Round 1: Dear Saint Anthony, Nicole is Lost and Must Be Found, It's Been About a Month Since I Last Saw Her

Living in Quito is hard for me, with the issue of safety topping the list. It’s not that Quito is any more dangerous than other large cities it’s the fact that every time I am about to do something some Quiteñan is bound to say, “Cuidadate, es muy peligroso”. It’s limiting, literally and figuratively. I stop doing the things that make me happiest, like running, volunteering and writing and more of the things that make me lazy, like drinking and perusing the internet. I lose myself in the dull drums of the daily routine, a waiting game really. In turn, my mind turns to a big mushy bowl of oatmeal and alas any focus I had of my goals is lost. So when I have the opportunity to dawn my adventure braids and get out of dodge, I do so, without thinking twice as I know the trip, lasting from one hour to a couple of weeks, will help me gain back the personal clarity and drive that were lost on the so-called dangerous streets of Quito.

You can only imagine what a simple five days in the Amazon did for my psyche, would do for anyone’s psyche. If you are at all like me, and I’ll willingly admit it I am one in a million, your imagination will go into overdrive the second the scenery starts to change and old Andean men, in fedora like hats, and barefoot women, carrying machetes as if it were the norm, greatly outnumber those in suits and high heels. And when you are greeted at the edge of an Amazonian river by a tall, skinny drunk man whose Spanish sounds more like that of a drowning sailor you know you are finally in for the type of adventure you have longed for in the past month, if not your entire life. Then, as you are waiting for the canoe to pick you up, the sun starts to dip behind the droopy trees and the buzz of the mosquitoes becomes loud enough for you to actually consider the fact that they might be able to eat you alive if not infect you with ten strains of malaria. It is here that you take in a deep breath, one that would make any yoga teacher proud, and let a permanent smile creep across your face. One that is so big your travelling companions ask if you have taken some drug that they don’t know about. You try to explain but you can’t find the right words and you are not sure they would listen anyway as they are, hopefully, starting their own adventures. By the time the long blue wooden canoe arrives the sun has officially disappeared and you embark down the pitch black river, encountering bats and the red glowing eyes of crocodiles. For thirty minutes you are forced to rely on your senses of hearing and touch than that of sight. You feel the humidity and are reminded of your summer in Pennsylvania, hear the river rushing and think of all the camping trips you went on as a child. Memories, that you thought had been erased, appear so clearly, as if they had happened yesterday. You are flooded with them, it’s as if you are dying and your life is flashing in front of you, most likely because you have to admit, you are a little afraid of those things you can not see. And suddenly, just as you arrive at the small, 10 thatched hut lodge your mind stops on one. The first time you watched Swiss Family Robinson, also being the first time you imagined yourself getting lost in a foreign place, happening upon monkeys and toucans that would become part of your family. The first time you realized that being lost, truly lost, may finally stop your prayers of being found. 

Round Two: “I am sorry, I don’t know where we are” says Mariana, our guide will be out in the new year.

Prologue: Perdido en la Amazonia

Part of every South American travelers experience includes riding on buses for extended amounts of time. Some people can't stand the lengthy, often times cramped and smelly, rides. I love them, so much so that I often take the seven hour ride from San Jose to Santa Barbara when visiting my family back in the United States. These rides offer a few things that one is hard pressed to get in a car of your own or even on a plane; uninterrupted time to get lost in your thoughts along with new landscapes to ponder over, not to mention time to read that book you've been putting off for a month or so (Mountains Beyond Mountains turned out to be perfect for the occasion). Two eleven hour bus rides through waterfall laden rainforests and a week in the Amazon provided me the opportunity to write quite a bit of those thoughts down. Typically I write to inform, sometimes to even entertain, this time the words that made it here are designed to convince. You see, I was lucky enough to see and experience the circle of life that takes place on the edges of the Amazon and the experience helped me to see how far away humans have stepped from that circle and in turn remind me that our natural resources can not continue to be taken advantage of. It is my goal to convince you to experience the Amazon for yourself or to, at the very least, help to conserve it from the encroaching modern world.

The Amazon, originally created in my head by my schooling and the Discovery channel was made up of dangerous animals and indigenous tribes that would attempt to shrink your head upon first sight, more like a plot in a Roald Dahl book than anything else. I knew it was an important place but never thought I would ever have the opportunity to go there so did not put much thought into its actual importance in this world. As I traveled along the highway and into the lush green landscape circumvented by small farming pueblos and waterfalls that put those in Yosemite to shame I realized how much of my world I was truly leaving behind. My experiences were not all good, it broke my heart to see a map of the Ecuadorian part of the Amazon with less than a 5th of the land preserved from human contact, about a third used for tourism and the rest owned by Texaco and Chevron. This was most evidenced by the oil line that followed the highway to the edge of the Cuyabeno river and the oil towns that would randomly pop up between the small farming ones secured by atypical chain link fences, keeping them safe from I don't know what. What was even more disheartening were the small towns that chose not to accept oil money but instead, cut or burnt down the surrounding forest for farming or raising cattle, in an attempt, I can only imagine, to survive.

Fundraising for nonprofits and selling history to teenagers has taught me that making people feel guilty will not convince them to do anything for you. Instead I will embark here on a quest to engage you in my brief story of the Amazon, to paint a picture well beyond what you can watch on any HDTV. I will intersperse my words with pictures but you must remember that my award winning sister is the photographer in my family and I, I am just a girl with a pen that only recently started to take writing even remotely seriously. I hope I will do the Amazon the justice it deserves.

Chapter One titled, Dear St. Anthony Nicole is Lost and Must Be Found, It's Been About a Month Since I Last Saw Her will be out in a few days, maybe.

Inspriration

Joseph, one of my morning students, is one of the reasons I will never give up on my life-long and extremely difficult quest to learn Spanish. He is a retired engineer, and a widow with three grown sons. He continues to study English for the sole purpose of holding a conversation with his grandson who lives in Miami. Joseph started in the Advanced II class but was quickly moved down into my Intermediate II course because, although he knew many, many English words, he could not formulate a sentence. Here, after many hours of hard work, you can hear his beautiful prose accentuated by his obvious love for his hometown, Riobamba.

PS - This is supposed to be a video...it's not working...spent way too long trying to make it work. If you are one of my silicon valley peeps or any computer geek and you know how to compress .mov files and then get them uploaded using an extremely slow connection please let me know. I have about 30 movies/letters I want to send out to those that wrote to my students about their favorite places. UPDATE...got it compressed to a .wmv file and even got the file uploaded but then it sat in processing mode for hours...help me please.