city you are from with mantami added to it and then kani. It´s definitely a different sentence structure with the verb coming at the end. One more:

Pregunta: ¿Cómo se llama?========> ¿Imashutitak Kanki?

Respuesta: Me llamo Teo ==========> Nukaka Teomi kani

The same as before except simply add mi to the end of your name. That´s very basic! All of the accents are the same as in spanish because it was the conquistadors who first attempted to write quichua. Solamente hay diez millones de quichuahablantes en el mundo. Todos están en Sudamérica.

Ok back to the trip. This trip was organized by IPSL there for it was gratis(free) for me. Which was nice because I´ve been spending too much traveling on my own. We left Saturday morning at 7 from a large centro comercial se llama Quicentro para ir en un bus privado. It was private, but don´t let that fool you. Private in Ecuador is NOT private in the U.S. On the way there we had to go over more mountains as expected and got a great view of a mountain called Napo. WE got out an took pictures. Further on we made another stop at lake Papayakta near a mountain named the same thing. Papa meaning potatao and yakta meaning lake in Quichua.

By far, this was the MOST bumpy ride I´ve ever experienced in my life. The roads were in such bad condition that literally for two hours the bus was constantly shaking furiously. WE finally got to Tena, the last semi-large town before there was no signal. We then made it to our destination, Misahualli. And this is where my ¨bad luck¨began. So apparently I left my wallet on the bus because it had fallen through a crack in one of the seats. I didn´t realize this until hours later and suspected someone from the hotel. So the entire time I was there I was worrying about my billetera. Because there was no way to get intouch with the bus driver because he was across a river and we had no sginal.

That night we went to a ¨shaman ritual¨ which proved to be quite hokey and seemingly artificial for tourists. We had to take a boat ride there and almost everywhere but it was more like a canoe with a motor. There was smoke and dances but it all seemed very tourist oriented unfortunately. The speaker also led us to a rock where apparently there were profiles of a woman, snake and other things, here´s one of a snake.

That night we had tilapia for dinner,which was a first and not that bad. I slept like a baby...and the pulgas(feas) feasted. I didn´t realize it until we had made it to an animal rescue center called Amazoonica which was one of the best parts of the trip. My arm was covered in red bumps that itched like mosquito bites but I hadn´t seen THAT many mosquitos, certainly not on my skin. I came back and took a shower and looked at my pillow and sheets and saw little black bugs jumping....worst nightmare. At first, it felt like that movie...¨Bug¨, because I couldn´t see them that first night nor during the day. Eventually I got a new room even had a portable air conditioner.

Amazoonica was a center for animals from the Amazon that had been taken as pets and then dumped off and before they are reintroduced to the medio ambiented they come here. They had capiburra, oceltots(tigrios) and several other animals that are popular as pets. That night we went on a caminata for more foe-quchiua rituals. By the way, becuase I wear a size 11 shoe I had to buy my own botas(boots). And I got a size just too small too, so I had blisters, bug bites, and no wallet all weekend. Somebody had to be laughing at me.

That evening we went to a Carnaval celebration across the river in Mishualli. It´s apparetnly all about getting wet. If they see any extranjeros that are dry they soake them with buckets of wather and foam in areosal cans. So I had to stay away from all of my woman counterparts because they were just asking for it. Needles to say I still got wet but they got drenched. THere as stage with a popular band called Los Inquietos playing there hits near the river while everyone got soaked. Later that night the stage and all the trash got swept away by the rain that came and wiped it all away.

It was fun and I got great pictures but boy oh boy was it hell for a while until I found my wallet on Monday. I´ll try and upload some now but I´m under the bullet now at an internet cafe.