By Erika Klemperer
I would never have gone to Ecuador if it weren't for my sister Stella. She was interested in helping to save the rainforest in Ecuador. She lived there for two summers as a volunteer. She taught some Incas and Mestizos to speak English. She helped explain to the youngsters that their land was being ruined. She also taught natives to make jewelry and necklaces and sell them instead of their land. She also told them to farm their land instead of selling it to the oil companies to be ruined forever.
The second year she was there, she invited us to go along. I saw many things and had wonderful experiences. We lived in the rainforest for the first part of our trip. Many days the rain flew down in sheets out of nowhere with no warning. You always had to wear something you didn't mind getting wet. The rain was so strong that it would never exist like that in our country. When it was heavy, it was harder to see through than fog, and it was impossible to stay dry. Our thatched roof cabin was on stilts.
I learned about an ant called the bullet ant. If you were stung, it hurt so badly that you would have to use the juice of a native plant. This plant was so strong it could burn a hole through your skin. We learned about a plant that had a mutual relationship with ants. The ants would kill the diseases that came to the plant, and the plant would provide food in return for the ants. To the natives, this was a very tasty snack because you would pop open a small pod at the end of the leaf and lick up all the ants that came scrambling out. I was too scared to try them, but our guide ate them in front of as though it was a normal treat. She told us they tasted like lemons.
There was strange flower that was used by nursing mothers. If the juice was rubbed on their breasts, it would help with the milk flow. There was another plant that was used for muscle tension. You would whack the plant on the area where you had pain. It would stick needles in that area and help relieve the pain. There were plants for many other sicknesses including arthritis and cancer.
We saw many different species of wildlife and plants in their natural habitat. An interesting one was a moth that was bigger than my hand. We also saw two tarantulas about the size of my kneecap. Every morning we had to whack our shoes on the porch to make sure there were no bugs in them. One morning, during this process, out came seven ants and a scorpion from my boot! We saw an anthill longer than my Dad is tall and as high as my waist and still growing.
I learned how to make a climbing device out of a vine. You would twist it a certain way to make a strong circle about head size. You would wrap your feet around it and scoot up a hanging vine. Our guide went about 40 feet to the top. My brother went half way. He would have gone further but his pants kept falling down. I couldn't climb it at all. Another fun thing we did with the same vine was swing. It was fun to see many plants from above. The rain forest was wonderful, and I hope that it doesn't disappear. Some day I would like to go back.
Next we went to Quito. In our travels we crossed the equator. We drove about five inches past it, stopped the car and climbed out. I was surprised to find out that it was marked by only a thin silver line about half a centimeter wide. It was amazing that I could be in the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere at the same time. We saw Inca ladies sitting on benches in the Southern Hemisphere knitting and talking to other old ladies in the Northern Hemisphere!
We went to a market called Otavale. This market began thousands of years ago and has been going since then. There were many beggars. I felt bad for them because they were so poor. For example, I gave one lady one penny, only one cent (!) and she was so grateful she kissed my arm. This lady had no teeth and nothing except for the clothes she wore on her back. When another lady turned her back to beg from someone else, I saw a puppy nestled in the back of her pack. In the future I would like to learn Spanish and Quechua and go back to help those ladies and others. We bought a few things. When we passed, the sellers would yell "five dollars". When we kept walking, we'd hear "four dollars". We'd turn and shake our heads to say no. They continued saying, "only three, two dollars, one!" They were so desperate to get money to survive that they would lower their price to almost nothing.
Some people didn't have enough money to buy a stall, so they would walk around carrying their products. Their crafts were all handmade and wonderfully designed. You could go to a gift shop in the U.S. and pay a very high price for the same product.
In Quito, when you need to go to a public bathroom, you would have to buy three squares of toilet paper for 25 cents from an Inca lady outside. In Quito, I got altitude and heat sickness. I threw up 10 times in one day, but it was worth being there.
One day, we went to a wild animal hospital run by volunteers. When someone finds a hurt animal in the wilderness, they bring the poor thing to the hospital. The animal is nursed back to health and returned to the wild. We saw countless species including squirrel monkeys, gorillas, sloths, peccaries, and many different kinds of birds. Later, one of the volunteers told that the squirrel monkeys kept figuring out how to unlock the cages and letting out all the animals. Finally they had to use keys. They had a code lock in the office where they had a file on each animal on the computer. The monkeys somehow figured out the number for the lock. They got inside the office and on the computer. They made a mess of the entire office.
On a different day, we went on a river trip to an island. On the island there were many squirrel monkeys running free. They were like pigeons are in New York City. One stole fruit from a store and began eating it. The owner didn't mind. Another stole a sandal off a girl's foot. A third climbed on my brother and grabbed a popsicle stick from his hand. One climbed on my back, grabbing my left arm. Another grabbed my legs and a third jumped up and tried to grab a napkin from my right hand. My favorite was the smallest. He was really cute and very interested in me. He kept playing with my shirt and was amazed to find that it would come apart from my skin, unlike fur. It was my favorite day of the whole trip.
The third part of our trip was at the coast. It was very inexpensive. My brother, sister and I had our own hut. My mom and dad had theirs. The huts were so big that I had four beds, a bathroom, and a door leading to the outside. It took two days of travel to get there. The last part of the trip was by jeep during low tide on the sand. When the tide went up every night, we were stranded because the mountains were on one side of us, and the ocean on the other. There was an eating room and they gave us so much of everything. The food was wonderful. One chair at the table had a view of the beach, and each meal we took turns sitting in that chair.
One day at dinner, the cooks were all looking out at the ocean. They were watching dolphins. The dolphins were leaping close to shore, which rarely happened. We rode horses on the beach and in the mountains. We swam in the ocean every day and we watched the sun sink into the water and rise from the mountains. Our guide showed me a beautiful path up the mountain on horseback. Later, when the rest of my family came back, I showed them the same view. It looked like something you would see on a postcard.
During our stay on the coast, we were the only guests, so we had the whole beach to ourselves. There were some archaeological dig sights near our huts. We were allowed to dig around, but we were not allowed to take anything. On the beach, however, anything we found was ours. We found plenty of ancient pottery pieces that were from 500 to 2000 years old. My brother found a gigantic petrified shark's tooth. That was 10 to 15 million years old. The guide had told us he had never found one that big. My brother offered it to him for the museum, but he let us keep it.
My trip to Ecuador was the most wonderful experience I've had in my life. I will never forget it.