Palora, Tena

So you may have noticed I´ve been pretty unreachable over the past week...

On Thursday, I took a 5 am bus to Palora, hours from Puyo. We truly left civilazation then. They drove the bus on a raft, NOT A FERRY, an honest-to-God raft! and floated it across the river. I felt like I was living the Oregon Trail (the computer game), but I hope that I don´t find out "Betsy dies of cholera," like in the game. In Palora, I stayed in the Catholic mission which is a clinic run by one rural medical student and a nun. It was insane! We saw a botched suicide and a botched abortion in the same afternoon. Don´t overdose in the Amazon... we pumped her stomach the old fashioned way, tube down the throat and 100 ml syringe, pumping by hands, and emptying the syringe in the sink!!

It makes me so angry to see backstreet abortions here! (Abortions are illegal.) The girls are teenagers sometimes, and they are so sick! And you´re not going to stop them from doing what they will with their own bodies. The thing that really got me was there were signs all over clinics with babies with little conversation bubbles saying, "Mommy, I love you so much, why do you want to stop my little heart from beating? Why do you want to kill your loving child?" It´s horrible! This is what young women have to look at! Argh! So upset!!!

The last interesting patient we had was a tiny Shuar baby who came in late at night with his head sliced up, and the rural doc had me help suture him up!

The highlight of Palora was the rural doc putting me on the back of his moto for a "paseo" through the countryside. We sped along dirt paths among tea plantations, which, sadly are planted amongst the rainforest, but it was still beautiful, the mountains and volcanoes in the background. In the mission church they even had their Jesus crucified with the background you could see outside the church, complete with the peaks of Sangay, and the jungle laid out before it. I never imagined I would be trying not to fall off and die from a speeding old motorcycle along a jungle path in rural Ecuador with a young doctor who referred to himself as el negrito hermoso, "the handsome little black guy." I felt like I was in the Motorcycle Diaries!

On Friday, in order to cross the river, the bus drove down the "highway," the five of us passengers got off, jumped in a box, and were hauled by pulley in a swinging metal platform, dozens of feet above the wide raging river basin. Then we boarded a bus on the other side. Craziness!!

I was in Puyo about twenty minutes before I jumped (literally, as it didn´t stop moving...) on a bus to Tena, where I was meeting some Quito friends for a jungle tour.

We went to cabañas over the River Anzu. Oh my God! You wouldn´t believe the view! And we were the only people there. It was like out of a movie. We went trekking through jungle canyons. We went tubing down the river, to a Quichua village, where the guide´s family sold us necklaces, so they could earn money without panning the river for gold (it looks like 1800s California in some places, with all the gold panners).

Then, on Sunday, we went whitewater rafting down the Upper Napo River, with some crazy guides. They really like to horse around, throwing us in the water, hitting people with paddles, purposely slamming into rocks. (Things that certainly would be a lawsuit waiting to happen in the States!) They showed us secret lagoons and passages. It was amazing.

I went the whole day injury-less. At our final stop, we took off our shoes that were sinking in very very deep sand, and I stepped on the only rock within miles! My foot is sliced to ribbons. Right now, I can barely walk, and I have to take taxis everywhere! Mamaw would freak out because a huge part of the bottom of my foot is literally ribbons of flesh and blood! Ick! The doctor told me not to walk for a week and a half! That´s not going to happen, but I am trying to hop along as best I can! Oh well, I´d rather be injured than sick to my stomach!

Congratulations if you read this whole entry! You are a true friend... I am back in Puyo for this work week, so maybe I can try calling, and you can expect faster email responses.

Love from the jungle...