Coca State of Mind
I am currently reading a book written by a guy who crossed the Amazon jungle living off a backpack all by himself. It’s his story about this risky endeavour and the motivation behind. He starts off in Quito, Ecuador on a bike and continues crossing the whole South American continent from West to East coast on canoe and on foot.
The book immediately transported me back to the 18th of January this year when I landed in Quito and started off my Ecuadorian adventures. It brought back the epic memory of reaching the Cotopaxi glacier at over 5000m above sea level, the second highest active volcano in the world, and going downhill on a mountain bike afterwords. Developing some crazy speed in between these majestic vistas guaranteed ending the day on an absolute high. I can’t imagine a better way to go down a volcano.
One of the most memorable places from this trip however is the town of Coca, where the protagonist of the book also spends some time trying to buy a canoe from the local indigenous communities.
I landed in Coca after spending some of the best time of my life in the absolute Neverland - the Galapagos. I don’t know why I chose Coca to be the gateway to my Amazon experience in Ecuador. Maybe simply because I found the name cool. I had done little research about the city itself as I knew that I am not going to spend more than one or two nights in it. I would use it just as a brief stop to organise a stay in the jungle with one of the local communities on the spot. When I travel I live day by day and rarely have anything planned in advance. I love it because it gives me the absolute freedom to stay longer in places that I like or move farther and discover places I had not even intended to go to in the first place. If I had done more research or spoken to other travellers about it, I would have probably not come to Coca. I am glad I did though.
After leaving my backpack in the hotel I had booked before jumping on the flight this very morning, I set off to see the town and look for a guide or an agency that organises stays and explorations in the Amazon. From the basic and quite empty hotel I was already noticing that this was not a very popular place. The few people I passed walking towards the main plaza were all from various indigenous groups. Very few mestizos and zero Western-looking people. I had entered a completely different world and suddenly I felt foreign. An exciting and somewhat uneasy emotion at the same time. The curious and not really friendly looks of the passers-by were wondering what is this woman looking for here. I was actually desperately looking for a place to have coffee without much luck. Turns out coffee is not really a thing in the Amazon so I bought some heavenly delicious mango from a man on the central plaza as an alternative. I sat there for a while watching local life unfold. Coca town was nothing special so far. Just square and similar looking streets with people going about their daily business selling and buying stuff or just drinking. Poverty and alcoholism among indigenous communities being forced out of their ancestral lands are unfortunately common and sadly noticeable here too. Everyone around in the basic street eateries was having ceviche with beers or some sort of large grilled fish or meat although it was still morning..I gave up the idea of a coffee and continued walking around.
Turns out there were just two “agencies” offering jungle exploration. Agencies is a bit of a stretch as one of them consisted of a desk on the pavement with a very young girl behind an old desktop computer who could not explain very well what they were actually offering. I was also quoted the crazy price of over $400 or $500 for a three-day stay in Spartan conditions on Shuar territory. So the second place it was! They were next to each other anyway. The other agency was expensive too and everything looked kind of shady so I was starting to wonder whether to travel to the other town I had read about that serves as I getaway to the Amazon and maybe try to organise something from there instead. The town in question is Tena situated about 200kms Southwest of Coca. However, it could take me many hours to get there. There might be fallen trees on the way and the bus can easily get stuck somewhere on the road too. Travelling through the rainforest is slow and can be very unpredictable and I would lose one full day for sure even in perfect circumstances. I was walking around looking at a map wondering what to do next. I also called the numbers of some guides I had but only one answered and he was quite far down the current of the Río Napo towards the border with Peru. If I stayed in Coca, there was only one option really - leave the next morning and spend three days with the Shuar community accompanied by a guide and the only other person that happened to be there at this same time wanting to explore the jungle, a Czech plumber living in London who spoke neither Spanish nor English well! This was gonna be interesting..! It would be just the two of us, a guide and a few locals in a secluded hut in the rainforest. I did not want to lose another day so I decided to go for it. It was expensive due to the fact that we were just two but after the Galapagos I had stopped counting. Every cent so far had been absolutely worth it and I would certainly not start thinking of saving on entering one of the most biodiverse places on the Planet, el Parque Nacional Yasuní. Yep, that is where we were heading off to the next morning.
After it was all set and done, I decided to pay a visit to the local market for lunch as it was already late afternoon. This turned out to be like coming back in time at least a couple of decades, if not even more. The market encompasses an open space with a palm roof situated almost on the shore of the mighty Río Napo - a tributary to the Amazon river. People around here have only lived on what this very river and the rainforest have to offer for millennia and I think the menu had not changed much. There were just three things being sold on every of the 30 or so stalls around. It felt so weird that every stall offered exactly the same thing but hey! the jungle is not a supermarket after all. Neither it’s a place of plenty where exotic fruit just hangs out there waiting to be picked as many people might think. For every barely edible plant, there is like a gazillion other species that will try to get it first. Getting food here requires work and skills.
I made a full circle followed by the eyes of the families standing behind the fires. Again, I was the only foreigner here at this time. All the sellers were representatives of different indigenous communities and everyone was staring at me. The three things being sold on every stall were fish from the Río Napo wrapped and grilled inside a palm leaf, grilled palm larvae on a stick which I learned were called mayones, and to drink agua de guayusa - a herb from the area that is believed to be almost magical and have numerous health benefits. That was it, basic and fresh. I decided to leave the mayones for another time, or possibly never (had to try them eventually though) and ate the fish with my hands under the stares of the market people. Being so observed did not feel very comfortable nor welcoming but in the end I was studying these people too. The rainforest is certainly not a comfortable place so the sensation was spot on. We embodied two different worlds colliding and I so pray that the world in which I grew up does not destroy theirs more than it already did.
The Amazon remains, in many parts, the least explored place on Earth and the home of the last people living according to the laws and in harmony with Nature. I was beginning to grasp what an absolute honour and privilege it is to be here and learn from them.
