And it was an Anaconda. In a cage. At the zoo.
If you look closely at the body you can see bumps...dinner from a couple days ago! I get food babies but I'm glad they're not THAT noticeable.
Let's back-track a bit to dinner the night before our jungle trip. We emerged from our napping/reading/getting attacked by a cat states post-white-water rafting supremely hungry. Trying to be adventurous, we walked all around Tena looking for a good restaurant. This involved attempting Spanish at a market where we met failure squarely in the eyes. I don't know how we ended up walking in to the next place but it was one of our last options so we rolled with it. The menu was only words. Spanish words. And our Spanish-English dictionary was not offering much help. It was decided that we'd each order something that sounded like it struck our fancy and then share.
Except it wasn't the most organized of restaurants and our orders were messed up and they kept trying to give us instructions in complicated Spanish and we kept trying to explain that we only knew very simple Spanish. It was not the funnest of situations and then I ended up with a plate full of French fries and a piece of fried fat laid on top.
And Greg missed an opportunity to be chivalrous...
Not wanting to deal with Hangry Teagan all night, Alisha and Greg forced me into a pizza place that was tried and tested. It solved the problem but I'm still a little bitter that I first wasted four dollars on fries and fat.
The next morning we set out on a 2-day jungle excursion. It involved a water taxi.
Alisha's legs were already fried at this point in the trip. Soon they'd be fried and flea-bitten.
We toured a jungle cultural center where they had a bunch of mini-traps displayed. This one was my favorite. Trip a branch and the gun goes off! Supposedly. The gun wasn't loaded for the demonstration.
There were traps for everything from small rodents to jaguars and it's actually hard to pick a favorite. Each was pretty cool.
Then there was the talk about medicinal uses of plants but also the narcotic uses of plants. "Take a swig of this reddish stuff and you'll be hallucinating for several days..."
Note taken, don't drink the reddish stuff.
Ok, we got to use a blow gun.
Aimed at a foam monkey.
It was super heavy and really awkward to use but surprisingly effective. You didn't even have to blow very hard but the wooden dart could still penetrate the tree from at least 20 feet back. Not that any of us ever aimed poorly enough to miss the monkey entirely and hit the tree...
Using the toilet! It was a very manual flush...
Lunch. The pineapple was soooo yummy.
AmaZOOnico. It's a zoo in the Amazon for injured jungle animals. Mostly those that people have tried to take on as pets and then abandoned.
It wasn't super amazing but it also wasn't boring.
I'm pretty sure Alisha took all of those pictures, so photo creds.
I loved these signs.
This lady showed us how to make a bowl.
After the pottery demonstration our guide put several drops of "Dragon's Blood Resin" on my hand and told me to blow on it. I was a little suspicious because it was a reddish liquid not unlike the stuff spoken of earlier. I did not want to be hallucinating for days! But I blew on it and a few drops turned into this thick paste that he said is good for healing cuts and a number of other things. He put some on a cut he had on his lip and left the rest on my hand.
This dog did not have fleas. One of the few.
It was late afternoon when we got to the cabana for the night. Such a pretty place. And the bugs weren't even THAT horrible.
The water turned off while Alisha was in the shower and she stood in there for at least 20 minutes waiting for it to turn back on.
Actually, she stood there for a couple seconds and then started shouting for me at the top of her lungs. I was enjoying a nice snooze in the hammock and hobbled back to our room to discover her like this. Then I ran around inquiring as to the status of the water and varying reports came back. Eventually she opted for the one that suggested she trek down to the waterfall to rinse off.
I documented the moment, like any good friend should.
Are we laughing about this yet, Alisha? Do you still remember how cold the water was? What a "cool" experience!
There was a jungle trek the following morning. We're posing next to cocoa pods. Alisha is holding the machete.
The leaves of this plant make a nice toilet paper. Or so said our guide. Duly noted.
The jungle trek was pretty legit. I had my eyes peeled every which way for snakes and if our guide had snuck off, we would have been SOL. There wasn't a clearly defined path and it was just tangles of green as far as the eye could see.
Fausto fearlessly guiding us thru the jungle...
And that's it for now. More eventually!
Have a great day :-)
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