Shayari, Kichwa Jungle Community, and more...(by micah)

Well! I dunno if you blunters are still reading these speils... as with the lack of a digital camera I guess they become a bit tedious. Tis a right shame... we have some pearler analogue photos tho which you may get to see someday!

Well we busted out of the Cloud forest, finishing on a high note of a 3 day Horse trek to a highland lake (I actually got galloping for a few hundred metres!, bloody fun) and a Christmas Hangi which Kahl diligently impressed the locals with... we slaughtered the christmas pig and cooked him in the ground! poor sod. After a night on the Puro (a rather inebriating spirit made from local sugar cane) with the locals, singing Sloth room, and dragging a comad dave home 2 km, I had a pretty uneventful (asleep, sick) new year while kahl was out getting stabbed with a butter knife in the Mariscal of Quito! (dont worry he wasnt hurt it was just a butter knife) The following night we made it down to the Jungle again...

A community of 75 (mostly kids), and lots of fertile jungly land! We stayed in some beautiful Cabanas open to the steamy jungle air, right in there away from civilisation! We helped build an enclosure for small mammals called Guantas, and ended up putting the young Tapir in there cos its elders were giving it shit in the big enclosure. We helped make a dugout canoe, and generally hung out, swam with piranhas (and ate piranhas!) played footy, and wandered about the community looking at tarantulas, snakes, swinging on giant swings, checking out the medicinal gardens... we were the first volunteers to stay there, and Don Fausto Obliged us an Ayawasca spiritual trip which the indian Shamans do! nothing to rave about really...just made us puke. The folk there all speak Quichua, which was inspiring. They are poor as but yet so rich and lucky to have the land that they do and many of their traditions still thriving. We ate a million platanos, Yuca, papayas, and palm hearts, all prepared in different ways each day, which was something quite special. Our leaving treat was big ass grubs like huhu´s, which smelt like cheese and oozed like melted cheese and tomato sauce upon being squished open! We kindly obliged and ate them.

The heat was eventually too stifling and we were glad to return to a flight out of Ecuador... but... my passport aint here yet still, so Kahlil has taken off to Costa Rica and I will meet him in Nicaragua whence my passport gets here!
Happy New year to all...
Micah