After kicking around Quito for the better part of a week, with a brief stint in the city of Otavalo, we have ended up deep in the Amazon basin on the northeast border of Ecuador. Getting here was its own small ordeal: the night bus last night, 11 1/2 hours, then a mini-bus for 3 hours, then a small motorized boat for 2 hours, the river narrowing and the trees closing in overhead until the jungle noise replaced every other sound we'd been hearing for a week.
The campsite itself is a series of connected, open air, thatched roofed cabins, the kind of thatch that's gone dark and soft looking with rain and years. They have half high walls, just enough to mark off a room without ever really closing it, and a small semi enclosed area for a toilet tacked onto the back of each one. Every cabin has a double bed with mosquito netting that tucks under the mattress, and at night you can hear the netting brush against itself every time someone shifts. There are two outside, cold water showers and no electricity anywhere on the property. Privacy is not an option here, not for showering, not for sleeping, not for anything. You get used to it faster than you'd think.
Our little multinational group has sorted itself out: one American, one Canadian, a French couple, an Israeli couple, a Danish couple, and a young single Swiss girl. Six languages worth of conversation drifting across camp at any given moment, half of it overlapping, none of it needing translation to understand the tone.
The Bus From Hell
The bus trip itself was painfully slow. It left at 10:00 PM and was supposed to get into the town of Lago Agrio by 6:30 AM. A thick fog rolled in for most of the drive, so thick the headlights just bounced back at us in a dull gray wall, and it was heavy enough that the driver actually kept his speed in check, which for an Ecuadorian bus driver is close to a miracle.
Around 4 am this morning, we came to a dead stop. All I could see out the window was a smear of tail lights ahead, more lights alongside us, more behind. The next 2 hours until daybreak were the only true sleep I got all night, and even that was a shallow, jolted kind of sleep, because the roads were so bad that the bus never stopped bouncing under us. The seats are comfortable enough for sitting. They are not built for sleeping.
When daylight finally came up gray and slow through the fog, we saw why we'd stopped. A river had washed clean through the road, and two buses were stuck in the middle of it, water lapping at their wheel wells. Traffic had backed up for half a mile on both sides while everyone waited on a bulldozer that was apparently coming from somewhere, though nobody seemed to know where. One of the stuck buses had almost made it across before it stalled, close enough that its passengers could wade out. The other sat dead center in the current, and its passengers were still stuck inside, faces at the windows, looking out at the growing crowd gathering on the bank to watch them. We took a picture. Of course we took a picture.
The bulldozer eventually showed up and carved a new path through the river beside the stranded buses. Then, by some logic I couldn't follow, all the traffic on the far bank started crossing first, one by one, like there'd been some unspoken Ecuadorian ritual to decide who went when. Once that side had cleared out, we were the second bus across. Water came up over the wheel wells, the whole bus rocking slightly with the current, but it was a relatively easy crossing in the end. We never did find out what happened to the two stuck buses. Once we were across, our driver just gunned it back up to regular breakneck bus speed like nothing had happened. I get the impression the roads wash out here often enough that nobody bothers being surprised anymore.
No Joy in Geoffville
Back on the road, we still had another 2 1/2 hours to Lago Agrio, though of course we had no way of knowing that at the time. When we'd first boarded, they told us there was a bathroom in the back. Technically true. It didn't work, and the door was bolted shut.
I don't think I can adequately explain how badly I had to pee.
I tried to go during the river stop, while the bus was stopped and everyone was standing around outside, but with a crowd of strangers a few feet away, a serious case of stage fright set in, and there was no joy in Geoffville. Now stretch that condition out over 9 hours of bumpy road. I should also mention I'd eaten Indian food the night before, so on top of everything else I was putting out a steady, low grade stream of gas the entire night, and the pressure of it was leaning right on my bladder along with everything else. Pain, pain, pain. And the ride just kept going, and going, and going.
Right Now
Currently I'm lying in a hammock, listening to the sounds of the jungle underneath conversations happening in four different languages at once, and I am damned happy that the last 24 hours are behind me. We're already making friends with the cockroaches, the tarantulas, and the rest of the insect population that apparently co-owns our cabana with us. All is right with the world.