I’ve finished the second of my three trips in Central and South America, and am officially halfway through the overall journey! I spent the last week at a homestay in the jungle near Tena, Ecuador, learning about the local nature and customs of the Quechua people, an indigenous group from Peru.
Itinerary:
Day 15 (Quito): Travel Day, New Group
Day 16 (Tena): Andes Bus Trip, Mud Masks, Chocolate-Making
Day 17 (Tena): Quechua Culture & History
Day 18 (Tena): Lake Swim & Village Biking
Day 19 (Tena): Animal Sanctuary & Blowdarts
Day 20 (Quito): Travel Day, Final Dinner
Day 21 (Quito): Quito Tour, Equator Line
Day 22 (Lima): Travel Day, Dinner & Drinks with New Friends
1. Why am I here?
My travel plans for this entire trip started from a 65-day tour offered by G Adventures, covering 7 countries from Ecuador to Brazil. After deciding that would be a little too much time and a little too much money, I chose a 3-week segment of that tour I was most interested in. But I really wanted to see parts of Ecuador, and specifically some of the Amazon, so I chose this week-long “Local Living Amazon Jungle” trip, and found dates for the other tours that fit with it. So in a way, this was the focal point of my entire six-week trip.
2. Where Is “Here”?
Tena is a small town about a 5-hour drive from Quito, on the other side of the Andes mountains. We didn’t spend much time in the town itself, but around it are many Quechua families and communities. Aside from mining and fishing, eco-tourism is one of the region’s biggest industries, and many families have established partnerships with international companies to host tourists and travelers. We were introduced to our homestay and hosts on the first night, the family of a Quechua shaman named Delphine (sp?), who was really passionate about sharing his culture with the rest of the world.
The homestay was a 30 minute drive outside Tena, along a bumpy dirt road, surrounded by jungle. The area was fairly populated by other families (like really low-density jungle suburbs) so there wasn’t as much wildlife as other jungles, aside from bugs! We stayed in a semi-enclosed simple wood structure with 4 bedrooms on each floor, each with 1-3 beds (covered by mosquito nets, of course). The property had electricity and running water, but both were inconsistent. Delphine’s daughters Narcissa and Maria made every meal (which included 45+ people one night!!), and his son Rolando and cousin Miguel guided most of the activities.
3. Trip Recap
Based on my posts from Mexico-Guatemala-Belize, you can get a sense of the ‘extra’ activities on these trips, so I won’t write about them as much here. Still, we did a lot this week, so in chronological order:
Day 15
- Leave Playa Del Carmen at 6AM
- Fly to Quito, Ecuador via Panama City
- Meet roommate Sydnie, from California
- Welcome Meeting in 1 hour, find the quickest food nearby
- Eat the worst empanadas of my life (90% air, 5% filling, 5% grease)
- Meet new Group: a British couple, an Aussie couple, one Dutch gal, one Danish guy, 6 Canadians, and us two Americans, all ages 26 to 55.
Day 16
- Hotel breakfast with awkward conversation
- Lead talking/joking, riding off energy of my last group
- Transit to Amazon Homestay (taxi, bus across the Andes, then taxi, about 6 hours)
- Lunch (Broccoli soup, chicken, rice, beans)
- Meet our Host Family & Adventure GuidesOrientation/ Nature Walk and Clay Masks
- Shower, but the water line breaks before I can rinse, so get stuck for 15 min until it’s fixed
- Chocolate-making demo
- Dinner (Maito (leaf-wrapped fish), boiled yucca, tomato+cucumber salad)
- There are no lights in our rooms to keep the bugs out, so some of us play Uno until it’s time for bed
- Sleep (poorly) through a heavy rainstorm, strong wind, and weak bladder
Day 17
- Breakfast (Fried Yucca, Egg, Salad)
- Achote plant painting symbols from local petroglyphs, and reed crowns to indicate gender
- Hike to/up nearby waterfalls (to cleanse bad energy and return with good energy from Pacha Mama (mother earth))
- Lunch (chicken, potato, rice: chicken veg soup)
- Jungle Medicine Hike (learn about medicinal and cultural uses for local plants)
- Quechua Shamanic Practices (healing ceremonies, ayoausca uses, wedding ceremonies (I got to be a bridesmaid!!), chicha (fermented yucca) & local whisky drinking)
- Dinner (potato soup, pasta carbonara (they went out of their way to provide variety))
- Found a deck of cards at the homestay, people shared their favorites (Aussies taught “shithead”, I taught “spoons”)
Day 18
- Breakfast (mashed plantain & scrambled egg)
- Long walk to local “pools” (river-fed resort area)
- 2 hours pool time (cut up my feet jumping into the water but So Fun) (LINK TO VID)
- “Taxi” back to homestay (14 people piled into the back of a pickup truck)
- Lunch (chicken fried rice, bananas, tomato)
- Mountain Biking through local communities
- Shandia community lodge + snack (yucca+palm dumplings, cacao seeds)
- Shower by flashlight (and now all running water was out, and there was only one bucket, so I washed from my hydroflask and camelback (JUST enough water))
- Dinner (beef, beets, rice)
- Share boxwine with the gals and play spoons (I won a round this time 😁)
Day 19
- Breakfast (pancakes, strawberry, banana)
- Transit to Amazon animal sanctuary (taxi+motorboat, 2 hrs)
- Tour AmaZOOnica Animal Rehab (not a Zoo tho)
- Transit back to boat docks for lunch (whole fried trout, one of the best fish I’ve ever had)
- Stop at Tena on way back to homestay to buy supplies (toothpaste + candy for me)
- Waorani Blowgun Lesson & Demo
- Finally take a normal, well-lit shower
- Dinner (beef & rice)
- Card games (spoons & shithead again, then I taught “bullshit”, then Uno again)
- Had a bit more boxwine than I should have, and had to get up 3 times in the middle of the night to pee 🙃
Day 20
- Breakfast (Fruit, eggs, fruit juice (guanawana I think?))
- Transit back to Quito (~6 hours), tried sleeping with little success
- Lunch (actually good empanadas & an arepa (Ecuadorian ones are made with cornmeal!))
- Mall adventure with older Canadian couple (I really vibed with them, they were goofy & cool – the guy still skateboards at 55, and the gal had such an appreciation for their life experiences)
- Tried (failed) finding replacement case for my Samsung earbuds, since it seems unable to charge them now…
- Drop off jungle-musty laundry, shower, get dolled up, then pickup clothes
- Uber to Goodbye Dinner @ Katari (cool bar/restaurant with self-serve wine/beer taps)
- Wait 1 hour to enter Katari (large groups are hard… we eventually split in half to get in)
- Find one beer I like (a sour) & have a light dinner (shared apps with the table)
- Live band starts playing (really good), I have lots of fun dancing
- Get back to hotel at midnight, say final goodbyes to (most of) the group
Side Note on Dancing:
I spent a large portion of my adolescence and adulthood not enjoying dancing, because I felt awkward and bad at it. It took a period of 2ish years at the start of my transition when friends/family were having weddings, which were good excuses to push past my comfort zone and try making the most of the dancefloor/DJ. I no longer try to dance ‘right’ or ‘good’ or care about other people looking at me (something I also had to get over in my transition). I just move in ways I have fun with! And as it turns out, that makes you look really good at (and comfortable with) dancing. (Video Evidence)
Day 21
- Hotel Breakfast (egg, croissant, fruit)
- Uber across town to start Quito City Tour (guide Alejandro)
- Climb towers of La Basílica del Voto Nacional
- Walk through Quito Old Town and churches
- Take in the views from El Panecillo
- Lunch (more empanadas, my favorite so far)
- Equator Line & Museum (Intiñan)
- Artisinal markets (very difficult for me to ignore all the people asking me to buy their stuff! Got some practice haggling though)
- Join 3 Canadians and 2 Aussies for dinner across from hotel (accidentally ate some REALLY spicy peppers…)
- Enjoy my (possibly only) night with a room to myself, taking care of some NL immigration stuff
- Sleep at midnight (wish it were sooner, but I still got GREAT sleep and felt soooo much better the next day)
Day 22
- Hotel Breakfast (Egg, papaya, and biscuit)
- Hurriedly pack, finding space for an alpaca hoodie I got at the market the day before
- Taxi to the airport, and enjoy a really smooth experience through check-in, security, and immigration
- Fly ~2 hours to Lima
- I bought a cheap ticket and the airline was charging me $75 USD for a carry-on bag… I decided to risk it based on what one of the Canadians said, and was able to just… bring on my carry-on, without having paid
- Transfer to Lima hotel
- Meet up for dinner with 4 friends from the Ecuador trip for dinner (the Danish guy and British couple, who are doing the same tour as me next! And the Dutch gal, who’s meeting up with family in Lima for another South America trip later)
- Bar hop until a club opens, dance till midnight
4. Thoughts
Even though that itinerary looks super packed, this trip was a nice (slower) change of pace from my last one. Staying in such a remote place gave me space from the constant variety of new location after new location. The lack of electricity, cell service, and coverage of all our meals meant there was less to think about and distract me. And the shorter timeframe made me feel less pressure to get to know the people in this group (but I still did!).
That being said, I REALLY wish I had planned buffer time between these tours. The one extra day in Lima is only break I’m gonna get, but it would have been nice to be able to just chill, or explore at my own pace, in one of these cool cities. I hope to be able to come back someday, wander around the old town in Quito, summit Cotopaxi, and visit more restaurants in Lima. But I’m really looking forward to how much of Peru I’ll get to see over the next 3 weeks!
Quito
Aside from the sounds and (noxious) smells of car traffic, Quito is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen. It sprawls a Huge area surrounded by mountains, has old and modern architecture, and really interesting topography. I hope to come back someday to explore it myself and hike some of the nearby volcanoes.
Language
Unsurprisingly, fewer people spoke English here than in the tourist-hub-towns we stayed in on the last trip. I got REALLY good practice with my Spanish, which highlighted just how poor my vocabulary is. One of the Canadians was the only other person who knew any, and she was really fluent – enough to hold conversations with our host family in the jungle. I was able to navigate most customer service interactions, and flex a bit on the Quito city tour, but I’d like to get better. If one of my goals when travelling is to talk/connect with local people, I’ll need to actually be able to communicate with them. Both my airport taxi drivers on this trip spoke very little English, but were patient and let me practice Spanish with them, which was really nice and helpful. The last guy complimented my ability to understand Spanish (he didn’t say the same about my speaking ability 😂), which must mean I’m doing something right.
News
Two hurricanes have hit my country since I started this trip, devastating lives, communities and infrastructure. A monumental election cycle continues, and the future of the world seems more uncertain. The (latest) genocide in Gaza has continued for a year without end. And none of that has felt real while I’ve been on this trip.For one, it’s not always easy to keep up with news even during normal life, let alone a busy schedule like I’ve been having. And why would someone willingly choose to take on the weight of such horrible news entirely outside of their control?
I’m in my era of living for myself in the present moment, but I’m realizing that INCLUDES continuing to engage with the issues I care about, and not turning a blind eye to problems that don’t affect me. Whether or not I could somehow continue this level of travel, I know it will take more effort to stay informed on issues and people I care about when I’m not there with them directly. I hope this travel experience will help me get some practice and perspective on what this will look like for me in the future.
Until next time,
💜 Ada
Post 6/8 of Ada’s 2024 Latin American Journey (1100+ Photo Album)
- Mayan Adventure (14 Days)
- Local Living Ecuador (7 Days)
- Sandboarding & Sunsets (21 Days)
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