NHESP 2011 Update 7

Greetings all!

Sorry for the delay, but I am sure you can all understand that life on expedition is busy. In light of that, I will do my best to update all you fine folks back at home on the wild adventures of the past week or so.

            In Zuleta (which is where I believe I concluded my last update), we worked hard for the entirety of the day on constructing our leather sheathes—the final step in the long, yet rewarding process of creating our knives—choosing the pattern, cutting the leather, and softening its coarse texture with the cool touch of water and molding it with our hands. Under the learned guidance of German, at the conclusion of the day, we each had created our own, beautiful knife sheathes, and some of us even began the process of making our machete sheathes as well.

            We spent one last night in Zuleta, all cuddled in German’s bread-making room, surrounded by good food, good company, and song. The next morning we departed for the first day of our bike expedition during which we began our ascent into the high Andes. We biked around 30 kilometers that first day and learned firsthand how truly uncomfortable it is to bike mile after mile on cobblestone roads; the result was an extreme case of some very sore butts. Despite that small misfortune, we got the chance to enjoy bizcochos, hot chocolate, and cheese, which is a typical Ecuadorian meal, during a rest stop in a small town along the way.

            Before night fell, we reached our destination, Guachalá, the oldest hacienda in Ecuador. While enjoying a warm dinner provided by the hacienda (for which we were grateful), we learned that Guachalá hacienda has been in existence since the earliest time that Ecuador was colonized by the Spanish. At one point, it was run entirely by a woman, which was quite revolutionary considering the time period.

            We spent a comfortable night camping in the courtyard of the hacienda. The following morning, we were on the road again for a much more challenging day of cycling mostly uphill, on mostly volcanic gravel. The next day followed suit as we continued to travel up and up the mountains. The trail became so steep and gravelly in some places that Thomas called our uphill cycling “pushes” meaning that we would end up having to push our bikes up parts of the Andes.

            On the last few days of our bike journey, however, our efforts of pushing ourselves, and sometimes our bikes, up the seemingly never-ending curves and dips of the Andean mountains, were rewarded by an extremely pleasurable night at the hot springs in Papallacta. We soaked our sore muscles in the healing waters that sprang up from the depths of the earth. It was quite a treat considering that the following day was an audacious one. We bicycled more than 100 kilometers; excluding a 7 kilometer ascent, most of the ride was downhill. It would be our first descent into the jungle, our first taste of the Amazon.

            Although the journey was a challenging one, and toward the end, we were biking at night guided only by the light of our headlamps and drenched by the sweet jungle rain, we were giddy and joyful with the newness of the climate surrounding us. We even stopped for a time at a small convenience store with whose owners Marcea made quick friends. Before we knew it, in exchange for the kindness of the owners—a dry place to stop and rest—we helped the store owners in loading countless cases of beer into a truck to be shipped off; certainly a memorable encounter.

At the end of the very wet, dark bike ride through the Ecuadorian jungle, we were sure we had reached our destination—a piece of land newly bought by Marcela’s parents—and then we realized . . . we had made a wrong turn.

            “I am in shock,” were the only words that Thomas could muster up in such a situation as this. Without a doubt, we all felt the same. We were exhausted from five days of biking. It was 11 o’clock at night, and our energy level was low. Yet our spirits were still high, so we turned around and continued on, feeling our way through the dark and the mud of a random back road in the jungle.

            At the conclusion of perhaps the most intense day of biking we ever experienced, we enjoyed a warm dinner and the warm hearts of our companions, and eventually, to everyone’s delight, our warm sleeping bags.

            Our final day of biking was separated by a day’s layover at the piece of land we had come to rest upon the previous night—spending the day journaling, washing our clothes, and soaking ourselves in the cold, refreshing water of the jungle river near our campsite. We left the next morning to embark on the last day of the bike trip, experiencing the true power of the jungle sun as we continued on to our final destination: the commencement of the river portion of our expedition. Luckily, because we crossed quite a lot of rivers throughout that last day of bicycling, many of our stops included a swim break, which was a fine antidote to the strength of the sun. 

   Just as the sun dipped behind the gentle jungle hills, we reached our campsite. And now it is time to discover the new world of the water and say good-bye to our trusty companions—the bikes.