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Slept to the sound of night birds, frogs, crickets and whatever was out there in the dark. I love it! After an amazing breakfast of eggs, muesli, two kinds of fresh fruit, rolls and butter and great coffee, we met our guide Juan for a full day of trekking through the jungle. Juan is from the local Quechua tribe and only spoke Spanish and Quechi but thanks to Sivanne (again) and Omer's 35 year old Spanish making a comeback, we were able to understand everything he told us. We set out in the rain but under the canopy of the jungle we couldn't feel it too much. Juan was phenomenal. He showed us every type of plant, tree, animal, flower, insect and fruits and explained what each was used for. We daubed "dragon blood" that dripped out of a tree when he stuck his machete in it, all over our mosquito bites. It's supposed to stop the itching. It really worked for a day or so. I have a lot of bites from Banos that a week later are still driving me crazy. He painted our faces with orange paint that he took from crushing little seeds of a fruit. They also put this in paste in their hair and it goes completely orange. He showed us how they make the thatched roofing from palm leaves. He showed us which trees are good for boats and which for houses. We opened up the branches of a specific tree and ate the ants that came out. They tasted like lemons - really sour. I'm convinced they crush these up and put in sour candies! He showed us ants that crawl on your skin and heal your cuts. We saw frogs, centipedes and spiders. I don't know how he would spot all these things.
We finally arrived at a little river bank and set up our lunch. Turns out the tiny backpack he was carrying was full of food! He served a great pasta salad on plantain leaves.
We continued on through the jungle through really mixed weather - rain, sun, back to rain, back to sun but all the time hot and muggy. All in all we walked for about 5 hours and ended up on the beach of the river and then waited for the canoe to take us back to the lodge. Had another swim then sat by the river with a drink watching life go by until dinner.
Another early night to bed. I was looking forward to hitting my comfy bed and listening to the music of the night after such a long day. Walking up to the hut in the dark with my headlamp I saw a beautiful little frog sitting on a leaf in the middle of the path.
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