The Selva

Despite the various bug bites, having my mole mistaken as a bug on my face, sleeping under a musky mosquito net, parasites in our tap water, cockroaches and frogs in our room, and the unknown rashes on my body, the jungle was an experience of a lifetime.

Wilson and I spent 5 days and 4 nights in Cuyobeno, a part of the Amazon jungle outside of Quito. The first night we got there, we went on an evening night tour. Unfortunately, we didn´t see much due to the rain. However, when we returned back, we saw a tarantula on the roof of one of the huts. This was the first time, I had ever seen a tarantula outside of a glass case. I thought I would have been freaked out but the tarantula, well, was a tarantula.

We saw a number of exotic animals that made this trip worthwhile. On our second day, we were pleasantly surprised to see an anaconda resting in a tree during our canoe ride. We also saw finger monkeys (you can literally put these things in your pocket), toucans from a distance, birds that looked like turkeys, spiders and ants of all shapes and sizes, a gigantic grass hopper, jungle cock roaches, a dart frog that is poisonous, and various other insects. It was also interesting to see how all the rich vegetation throughout the jungle.

The guide pointed out that the wooly and holler monkeys are often hunted for their meat because it “tasted just like beef” (not chicken!). Unfortunately, we did not try any of these monkeys during our meals in the jungle.

On the food front, Wilson was brave enough to eat some mini ants that apparently tasted like lemons. And the guide had everyone try this type of plant that he claimed would whiten your teeth. We questioned why indigenous people would want to whiten their teeth (isn't this more of a modern-day thing)? After he had us chew on a piece of plant for a couple seconds, he had us all stick out our tongue to see if it was blue. Unfortunately, no one in our group except for one gal and the guide had a blue tongue. I guess that was interesting...It was the chlorophyll in the plant that caused this reaction.

The guide also showed us a tree that was used to treat malaria in the jungle. You are supposed to boil the bark and drink it twice during the day to help cure this disease. Fortunately, none of us had to drink the potion!

We also visited a “shaman” (also known as a medicine man). We ate our boxed lunches at his house but unfortunately, he was not home to cure our bad spirits or sicknesses. So we went over to an indigenous community to meet some of the local folks and meet another medicine man who is 90 years old and in awesome shape. Unfortunately, he was a retired medicine man so he wasn't able to see us for remedies but instead, he showed us how the city yucca was harvested in his community.

On our last day in the jungle, we canoed upstream to the lake in a 5-man canoe. Canoeing is a lot harder than one may think. It took us nearly two hours to go upstream to the lake, which takes a mere 15 minutes in a motorized canoe. Our treat was we got to jump out of a tree into the lake.

This was definitely a trip we would take again. We saw a lot of different jungle things, met a number of great people and really enjoyed the overall experience.

Comings and Goings

After a brief respite in San Francisco for the funeral of Agnes's Great Uncle Francis, who passed away at 97, we're back in Ecuador.

We'll finally be off to the Amazon tomorrow for a week and then the Galapagos the week after. In the past few weeks, we've been working on our still horrible Spanish and just bumming around the city of Quito.

A few folks have inquired about the guinea pigs here, which are considered sort of an Andean delicacy. As mentioned in our previous posts, we did finally have some cuy, as its called here. Cuy is not really something people eat on a regular basis and many folks consider the consumption of a guinea pig to be no more appetizing than eating a rat. And it's a traditional cuisine of indigenous folks in the mountains. That said, it is still widely available in Finer Ecuadorian restaurants.

My cuy was served whole and deep fried. Much to my surprise, the meat was quite tender and moist. I had thought before that it might be sort of dry, like many rabbits I've eaten, but the texture and quality of the flesh was consistently inviting in a way that I suppose is only possible in a small animal, which likely cooks evenly.

The meat itself tasted like sort of a gamey chicken. Unfortunately, the batter on the outside of the carcass was very thick and overwhelmed the delicate flavor of the flesh. In fact, much of the cuy tasted a lot like pollo campero chicken, if you've ever had that (Pollo Campero is the KFC of Guatemala, though though are now opening franchises in the US). I would have enjoyed the meal more if I had had some buffalo wing sauce some ranch dressing on the side.

If I try cuy again, I´ll have it baked.


In other news, I got into a minor scuffle in a bar in Quito here. Every year, the streets in the capital fill with drunken revelers to celebrate the founding of the city. Our area, Mariscal Sucre, is especially chaotic with street stages pumping out live music all night for a week straight and people peeing all over sidewalk since they don´t supply nearly enough porta potties (I think I saw two). It´s like New Years Eve for a week straight.

Anyway, on Friday, at the peak of the festivities, some folks in a bar all started beating on our Ecuadorian friend, who is a former teacher at our school. I got the chance to rear back and really unload a series of rights into the skull of some poor fellow. I originally was just trying to hold him back from beating on Jorge, our buddy, but he wouldn´t stop coming, so I just beat him to the ground. I don´t think I´ve had such a pure moment of clarity in a long, long time, just unleashing maybe eight or ten shots with the full force of my weight into his head. I felt like Mike Tyson! (when he was younger and faster). Afterwards, my knuckles were quite sore. While beating on this guy, some knucklehead busted a bottle on my head.
The amazing thing was that it didn`t even hurt! Two things were working in my favor here, first, whoever hit me, was nice enough to do so on what must be the hardest part of my head, and second, I was wearing a bandana (which I rarely do, but some beer girls were passing them out), which prevented a gash from opening up on my scalp.

I´m not sure what precipitated the whole fracas but I believe Jorge was probably just hitting on the wrong girl. Before I got to engage the guy who blindsided me with a bottle, I got pulled away and we continued our festivities in another discoteca. The whole thing was actually pretty amusing, no one got hurt, and I found out that I must have a really hard head, which is not the type of discovery you make except under very specific circumstances.

Post fight, I´ve been asking a lot of people about bar fights here. People seem to fight a lot here when they drink. While I haven´t encountered any stats on the subject I have asked a few people about the frequency of such occurrences, and the consensus is that about 50% of guys in bars fight about once a year. One guy I talked to last night said he hates fighting but gets caught up in them just ´cause they happen. He dislikes the fact that most bar fights aren´t one on one. It all recalls an odd conversation I had with my Spanish teacher here when I first arrived in Quito. She thought it was highly unusual that I don´t fight in bars and that I hadn´t been in a scuffle since like third grade. I told her that I was just a little guy and there`s no upside in beating on a little guy.

Anyway, I don´t plan to getting into any more brawls, but considering that bar fights are quite common here, I`ll chalk it up as an Ecuadorian cultural experience.