The jungley ones have returned! A little worse for wear, knackered and wondering whether I will ever feel clean again, but very glad we went. Surprised that I miss it.
The Amazon was impressive… vast, dense, and dramatic. I am all adjectives. It’s heavy with humidity, and then a split second later drenched in unfeasible amounts of rain.
Ah, the rain. It was relentless and unforgiving – distances disappeared in white mist, and any notion of dryness became a delirious memory. We would naively hang damp clothes up to dry and then find them soaked the next morning. Wellington boots and huge rain ponchos were our uniform (argh, the rain poncho – that thing did nothing but pick up mud and cover me in it, until I was a brown mud monster squelching around feeling sorry for myself, until I finally ripped off the poncho and welcomed the rain).
I like to think I lost a few prissy vanities; by the end of the second day, trying to find our way back to camp as the jungle floor disappeared into blackness, all I wanted was to get back unhurt, cleanliness be damned.
But I can’t say we were roughing it, exactly… luxuries like flushing toilets and three-course meals did somewhat detract from the authenticity of it all. I’ve developed a pre-dinner popcorn habit.
And though the jungle felt as starkly real as it gets, the occasional dirt road and telephone pole served as reminders that we were not, in fact, intrepid explorers, but cowardly tourists on a well-trodden route. It’s “secondary jungle”, meaning there aren’t so many impressive animals, but a plethora of plants (including ayahuasca, which we got to look at but not taste – and no, we didn’t meet a shaman).
High points
Floating down the river, picturesque and calming – a bit sore on the wooden floor of a canoe, but endlessly grateful at the chance to sit down.
Driving through the Amazon in the back of a pick-up truck in the pouring rain – strangely exhilarating.
Swimming through watery caverns to arrive at a well-hidden little waterfall; stunning but so cold and traumatic to get to that I’m not surprised only Rich and I agreed to go.
Low points
Trying to cross the swamp. The mud. The complete conviction that I was going to fall every five minutes, and the mental exhaustion of being so frequently afraid of such a simple thing.
And the horror of hearing, halfway through the second day, from a tearful group of English girls, that there had been a terrorist attack on London.
More terrifying because we were so remote, so isolated, and had no way of even knowing the scale of it, so naturally my imagination went wild. And the scared imaginings were more saddening for the peace of the jungle, so alien to such awful things. (Should I point out the irony of people being worried about me leaving London for Ecuador?)
But, back now in Baños, and readjusting to noise, and cars, and people out shopping and partying and all these things that seem appropriate to civilisation.
It feels stranger than I expected; petty, somehow, and a shock to the body. Not, of course, to say that my feet are not hugely relieved to be dry once more, and my hair beginning to resemble its old self having been reintroduced to shampoo.
