Ants in the pants

We survived the jungle... No, we really enjoyed our time there. Our lodge was right by the river and had a very jungle-like design, including tarantulas under every thatched roof. The food was fantastic, our group was great, and we eventually grew fond of our guide Elvis and canoe racer Edwin. If I had to describe the Amazon jungle in one word, it would be "GREEN"! Everything there is green, the river is kind of muddy-green, some of us turned green around the nose when they spotted the first tarantula, and even the sloth had more green than brown fur. Only the river dolphins are pink, and we were lucky enough to see some of them! Otherwise, our guide Elvis did everything he could to fulfill our animal wishes: caiman, piranhas, numerous monkeys, even the smallest monkeys in the world, dozens of different parrots, and even more spiders, scorpions, iguanas, frogs, giant butterflies, anacondas, and other snakes. Elvis grew up in the jungle, so he knew all about it, but even in complete darkness, he could spot snakes in the trees and spot caimans underwater. Elvis doesn't know exactly how old he is, they don't keep track of that in the jungle, but everyone in his village has funny names, his brothers are named Stalin and Vladimir... I wonder if there's also an Adolf? That's because when a newspaper flutters into the village once a leap year, they look for names for the new babies there :-D Elvis may not be able to sing, but he can croak like a frog and imitate all other animal sounds perfectly! He just needs to work on his sensitivity towards tourists. Many of us were terrified of spiders and beetles, especially at night, and he would make jokes about it. In general, according to him, every animal was deadly poisonous, which it never was, and at some point, we didn't know what to believe anymore. But I finally got to pet a tarantula and carry it around, and another giant spider was put on my face to entertain the whole group! But when it came to eating finger-sized maggots, I couldn't do it anymore, it was too disgusting for me!

Our canoe driver Edwin, a true jungle Kevin with a flowing mullet, a tricked-out canoe motor, and nothing but nonsense in his head, made us laugh every day, even when he got our canoe stuck so badly at night while searching for caimans that we all had to get out and push. Luckily, there were no caimans or piranhas around!

On the last day, we visited a shaman who told us all about the hyped Ayahuasca drink and its psychedelic effects. Unfortunately, we didn't get to try it because the drink happened to be all gone ;-) Tömmi had to get his back 'stroked' with a thorny plant, which is supposed to be good for back pain... You can see the result in the pictures :-D In the village, we were able to bake jungle pizza from the yucca root. It was a bit too touristy for me, but if it helps the village buy a current newspaper, it's worth supporting.

After our great time in the jungle, we are now back in the Andean highlands in Latacunga with a view of the Cotopaxi volcano, which we still want to visit in the next few days. But first, we have the Quilotoa Loop on the agenda from Monday to Thursday, a 4-day trek from the Quilotoa crater lake to Sigchos, crossing small Andean villages.

At the Quilotoa crater, we already exerted ourselves yesterday. The 6-hour round hike at 3900 meters was doable, but when the bus driver didn't come back as promised in the morning and we had to wait in the middle of nowhere for over an hour at around 5 degrees Celsius and icy wind, the mood reached rock bottom. Luckily, a nice Andean lady gave us a ride on her pickup truck to the next village, where we caught another bus. To cheer us up, Tömmi brought pizza in the evening, which actually tasted really good.

A quick addition from Tömmi: The giant spider on Tina's face was actually a scorpion spider, and in that moment, I wasn't sure whether to save Tina or leave her. Sometimes she's a bit too adventurous for me. Another interesting realization was that the rainforest truly deserves its name. Even during the current dry season, you can be surprised by heavy rain showers in a minute. Thank goodness we had our best friend, the XXL rain poncho, always at hand.

I'd like to mention two more jungle hazards that we encountered on our daywalk through the Amazon. First, you should never put your feet with too narrow width into the local rubber boots because if you have to trudge through the jungle swamp, it's easy to find yourself barefoot and horizontally in half a meter of mud, just like me. Also, don't spend too much time taking selfies when the rest of the group is already on the move because it could mean that the vanguard disturbs a wild beehive and the rearguard gets attacked by hundreds of bees. Hours later, Tina still found a handful of live bees in her hair under the shower. They probably wanted to start a new colony there.

And one last anecdote from the night drive from the jungle back to the Andes. I was calmly reading my werewolf novel when something hard hit my forehead. I looked directly into a gigantic machine gun, and the nice man operating it just said, 'Foreigner? Come with me!' The first shock was quickly over, we just had to show our passports and write down our information so that we could pass the military base, which conducted drug and weapon checks due to its proximity to Colombia.