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Traffic on Pan-Americana Highway after huge explosion, I wrote before, was restored and I decided not to go through the head hunters (head shrinkers) territory. They probably have never seen a folding bicyclist and may have a temptation to shrink my head as a souvenir. Instead I started long bus ride to Lima, Peru. However, before I will continue let me finish with Ecuador.

Travel to South America (part II)

Alex Mumzhiu
2006-03-22 14:07:41

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This is a good time to explain the difference between Russians and most Westerners attitudes towards the forest. For the Russians, the forest is a friendly and kind thing. This comes from the folk stories, childhood trips to the forest for mushrooms and berries and so on. For the Westerners, especially Americans and English people (less to the Germans), the forest is full of dangerous and poisoness plants and animals and they do not want to touch them, needless to say, to put them in their mouth. They can do it only if they are properly packaged and sold at supermarket.

My companions were retty typical in this sense. There were 3 young but not pretty, ladies from somewhere in England and 2 more not so young but even less pretty ladies from London, who looked like bag ladies (nishenki) in-spite they were highly paid professionals. I guess it is London's fashion. These young ladies deserve much credit for their brave decision to go for a 6 month round the world trip, but instead of open hearts they went with hard upper lips and expect the rest of the world to fit the tough English standards of human behavior, table manners and sanitation. This is pretty typical by the way. They dreamt about showers, which they did not have for 3 days being on the shore of the river, and dream about peanut butter sandwiches. If you are so unadaptable, why torture yourself and go to the unfamiliar places.

The best activity was so called sunrise walks, which started with floating on a canoe (the motor was off) along the river before sunrise and listening to the sounds of jungle. It was great.

Next portion of my tour was with 4 independent travelers from Argentina, Israel, Sweeden and Sweetzerland. Independent are always the best. They were normal people, which don,t afraid to swim in the river drink alcohol which I, as always, had, and so on. We had a lot of fun. Last day remind me my Siberian expedition days. It was pouring rain, motor did ...