Home » Ecuador » La Amazonía: The Village of Wachimak

My time in the amazon was easily the most extraordinary time of my life. nothing that i have ever done can compare to that time in adventure, uniqueness, and pure incredibleness . . . i imagine that this is what travel was like 100 years ago. there were many times that i felt like a national geographic explorer truly discovering the ways of the ecuadorian amazon.

La Amazonía: The Village of Wachimak

Andy Wunder
2007-04-19 22:35:13

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raining hard and it rained all day. so we spent the day making jewelery. the kids had collected all these crazy beautiful amazon seeds and the parents took some type of leaf and made it into string. so we passed the rain away by making seed bracelets and necklaces. cant believe those got through US customs.

i spent the middle and hottest part of the day relaxing. after hikes and lunch i would normally hit the hammock and read. in many ways my hammock time was my favorite part of my time in the amazon. i would relax and read and listen to the sounds of the jungle. mid afternoon would roll around and i would normally play soccer with some of the villagers (on the weirdest soccer field smack in the middle of the village) before taking a bath.

night time was pretty relaxed. we would eat dinner and hang out. not much to do when it is completely dark. on
one of my first nights i discovered something that i found really odd. a few months before i arrived, a generator was donated to the village. i have no idea how they got it there ... i could hardly get my big backpack through the canoe/6km jungle hike that it took to get to the village. i have no idea why someone would donate a generator and how they got it there. so, on the rare occasion that they had gas and that they could get the generator to work, there was electricity for about 2 hours (during my two weeks, it was only used or workable for about 6 days). basically a few huts hooked up a light bulb to eat dinner with and that was that. then i discovered something else that really blew my mind. they had a tv and dvd player. i was told it was brought in 2 months before i got there. here were kids that had never left the jungle and they were watching western "civilization" through american movies. it must have been weird for these kids, most of whom have never seen anything but dug out canoes and jungle animals to be
seeing this completely different life. okay, back to story. so nights normally ...