Jungle Book: Family Trip to Shakay

After weeks of preparation and planning and hours of packing we were finally ready to begin our first family trip (dog, chicken and all) out to the village of Shakay.

All ready to go!!

That would be the chicken in the bucket :)

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Unfortunately, our car wasn’t quite as ready as we were….it started, very sluggishly but it was problematic enough for us to be a little concerned.

Mostly we thought – if we leave the car sitting at the port (hours away from a store or town) will it start when we return from our trip?

We decided it probably wouldn’t, so we started our trip with a visit to a nearby town in search for a new car battery. A couple of hours later we were on the road and headed to the port.

It was a beautiful sunny day and the boats were ready and waiting for us (they were a bit smaller than I remembered) but somehow we managed to load everything in them and head up river.

I was really impressed with the house and relieved to see it!!! After sitting on a duffle bag, while encased in a very tight black life-jacket, and leaning forward to grab the sides of the boat - so I wouldn’t loose my balance and topple out - it had been a very long hour and a half ride.

Adam unloaded all of our belongings and we decided to walk around and try and greet everyone. By the time we got back to our house we were all tired, covered in mud, a bit irritable and definitely sweaty.

We decided to walk down to the river to bathe… words cannot explain the frigid icy coldness of that water!! To say it took my breath away doesn’t even begin to describe it!! The kids were looking at me as though I had lost my mind with my gasping and screaming and carrying on….somehow we got clean and we began the muddy accent back up to the house.

View from upstairs

View of our path down to the water

Coming up the hill after bath time...

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Here is where everything goes horribly awry … somehow we made it up the huge muddy hill without getting to dirty, but we are in our clothes and are soaking wet. This is when we realize that we haven’t unpacked anything --- we don’t know where any towels are and the kids clean clothes are in the bottom of our very full waterproof bag.

At this point I should probably mention that Samuel is diaperless because of his bath.

So I am trying not to drip all over the dry clean clothes, Adam is trying to find towels and the kids are shivering with cold. I look up to tell the kids its ok I am gonna find their clothes when I see Samuel making ‘the face’ I yell, Nooooo – but it’s too late, he has pooped his pants.

Adam comes running upstairs thinking we have been attacked by killer monkey’s and instead finds me gawking at our son trying to figure out how I am going to get the poop out of his pants without making to big of a mess (especially since I have no idea where the wipes are).

He make a split second decision to just pick him up and take him outside not realizing that the elastic at the bottom of his pants is no longer elasticized and the poop falls out of his pant leg and splats right on the floor. Beyond frustrated Adam runs downstairs with Sam in search of wipes not knowing that he has unintentionally stepped in the poop and is tracking it all over the house…. Needless to say, it was a very eventful first evening.

Getting the kitchen organized

Adam working on the sewer lines (at least until he hit a rock the size of the house....on to plan B...or C.... or D?)

Playing with bubbles (as you can see, Sophia's always seemed to spill)

Our 'sunning' rock

The ladder Adam and these three boys built so we wouldn't get so muddy after bathing.

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We settled into a routine and the village kids made daily visits. They began by just staring at us … like, that is all they would do.

We would tell them to come in and sit down – try to make conversation but they just stared silently.

It was a bit awkward and unnerving at times, but they loosened up and by the end were playing happily with the kids, teaching them Spanish, how to play kick ball and swinging in the hammock.

Adam was able to get the sewer system mostly set up and by the second evening we had a toilet in the house, thank goodness!!! We were still bathing in the icy water but I was getting a little more used to it.

We had our first house church on Wednesday night. Esteban came as well as two other families whom we had never met. They weren’t believers and I think they came mostly to just check us out but it went really well and we had a good time. I had actually made way to much food for lunch so we had plenty of food to share and enjoy while Adam told some Bible stories.

Our House

View of the sandbar ...

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July 5^th was Adam’s birthday. The kids and I really wanted it to be a special day for him so we let him pick the activities and the food…

In hindsight maybe I should have picked the activities! Adam’s ideas are always a bit crazy and this one was no exception J

There was a sandbar on the opposite river bank, where the sun always shone and it was a perfect place for the kids to play (our bathing area was a bit rocky and not very shallow). We had talked about trying to get over there but we hadn’t attempted it. So Adam decided for his birthday we should swim across the river and play in the sand.

We put on our life jackets and worked out a plan. Adam was going to put Sophia on his back (Sam on mine) and we would swim across… great plan.

I’m not sure if any of you know this but I have bad luck in water….if there is a rock it will find me, if there are scary people eating fish they will bite me, if there is a strong river current…I will get caught in it – and I did.

Adam told me not to panic that I would make it to the other side and it would be fine, but halfway across as I was swallowing buckets of water and hoping I wasn’t going to drown our son - I was thinking he was wrong. I think he must have seen the panic in my eyes as I floated past him but he jumped out and grabbed me and all was well.

Of course, I told him (after I caught my breath and quit coughing up water) that there was no way I could make it back across (because we would be fighting the current and trying to make it upstream…..so not happening).

So Adam, nice husband that he is, swam back across – got a rope and swam back with it…after tying it to a tree of course. So when we were finished with our sandy excursion we just held onto the rope and let it pull us across.

We ended the day with a cake. This cake was definitely ‘from scratch’ and definitely had hot cocoa mix in it… since we didn’t have an oven we put it in a pressure cooker and let it cook (or burn) on our stove – which settings included - very hot and hotter.

Amazingly enough it was edible but it sorta tasted like a cigar…. It was definitely a birthday to remember.

Swimming in preparation for crossing the river...

Birthday Lunch (guacamole & tortillas with rice and beans)

Birthday Fishing (after we had survived the swimming expedition)

The Cake.

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It finally rained and we were able to heat up water for a bucket bath – the kids were soooo excited!! We were excited as well, especially since we had found a couple of lice in Sam’s hair and we wanted to make sure we got rid of those little suckers.

We found some interesting bugs (some in our hair, yay for me) and we ate lots of beans and rice J We had church a couple of more times and before we knew it, it was time to come home…

Our bathroom :)

Hiking to 'town'

Other homes in Shakay

Shuar ladies walking home (they live a 30 min walk from the center of Shakay)

Church. Left to Right: Ricardo (our boat driver) Hermocina, Ricardo's wife and Esteban

Left to Right: Lucho (who cut all the wood for our house, with a chain saw) and his wife Beti. Their 5 month old son who they have not named, in case he doesn't live.

Happy visitor on the wall...

Found in my hair....after my bath (so comforting, I was definitely getting clean). Apparently they bore holes in wood....good thing I found it before it went and drilled holes in my head.

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Unfortunately once it started raining --- it didn’t stop. The morning we were to come home the river was up as high as ever.

There is a huge boulder down where we bathed and they said if the water went over the rock the river was too high…it was 1 inch below the boulder… so the boat came.

We piled into the boat and somehow our driver managed not to flip it as we headed downstream. We were all decked out in our raincoats, ponchos and lifejackets. We made it to the port in 25 minutes and that was even with stopping to use the bathroom and bail out water (usually it takes an hour or more)!!

But we made it – the car started and we came home. When we told Sophia we were going to our house in Zamora, she said, “Oh, I am so excited!! I hope my new princess shoes are ok, I can’t wait to see them”.