For the rest of February I will be living in the Amazon Rainforest! Wait, what? True enough, yesterday morning I woke up at 6 and just before 7 as I was getting ready to go eat breakfast my host sister popped in to say she had just called a taxi and it would be at the house in 7 minutes. About two minutes later my host mom came in yelling, Amy, el taxi es aqui! So I threw on my books and ran downstairs and out the door, barely eeking out a quick ¨chao¨on the way. Five bucks later I was at the airport in Quito, but not destined for an international location. Thanks to the prompt taxi I was about 30 minutes early for meeting the group, but Karl was already there too so I didn´t have to look like a homeless bum on my own. A few minutes later Kola showed up as well. Then pretty soon 11 of the 13 wer there, all excited for our adventure into the Amazon!
Our flight was only about 30 minutes, Quito to Coca and we definitley spent more time waiting to board and take off then we did in the air, in fact the beverage cart didn´t even make it through the whole plane before we started our descent. I sat with Steph and Liz and we had a great flight together, lots of laughter! WE had some great views of Antisna and of the Amazon itself as we came down into Coca. After our flight we had a short bus ride to the Rio Napo where we caught a motored canoe to the start of the infamous Maxus Road. At the Maxus road we jumped on a ranchero and drove two hours to Rio Tiputini and had another almost three hour motored canoe ride to the station. We saw tons of butterflies, turtles and birds along the way. The breeze from the moving canoe was very refreshing against the siffling humidity. It´s crazy hot here in the Amazon, and the humidity is probably rarely below 90%, no joke. So needless to say I have been doing a lot of sweating since arriving. It was about 100 degrees at the entrance of the Maxus Road. Yikes!
Friday night after dinner I had an extensive conversation with Steve and Colleen. We talked a lot bout elitism, convservation, world poverty and pretentious Peace Corps volunteers that we´ve met. We talked about how disgusting some poeple are when they think so highly about their humanitarian efforts that they forgetto actually include people. As expected, our place in Ecuador came up. In our classes we talk a lot about biological and ecological processes, but when it comes to human and environment interactions it´s not uncommon for the invisible and unidentified ¨they¨to come up. I feel like there is a certain field known as sociology that is more or less glossed over. They cut down the forest. They pollute the rivers. They hunt the animals. It´s strange that at the same time I can trace my being here to another equally destructive ¨they¨. They want instant gratifciation. They want cheap oil. They want cheap beef. They want fast cars and freedom. They want to live wastefully and comfortably. They don´t want anyone to second guess the power of the United States. They are what keeps the poverty stricken people of the world poor and they are one causal facotr of me being here. If the global south had an equal share of the world´s wealth I couldn´t come here and romp around for six months because it would reflect the real cost of all those things. So how to you make yourself a better global citizen?
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