After waking up at around 5 AM to watch the sunrise over the river, we began our journey into the jungle after a hearty breakfast. Like many of our excursions in the rainforest, they began by a brief boat ride down the river. We rode down the river and turned into an alcove where a local family who lives off of the land greeted us. They showed us the food they eat, how they cook, and some daily problems they face.
Christopher, our fearless tour guide shown above, first showed us how to make a spoon out of several carefully placed hacks of his machete on a piece of tree bark. It was quite impressive. We continued our hike and after about ten minutes Christopher begins to scrape bark off of a nearby tree and passes some crumbs out to each of us. He then says “eat it,” and we all look at each other for a moment before each licking our hands to ingest the crumbs. He continues to tell us that the type of bark we just ate is used to clean water from malaria and that now we will be fine for the next little bit against the disease. Not only does this example represent how experienced our guide was but also how much we trusted him because we all ate bark without second guessing him.
Among the other things we did during our hike was create a torch out of things only in the jungle, climb “Tarzan” vines, and how to make bird calls with just a leaf and a knife. Our trip climaxed when Christopher lured a tarantula out of its hole in the ground. Shortly after this we learned how to use a traditional blowpipe and then began the twenty minute trek home which completed our two mile hike.
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