day 4 and 5. . .finally

OK so I have done (admittedly) a godawful job of keeping up with this blog. Especially because I'm currently writing this from Santiago, Chile and have finished with  Ecuador. Because of this, I need to finish the freakin jungle. Day 4 and 5 were pretty incredible, but can be summed up in 3 words: "bat cave" and "tubing."

Day 4. . .

We woke up to another 4 and some hours of class, which at this point has become more of an exercise than anything. Gustavo was trying really hard to keep us engaged, but when you have a sweeping view of the jungle, butterflies floating around, hammocks inches away from you, weird insect noises from every direction. . .it's a little difficult to keep up the attention per say.

Anyways, we hear about our adventure for the day. . .and we hear we're gonna go to a bat cave, and I'm not talkin Batman. We waded through small creeks, climbed slippery rocks, and scaled fallen tree limbs when all of a sudden, we reach a ravine that is just a massive black hole. Our guide tells us that we're gonna be climbing through it. . .and this is basically how he tells us to go through.

Guide: Ok, we're walking through this thing! Don't put your feet low, or else you'll get stuck and might break a leg in which case you're screwed. Don't put your feet high, because then you might get your feet stuck in the above crevice or you again might slip up. By the way, there's no light in here so you can't see where your feet are. Finally, there are bats flying above you, so if one hits you in the face (looks at Greg), don't freak out because you now know what it was at least.

bat cave, with gothem city just beyond

. . .Damnit. So we go climbing through this thing. . .my feet ended up being just fine, and I saw bats flying RIGHT above my head. Thankfully none blasted me in the face, that would have been the opposite of fun.

Day 5. . .

Class with the 'Stash, which again at this point was pointless. The adventure today was TUBING. Now my memories of tubing has been from Phoenix memorial day and labor day parties, which have been a 4 to 5 hour floating-down-the-river adventure with 20+ friends and a cooler of brewskis. This was obviously nothing like that, but even so. . .I never have had all the tubes tied together like they were, so it was kind of odd to be floating down the river connected to 7 other people. However, it was super relaxing even with the occasional dip in the river.

After about 20 minutes of floatin down, we land on an embarkment and take a small walk into an indigenous community. We got the opportunity to hear about how they make food, create some household items, and got to try chicha (fermented yucca plant). It was, in one word, disgusting. It's funny because I've had chicha before, but this kind was godawful. I was told later that it was because it hadn't been totally fermented yet, and that the way they got it to be in a mushy pulp was that they had to CHEW IT BEFORE IT GOT THAT WAY. GEWW. Oh well, I'm still alive so no big deal.

After some more gentle floating, we finally got back to camp, packed our bags, and slept for one more night. The next morning was another long bus trip back to Quito. . .but the jungle trip was an experience I won't soon forget.