The Rain and the Devil

So according to Ecuadorian legend, when it's sunny and raining at the same time, like it was this afternoon, it's when the Devil is marrying a female devil. So what I'm trying to tell you is there's been a wedding.

On Driving Here...

It is crazy! I have obviously not been driving, but whenever I am in a taxi or the car with my family, we all fear for our lives. Quito is really hilly and all the cars are manuals so everyone slides back about a foot or two at all the lights. Taxis force their way into itty bitty spaces and go around cars to jump in line at lights, especially at turns. No one stays in their lane, people are all over the place trying to edge their way up the line, and there are pedestrians and salespeople in the road all the time! It's a mad house! Last night I learned some good new swear words from my otherwise somewhat proper host mom. All I can say is, it's possible I will never complain about Minnesota drivers again.

The Amazon!

So this last weekend I went to the Amazon for the first time in my life and it was awesome. We stayed in a Sani Lodge (here: http://www.sanilodge.com/) run by the Sani Isla indigenous community of the area. The lodge brings in a lot of needed tourist money which is good because the community decided 2 or 3 years ago that they were not going to allow petroleum export on their land  (more on that later). The lodge was incredible. I was in a big room with 4 other girls and we had mosquito nets that looked like princess canopies and windows on all sides that were just screens. Those are for the heat and humidity. When we first got off the plane from Quito (which is often quite chilly and very dry when it's not raining) I nearly died of the humidity being a California coast girl. My friend from Florida loved it, said it made her feel at home.

Anyhoo, we got to Sani by way of a 3 hour boat ride down Rio Napo, after which we walked for 20 minutes (Hayley and I were briefly lost in the Amazon jungle before one of the guides came and found us; also on that detour I kicked a spiny plant and my foot still hurts), and then a 15 minutes canoe trip to the lodge itself. All I can say is, it was beautiful and sort of surreal to find myself in a totally foreign, magic place. While we were there we went on a bunch of different hikes in small groups of 6 or 7 with our own guides. My group's guide was Sergio and was pretty quiet but also awesome. He would charge off into the woods with us running along behind and then all of a sudden he'd have found monkeys or parrots to look at. It was like a sixth sense for cool animals in the jungle. We went to a bird viewing tower and saw toucans, howler monkeys, parrots, parakeets, woodpeckers, tanagers and a bunch more that I didn't catch the names of. Some girls in my group were making a list so I'll have to borrow that from them for the full report.

The only bummer of the trip was that our whole group got sick a one point or other. In fact several of us are still feeling a bit ill. It wasn't the food from the most excellent Sani Lodge because the handful of Brits, Germans and other Americans who were there didn't get sick, just us. Who knows what caused it, but apparently at least some people have amoebas.

Now for the serious part of the trip. We spent the first day on a bus trekking through people's farms to get to petrol pools and spying burning poles above the treetops burning off excess natural gas. When petroleum is extracted, they find petroleum, toxic water that can barely be called water anymore, and natural gas. The water and the unusable petroleum get pumped into these horrific pools, which a basically shallow holes in the dirt in the middle of the forest or someone's old farm that the oil companies have paid for the right to dump there.

The pools look like this but way bigger.

There is no protection for the environment whatsoever. The oil and water is dumped straight onto the ground where it leaches into the ground and water that the local people live on. There are a million kind of health problems in the nearby communities including cancer, and health problems in kids. The plants and soil along the edge of the pools are completely dead and black. It was jarring to see them strewn through a landscape that is otherwise so full of life. I was horrified, and also horrified that I was so shocked because clearly I have known for a long time how terrible oil companies and oil extraction are for the environment and the people. I am going to take this as a call to action to be more environmentally friendly in my daily life. I think I'm going to look into solar panels for our house (heads up Mom and Dad) this summer. There's a Bay Area company called SolarCity that leases them.

The trip was beautiful and sickening (oh, puns) in a myriad of ways and I am amazed at my luck and privilege that allowed me to go.