Camping in the Rain Forest

Well, teacher workshops have started. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t able to get in a little more traveling last week.

Back on New Year’s day, my friend Amber came to visit. She’s starting work on a farm in southern Ecuador through an international organic farming organization, and decided to make a visit to Bogota. We were only in the city for a couple days, making the obligatory trip up the Monserrate mountain for the city view (my fifth time up so far, thanks to visitors), visiting a Colombian poet named Carlos Satizabal who had conducted poetry workshops in our Spanish classes at CSB/SJU, and playing ping pong with the monks in the monastery.

Bogota to Mocoa, ~11 hours. That's if your bus
doesn't make eighty stops and no local throws
a rock throw a window, shattering it and causing
a delay of an hour as workers tape plastic
over the now totally removed window. But
that only happened on my way back.

Since she was on her way southwest to Ecuador, Amber suggested visiting the town of Mocoa, which is on the way. I was glad to have another opportunity to travel, especially since we have similar ideals of traveling, mainly bussing and staying in cheap hostels while avoiding organized tours and instead leaning towards local outdoor attractions like hiking or camping. My confidence wasn’t exactly sky high, however, when – after we had already bought bus tickets – we were able to find out very little about this place. The internet couldn't tell us much since it isn't a popular gringo attraction, and most Colombians I’d asked knew almost nothing, if they knew where it was at all.

Feet a-danglin' o're the end of the world. 

So with that solid, concrete plan set in place, we arrived in Mocoa the morning after an overnight bus ride. A tent borrowed from the monastery was stretching the top of my small pack as we rolled out of the main part of town, because the price was half if we camped instead of opting for beds. After getting set up, we decided to check off the only attraction we knew of up to that point: a hike along a river that is comprised of mostly a series of cascades with some serious cliff jumping opportunities before arriving at the top of a huge waterfall that overlooks the southern Colombian rainforest, a location appropriately called El fin del mundo (meaning the end of the world, though I’m sure numerous worldwide locations are named as such). After some cliff jumping, swimming, and dangling my feet over a 230 foot waterfall (seriously, there was no fence or guard rail or anything, I wonder how many have died here), I thought to myself, Okay, we have four more days to occupy ourselves with outside of a small town in the rainforest. What followed were some of the best days I’ve spent in this country, and it was all thanks to the great people we met at our hostel.

            After returning from El fin del mundo, one of the guys who’d been staying at the hostel helping out for a couple of weeks, Julian, mentioned that the next day would be the last day of the New Year Carnavales, a week long party. We caught a ride into town the next day to find the main square cordoned off with police barriers, and little old ladies outside selling cans of spray foam and baggies of flour. We quickly learned that these materials were one’s ammo, and once through the police barrier, anyone and everyone was fair game to be sprayed and splashed with flour. Beer and food vendors flanked the edges of the square, but everything and everyone else was covered in white dust and a haze hung in the air as kids in pairs darted from victim to victim, dousing them in clouds of flour. And let me tell you, when you work in a school all day, if you get the chance to pelt grain and spray foam at adolescent and prepubescent children, you take it. You take that opportunity, and you enjoy the hell out of it. The only downside is, as we soon realized, is that you will eventually be outnumbered and out-floured, wiping foam from your sunglasses and coughing up white dust as child after child runs around you with glee. 

Just trying to enjoy a beer. But no, damn
kids had other ideas.

After the battle, we grabbed some nearby dinner before catching the parade through town. Much like the Fourth of July parade, this was a series of floats celebrating their history and culture. Instead of marching bands, there were numerous dance groups. And instead of weird central Minnesotan staples like the Shriners and unicycle jugglers, there were neon spray-painted indigenous characters. Don’t worry, there were still bands pulled by horse carriage. Oh, and a Star Wars float, can’t forget that. Still shaking off flour with every step, we were carried with the crowd back to the main square where the bandstand soon got going with music. Some of the other people who were staying at the hostel managed to find us in the crowd, and we danced and drank the night away, everyone adding layers of foam and flour to everything they were wearing.

Traipsing through the jungle.

            The next day was no less incredible. Some others helping out at the hostel invited us to go with them to the Salto del Indio, a waterfall from a river that springs from the mountain and feeds the local river system. We had to hitch-hike to the next town over, and hike for about two hours through pastures and flood plains before entering the jungle to find the river. Our trusty crew today included Sebastian, Laura, Gustavo, and Tatiana, Amber and me. After swimming and snacking in the falls’ misty grotto, we exited the jungle and walked back along the flood plain of the dried riverbed. Approaching sunset, we stopped and made a bonfire on the beach and chatted. Shortly after the pinks and purples had disappeared behind the clouds, some local kids approached us with fish that they had just caught and wanted to fry right then and there over the fire we had made. And after feasting like a horde of Gollums, we decided it was about time to try to find our way back in the dark. Since the light from my phone was strongest, I took the rear and lit most of the path as we crisscrossed the river and sand dunes, dodging huge spiders resting on the sun warmed rocks as we went. I also managed to spot a snake everyone else had apparently not noticed, and when we all gathered around, we quickly discovered it was a coral snake. Gustavo was trying to say something about how it might be an imitator, while I just said something to the effect of, Who the #$%@ cares, let’s get the hell outta here!! (Since returning, I’ve done some research (Googling) and found that the phrase is “Red touching yellow kills a fellow,” meaning that if the red and yellow bands of the snake are touching, it’s the deadly coral. If not, it’s one of the imposters. Now I didn’t take the time to examine color order. But if you look at the different kinds, the venomous one has definitively more black than the others. And I remember seeing more black than the others. So for drama’s sake, I maintain I walked past a deadly snake.) We made it back to the other town only having been bitten by bugs, and found a lucky ride back to our hostel in the form of a cattle transport. So as we bumped along in the dusty manger that was the guy’s trailer, we looked out the open back at the stars that lit up the road behind us.

            The next two days included trips to a small canyon carved by a cutting river, as well as a visit to a nearby animal rehabilitation center and botanical garden, guided by none other than one of our own from the hostel (Laoreano). These got placed on a long list of things I hope I will never forget. First, there’s the weather. We were in the rainforest, but rain never impeded our adventures. Conveniently, it only rained in the early morning before we were “up and at ‘em,” and our tent from Jesus let in no water whatsoever (must have been coated with whatever he put on his feet the day he walked on water). Though it was the most humid place I’ve been to, and gave up showering after the first day since I was sweating as soon as I put fresh clothes on. Secondly, while I freely admit to preferring traveling on the cheap, the prices in this place were barely believable. It was either two dollars a day to pitch a tent, or five to have a room, prices that are at least a half to a fourth of what normal hostels rate. Also, food both in the market and at a restaurant probably amounted to twenty dollars between the two of us for the whole week, with a meal at restaurant never costing more than three dollars apiece. Some of this financial benefit was due to sharing meals with people we met at the hostel, which brings me to the third thing I’ll never forget.

            There are many people in the world who’ve traveled more than I, but I have stayed in my fair share of hostels in various countries. But I’ve never stayed in one where fellow guests and those staying longer to help out were such phenomenal human beings; Laoreano, Julian, Laura, Sebastian, Juan Carlos, Gustavo, Tatiana, and the rest at Posada Dantayaco. I’ll never forget the day trips we all took together, the struggles of trying to get 6+ people a ride while hitch-hiking before giving in to the fact that we’d have to temporarily split up, and the time spent hanging off the rails of trucks or sprawled out in truck beds watching the Colombian countryside zoom past with mountains in the background of everything. I’ll never forget the nights spent under the roof of the kitchen and lounge area attempting to teach each other card games and drinking cheap Colombian beer, listening to someone play a guitar. I’ll never forget those same nights because of our dinners that consisted of everybody bringing something to the table to create massive feasts for ten, and we would spend the night trying to finish all the food.

Spanish word of the day: the verb llevar can mean a variety of things, predominantly "carry" or "take." So when we hitch-hiked, we would say something like "Nos puede llevar?" or "Nos lleva?" which both mean something like "Can you take us?"

Song in my head lately: Not a huge pop fan, but Walk the Moon has some solid tunes. Shut Up and Dance, especially, is a song you can't really listen to without, well, shutting up and dance.