5 Days in the Ecuadorian Amazon

In a nutshell, it was an excellent adventure -- an abundance of beauty in both nature and people. It was exhausting! And it was heartbreaking.
A few photos... Helen with Gimoke, who painted her face on Sunday

Helen shooting an arrow through a blowgun

Helen crossing a stream which flows into the Shiripuno River. (More than once our boots got stuck in the mud.).

The classroom we visited yesterday morning in Nenkipare. (The Spanish spelling is Nenquipare. The Huaorani prefer their own orthography

The empty classroom ... a couple of books, an upside-down chalkboard with a few tiny pieces of chalk on the floor, two desk-benches. What age children attend this school, I asked. Three to twelve was the answer. And sometimes the mothers drop off their 2-year-olds for the day. One teacher. Ach. I weep

I can't do this in a quick blog entry. There is just too much. Between Helen and me we have hundreds of photos and several videos, with stories to match each. We learned a lot. We had fun... oh, there was one night when we were both shrieking in a laughing fit over a photo of me -- Miss Grace -- looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame with a rain poncho over my backpack, clutching the arm of our guide through the slippery mud. Ha! Hahaha! So, obviously, we need to sit WITH YOU to tell you

Read this book: Savages, by Joe Kane
Go to Googlemaps and look for Puyo, Ecuador, then back up a bit. You'll see Shell, the town from which we flew East into Keweire-Ono, (a.k.a. Quehueire-Ono,) northeast of Shell but not on the map. And from there we went to places that can only be reached by dugout canoe or on foot..
It was powerful. I find myself in tears , inarticulate, babbling. The questions we are left with are troubling, the answers, when we think we have them, are painful. And then we learn a bit more, yesterday's answers slip away and we get new questions. To be continued!