Monday, February 13, 2006
Well, I left Jatun Sacha a few days ago and am now somewhere in the middle of Ecuador. However, I want to write more about Jatun Sacha before I forget.
I should describe where I lived. It was a wooden hut shared with one other person (an Amercan, Greg) and looked something like this:
Actually, there´s 3 rooms in each hut, with 2 people in each room...that´s what I meant. There´s a separate washblock. There´s something depressing about waking up, needing the toilet, and having to walk to a washblock in the rain. (There´s an effect in the rainforest that when you need to go, the urge is surprisingly and overwhelmingly strong. Many of the other volunteers experienced this as well). Also, the washblock - toilets, showers and all - was invariably filled by an interesting variety of insects. I was quite put off by this in my first week or so, but by the end didn´t even notice it.
I must also mention the bar - it´s the coolest place! The building is a large oval, rasied up slightly on stilts, open at the sides but with a thatched roof. It´s just one large space inside, with a few tables round the edge. My life became reminiscent of the second year at Jesus College: bar every night, often with us being the only people there. In fact, there was only one night when it was what you´d call busy and only a few occasions when there were any non-volunteers there.
As for the surrounding area. Naturally, I mainly saw the area around the road (it would probably be described as a track in England). The area along the road was heavily developed...'heavily' in terms of what you´d expect in a rainforet, anyway. The people that live there speak a language called Quechua; most speak Spanish as a second language. I suppose you´d describe them as indigenous (although to me that brings to mind tribal people wearing nothing but leaves). The people all live in huts that look something like this
and the huts are grouped together in ´communities´. There's chickens and dogs running about everywhere. Another thing the communities have in common is the Coca Cola logo...it´s everywhere. If somewhere sells drinks, it won´t bother with a sign saying ´shop´ or ´café´, it will just stick the Coca Cola logo outside. In fact, this happens in the towns as well, and even a reasonably nice restaurant will have a sign containing it´s name next to the Coke logo. I guess Coke must make the signs for free, or maybe even pay the shops/restaurants. I never understood how a company that just sells drinks could be considered one of the biggest companies in the world...but now I see. Everyone drinks it, everywhere.
Anyway, I don´t know whether I should be annoyed with these people for destroying the forest, or whether they´ve always lived there. It made me thankful for the huge area that Jatun Sacha protects, anyway. To be honest, the volunteer work I did didn´t seem directly useful, but I was pleased that my money was going to the foundation.
So, my last week at Jatun Sacha. I arrived back from Baños on Sunday (5th Feb) and was immediately recruited to a trip some of the other volunteers had planned to Coca, leaving on Monday. Coca is much further east, into the forest, and we got there by canoe along the Rio Napo, which was cool. We stayed the night at Coca, then on Tuesday we took another canoe for another few hours down the river to a biological reserve, Pañacocha. The Rio Napo is incredible...it' more like an estuary. Just look at the size of it!
Now look at a map and notice how far to the west of South America this is...it's merely the tip of the Amazon river system. I actually can´t comprehend how big the Amazon river itself must be. At Pañacocha we looked around for wildlife, with varying degrees of success. We did manage to see some pink fresh-water dolphins, which made the trip for me. They occasionally surfaced and you could just see their backs, but it was still pretty special.
Thursday was my last day of volunteering (we did something else pointless like construct a shelter in the organic garden, then dig up the tomatoes underneath it that had been planted a few weeks ago). In the evening most of the volunteers went to the bar and got suitably drunk. We played this drinking game which I´ve never come across before, where you have two glasses, and you have to bounce a 25 cent piece, or 'quarter', into the glass before you can move it on. Anyone heard of it? A nice ending to my stay was climbing up the observation tower (30 metres I´m told) on Thursday and again on Friday morning. It´s just a narrow, triangular, steel framework and you have to climb up the outside, using climbing gear if you´ve got any sense. It was absolutely petrifying, but definitely worth it for the view. On Friday afternoon I travelled back to Quito.
I think, without realising it, I began to really enjoy being at Jatun Sacha. Not just the excursions, but also just staying and working there. I´ll definitely miss it and the thing I´ll miss the most (and am missing) is the people and the company. I became good friends with some of the volunteers by the end, and might even stay in touch with them. I´m now entered the daunting 'on my own' phase. Find out how I´m faring in the next exciting installment...
to be continued
OK, I´m loving this photo uploading thing, so here´s a good one of me at AmaZOOnica, as described previously.
