"We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls.” – Anais Nin
Like in most cases, the company you keep makes all the difference. In my case, the group I've been placed in for the this Amazon adventure has been fortunate. We move as a tribe, it seems. We eat meals together, take on challenges together, play games together, and most certainly, we laugh together. My group of 10 is made up of me plus:
-a solo girl from Norway who's an architect and has just come from visiting Colombia,
-a newly married young couple from Holland, one is a registered nurse and the other a traffic engineer
-a solo girl from Germany who's a chemist
-two step-sisters from Holland, one's studying to be a therapist and the other wants to work for UNESCO or the UN
-3 friends from Holland, one's about to work for a NGO in Rwanda, one is police detective and the other is at LinkedIn
We've enjoyed learning from each other, especially regarding travels. I mentioned occupations because it came up last night that after getting to know someone and then you find out their occupation, you then begin to see them through another lens. It's been interesting to observe these twenty and thirty something, mostly backpackers. I admire their free spirits and willingness to try new experiences without any seeming doubts.
Our group went on a hike through the jungle today and boy, did we have a messy fun time. We were given tall wading boots to trudge through the mud. Slosh, slosh we went. It was fascinating to go deep in the rainforest and view the bright green fauna. We encountered spiders and frogs, but not any other animals.
Part of the trail led us in the middle of a swamp to cross. It started off with us balancing on logs and cautions to be careful because our boots don't have a lot of tread, but that was the least of our worries. After the log, there was allegedly a board to walk on, though we couldn't see it because of the murky water. This meant we were left feeling under water with our boots as best we could. At some point, we just had to go with it. For most of us that meant we missed the boards and splat, we fell into the nasty swamp. When I say fell, I meant we were in 2.5 feet of mud and murk and stuck because our boots filled up with swamp water. At first, there was embarrassment when it happened, but then it turned into laughs because almost all of us did indeed fall.
We learned what trees produce medicine that act like fluoride, anti-malaria, and latex. Some ants provide bug repellant if you run them on you. The coolest two things I learned about were the walking palm tree and about palm branches. Walking palm tree roots move the tree about 20-30cm each year to get a better angle to the sun- the whole tree moves!! There's apparently a time lapse YouTube video about it.
Secondly, our guide showed us a palm branch that looked like a bamboo cane just there, standing straight up with no branches. He informed us that when the wind or an animal bumps it, the branches come out. He demonstrated by briskly shaking it and sure enough, the branches just popped out like magic. It was so cool! These branches are used as roofing material because they are waterproof.
After dinner, we resumed playing a card game that entertained us the night before. We made a variation that when the cards got "cleared," then the game erupted into the "Floor Is Lava." The first time this happened, we all hastily left our chairs and ran to get off the floor, since it was lava. In doing this, we made a ruckus. So much so, that the entire staff came running in to see what's going on. It's even more funny now knowing they were taking part in a first aid training with two firefighters just outside. They really thought something was wrong and then laughed hysterically to see us hanging from rafters, laying on the bar and sitting on top of the railing like fools. Lol.
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