Into the Jungle

The day after our night in Coca, we woke up early and left for another oil town where we picked up supplies. We needed to bring enough food to feed ourselves during our time in the jungle, and some food and extra things for the Secoya community we would be staying with. We bought them extra food, some gasoline (for the boats), and gum for the kids. And then we drove to the riverbank of the Río Napo, a tributary of the Amazon. On our way there, we saw acres and acres of African palm plantations, which produce palm oil, but destroy the forest. However, the Secoya territory is protected, and the palm plantations stop right at their border, and the jungle begins. Our friend Hernán picked us up there in his engine-powered canoe and took us to a smaller tributary river called Río Aguarico. In fact, the Secoya kids go to school every day in a schoolboat--a wooden canoe with an engine, packed with kids, making stops at every settlement down the river.


We arrived in the Secoya village of San Pablo, a collection of some wooden huts along the Aguarico.


The Secoya are an indigenous group of Ecuador and Peru, who have been living in the Amazon basin for centuries, possibly millennia. The Ecuadorian and Peruvian Secoya were separated in the 1960s when the two countries fought a war over territory, and the Secoya fled the border areas. Now, there have been reunification projects for Secoya who knew each other as kids to meet each other again. Hernán estimates the total Secoya population at 2,000 people. They have a vast knowledge of the rainforest, and especially its medicinal plants, many of which Western medicine has yet to discover. For example, the shaman, Delfín, brew a hallucinogenic drink called Ayahuasca (or Yajé). They made it for us, but I chose not to try it.
Delfín and I:

I found living in the jungle to be very difficult. The worst part was the bugs, little no-see-'ums that bite relentlessly. I guess I didn't apply enough bug spray, and they totally devoured my arm.

While we were with the Secoya, we didn't really do much, but we went on a nature hike in the jungle, rode on boats, and played with their kids. One day the kids just had a ball climbing all over me and having me swing them around. I even told them the story of Little Red Riding Hood in broken Spanish. Some of the kids are really great climbers--they're totally fearless.


I thought I'd give it a try, too, on the biggest tree in the jungle.

It's higher up than it looks, seriously.

The girls also caught a massive spider:


And I played with a pet boar...

And found a caterpillar.

The word the Secoya use most often to describe their environment and lifestyle is tranquilo, meaning tranquil or quiet. They live very close to nature and take life slowly. Life in the jungle is certainly difficult but they have found a way to make it work, with their cultural knowledge and some modern technology. For drinking water, they collect rain in large buckets with cloth filters (and this is a rainforest, so it rains quite often). For electricity, they bought solar panels with batteries, and so they have lights, cell phones, and TV. They grow most of their food themselves, such as plantains, rice, sugarcane, and cacao, and they raise chickens. The government provides some health insurance. In fact there is an American man who chose to leave his life in the U.S. and live among the Secoya instead. It's not what I would choose, but different things work for different people.