Hola everyone!

Well everything didn't quite work out like it was supposed to! I was meant to meet the director of the company I am volunteering with to travel to Puyo and from there get a plane to the jungle in the south to live with a Shuah community. However, the plane apparently had no gasoline and Max (the director) didn't know when they would be able to get any?! He had arranged for me to go and work with a Secoya sommunity in the north where there has been lots of problems with petroleum companies, pharmacutical companies and the migration of other tribes from the Andes, great!

In order to get there I had to catch an overnight bus from Quito to a town called Shushufindi in the north. I arrived in Shushufindi at 5:30am after a rather pleasant 8.5hour bus journey only marred by the awful kung fu films they seem to love here. Shushufindi is a really disgusting town full of oil refineries, compounds, gas storage tanks and street markets. I felt really minging so I headed to a restaurant that was open with a bathroom. The only restaurant that was open happened to be the one that serviced all of the petroleum workers from the various different petroleum companies that work nearby. That was fun! The next 7.5hours were spent hanging around waiting for my 'petrolera' bus to Puerto Gregorio, where I would get the canoe to a place called Tierras Orientales, where Gustavo (the father of the family I would be living with) would be waiting.

Finally the bus turned up! The petrolera buses are open sided rickety old buses that are similar to those used in old roller coaster rides. They are used to transport people, rice and sometimes animals (on the roof) to the different communities in the jungle. It took three hours to get to Puerto Gregorio as te bus had to stop randomly either to let people on or off with their various purchases. The route the bus took consisted of several dirt tracks marked by numerous check points and oil refineries. Massive oil tankers and pick up trucks with oil workers kept thundering past and I didn't think the bus was going to make it at all. I was the only 'gringo' on the bus and everyone starred openly for the whole journey, it was really uncomfortable in every way!

When we arrived at Puerto Gregorio, as in the bus just stopped randomly and everyone got off, there was just a wooden shack and a steep bank with a couple of wooden canoes with motors. We're talking a major port here people!

Gustavo was not there to meet me and the owner of both the bus and the canoes told me that I could not phone him but that he would take me to Gustavo's house. Here's the catch, didn't see this one coming a mile off... it would cost me $25 because it was so far. I gave him the most evil look and attempted to haggle but to no avail so in the end I paid him and struggled onto the canoe (everyone staring again) with all my stuff. And so began my journey into the jungle!