Tepapare part 2.2: the final exit

Okay, here is the much anticipated and exciting conclusion of Susanita’s adventures in Tepapare! (warning: if you are viewing my blog for the first time, or haven’t read my previous few entries, this next post might not make a lot of sense, as it is part of a much longer drama. So, you’ll either want to go back and catch up on all the fun…or move along to a more interesting blog to stalk.)

So, let’s see, before I interrupted my tale to post a fundraising plea (thanks to the two of you who donated!), the storyline was going something like this: the Duke students and PC Volunteers were participating in a traditional Waorani dance on the last night in Tepapare. A good time was had by all. Sleeping that night, however… not so fun. Or not sleeping, I should say. It started raining really, really hard in the middle of the night, and once again my insomnia combined with my mephloquine muddied mind made my imagination go into a wild, weird hyperdrive. I started having visions-nightmares about the rising river level… seeing our projects being totally flooded…feeling my sleeping mat was wet because I thought the river had rose and flooded the house…then I started worrying that it was so flooded we would be stuck in the community for three more days and all the students would miss their flights (and so on and so on). My dilusions/nighmares were totally irrational…and completely and utterly exhausting. I didn’t really sleep at all.

When I finally got up at dawn and looked out towards the river, it actually looked lower than the day before—even despite the 6 hour steady downpour. I went and checked our projects and sure enough, they all survived. I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Wow, that was a lot of ulcer-causing worry for nothing.

We skipped a full breakfast and opted instead for a quick cup of coffee in between trips hauling gear to the riverbank. On my last trip carrying tools and miscellaneous gear, I see one of the canoes take off half full with Jeremy and Jeff and a random assemblage of Waoranis onboard. What?!?!? Why did they leave? Why did they leave without taking more gear and passengers? Why did they leave before the other canoe was ready to go? The canoes always travel together, right? There were no answers, however, because the only ones that could answer them were on the canoe that was already beyond the first bend.

After the first canoe abruptly left, we tried to finish up the final packing. It was all we could do. It was slow going, however, because there were soooo many people and sooo much stuff still left to load. As we were seated on our little wooden plank seats, I remember looking up and noticing that the Waorani watching us from the safety of the banks all had what looked to be concerned looks on their faces. This was not a good sign. About this time, my counterpart mentions that we are riding very low and that there is a greater chance of tipping…oh, and that it was going to be really dangerous. So, what was her recommendation? Ready for this?... To take out one of the metal cooking pots. What? Like, taking off one cooking pot is going to prevent an overloaded canoe from tipping ???!!! (Incidentally, the pot was the source of a previous stand-off and lingering consternation when one of the community members claimed that we donated the pot to them. We did not. They wanted us to give the cooking pot to them. We did not, as we could not: it belonged to the Waorani Women’s Association. They use it for all the workshops. Anyway, this overloaded canoe controversy offered my counterpart a convenient way of saving face and leaving the community with another gift). While this helped her political problem, the extraction of one metal pot from the canoe was not very pragmatic. It didn’t lighten our load in any meaningful manner. Yet, soon after it was unloaded from the canoe, my counterpart said that we would be fine. That was right about the time I started to get really stressed. I tried to get a straight answer from her: I mean, one minute she is saying it was too dangerous, the next she said it was fine. There was much confusion as to what to do next. Incidentally, I was sitting next to the one student who didn’t know how to swim. Raw fear was radiating off of him…and it was, quite frankly, freaking me out. Meanwhile, some of the bravest in our crew started voicing their own safety concerns. I finally made the executive decision that some of us would simply have to stay behind. We would just have to wait for the canoe to make an extra trip to come back and pick us up (I didn’t haul those gas cans all over Pastaza and Napo provinces for nothing!). The bus could go ahead and we could call my new friend Ricardo to pick us up in Meñepare and take us to the first public bus stop to get back to Puyo from there. It just wasn’t worth the risk of tipping the canoe (and Tyler too. sorry, that was stupid. Just couldn’t resist) and risking the unspeakable. My counterpart was very much against this plan…and this led to a strident exchange of words. I stood my ground. I got out of the canoe and I asked for volunteers who were willing to stay behind with me. I told the students who had flights the next day that they had to go, but anyone that had the time to spare and wanted to stay should stay. At least one (maybe two) Waorani, two students and three PC volunteers (including myself) got out of the canoe with a handful of gear. I figured we relieved the boat of probably 1000 pounds of weight. We got out, walked back up the riverbank and waved goodbye to our compañeros...silently wondering when or if we would see some of them again.

Those of us left behind took stock of what we had with us. A half dozen chocolate bars…3 cans of tuna… several packs of crackers… around $125 in cash…life jackets…a bunch of bananas…three cell phones (two of which belonged to guys that went in the first canoe)…and one book of matches. Well, at least we had the chocolate!!! So our motley crew settled back into the profe’s house to wait out the rain, snack on our food…and to wait for our ride. Thankfully, the students who stayed were super laid back about the whole thing, which was awesome. The last thing my stomach and stress level needed was to deal with some high maintenance students. Because it was raining, we holed up in the profesor’s house and plotted the two students’ trip across Ecuador.

Incredibly, the canoe came back to pick us up in less than four hours. I was prepared to wait most of the day, so the fact it got back so soon was a good sign and no less than a miracle. We asked the motorista if everyone got back to Meñepare ok. He enthusiastically said yes; that everything was fine.

Because we had so few things to with us, loading back into the canoe was quick and painless. By this time the rain had stopped and it was actually a beautiful day. Clearly staying behind and waiting was the better choice. I know I had previously made fun of the fact that the Women’s organization bought a ridiculously large 40 hp outboard motor to power a canoe. But given we were traveling at high water and against the current, the big motor was awesome. It was smooth and steady. It actually felt like we were on flat water, not a rapidly flowing river.

Not long after pulling away from Tepapare, we get the full story of what had happened to the first wave of travelers. It turns out, the motor on the first canoe (the one that left early and only half full) broke down. Seriously. We were told that canoe pulled over to the side and was slowly poling its way upstream, waiting for the second canoe to rescue them. Somehow all the gringos in the first canoe got in the second canoe (that my group had debarked from because of concern of overloading) and continued on downstream. All the Waorani and a bunch of the bags, however, were still in the stranded canoe somewhere along the river. Hummmm… interesting.

So, we were totally cruising back upstream. Well, we were cruising along until we came to the other canoe. There, it once again got a little hairy. The challenge was trying to get two canoes back upstream with just one motor (insert joke about being upstream without a paddle here). First we tried to, to borrow Roger’s phrase, “just make a catamaran out of the two canoes.” Uhhh…yeah. That didn’t work. By tying the canoes together side by side, they wanted to tip toward each other, threatening to dump all the passengers and contents in the watery wasteland between the two. Plus, they kept wanting to crash into one another, threatening to smash the fingers and hands and other body part caught between them. So we ditched that plan and we tried to tow the crippled canoe behind ours. That was even scarier, as the trailing canoe fishtailed all over the place, almost tipping the lead canoe. Plus, making any type of turn, even a wide turn, was next to impossible, and, well just plain dangerous. We finally settled on a hybrid type towing set-up whereby one of the Waorani guys was literally straddling the somewhat staggered canoes (such that we weren’t quite side by side, but not totally towed either). It actually sort of worked. With the added weight and navigational challenges posed by the canoe towing, however, our travel speed slowed considerably. Like, to a crawl. I remember looking at the side of the river and thinking that if only there was a clear path along the bank we could have easily walked faster than the speed of the canoe caravan. This made the rest of the trip really drag on, especially since we were zipping along so fast at the start.

The minutes dragged into hours. At one point, the motorista confidently shouted to us,“We’ll be there in 20 minutes.” Roger and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Yeah right. Ya mismo. That started a very serious bit of bantering on when we would actually see the bridge where the bus would be waiting for us. We stared intently at my watch and decided to make a wager. The bet was big: not one, but TWO, ice cold beers to the person who guessed who was closest to the time we would spot the bridge. Roger guessed 1:55. Someone said 2:25. I said 2:16. One of the students said 2:22… We all stared ahead. Every bend in the river looked like the one that would be the one that led to the bridge where the bus and the rest of the group would be waiting. Then all the trees and all the bends started looking the same. It felt like we would never make it back. Then, at 2:22, a full 40 minutes after the “20 minute warning” we spotted the bridge. A cheer went up among those of us on the canoe, and those assembled along the river bank and on the bridge. We made it! We finally made it onto dry land! Hooray! I thought the rest of the crew was going to hug us. Instead, they buzzed past us and went straight for the food bag, as they were all starving.

So, in the end, even after all of my stress and worries and fretting, we completed our projects, nothing was destroyed in a flood, no one was bit by a snake (or a penis fish), no one was left behind, the canoes didn’t capsize, no one fell out, AND we all actually fit on the mini-bus that drove us out of the jungle back to Puyo. We were piled on top of one another, of course, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.