We spent five days in Queros meeting the people and learning all about them and their way of life. We ended up camping the whole time and fighting off hoards of bugs, most of all ants, but it ended up being an amazing experience. Here are a few of the highlights of the trip for me:

•YUCA! We ate yucca with each and every meal. Fried yucca, boiled yucca, yucca soup… you name it. One day we were even sent out to work the yucca field in order to help repay the community for their generosity. Let me tell you—this was hard work! We had to use machetes to cut up all of the plants near the yucca plants and spread the dead plants out over the roots for nutrients. It was hot, humid and I’m just not very talented with a machete… In the end it was worth it, though, because we brought home some lunch! The other half went out to work as well, but they gathered palm hearts. Again, very delicious.

•One afternoon Andy, Meredith and I took a quick hike instead of napping after lunch. We were lucky enough to have Freddie, one of men from Queros, who gave us a private tour, so to speak, of the selva. Freddie decided that we didn’t need to follow a path since we had done that sort of trek earlier that morning, which turned out to be quite the work out. We literally cut our own path through the rainforest with a machete. He explained some medicinal plants to us and pointed out every insect we came across from the giant hanging termite homes that looked like dirty turnips to giant gorgeous butterflies.

•The river definitely qualifies for my highlight list. Every day we took some sort of hike in the morning or worked in the yucca fields. Needless to say, after this hard work in the hot, humid weather, we needed a break and a way to cool off. We spent hours down at the river and it was more cold than cool, but this was a very welcome change in temperature! We even found a place deep enough to dive into but after the jump you found yourself in the fastest part of the river, and it was a bit difficult to stop yourself. So we took advantage of the fast flowing river by sort of body surfing in the current.

•One of my favorite parts of the trip was the demonstrations of handicrafts by the people in the town. The young boys and one old woman showed us how they used seeds found in the forest near the town to make necklaces, our cook for the week had immense skill for weaving shreds of bamboo into baskets, and within twenty minutes the men of the group could hand carve an arrow, though they had to add feathers later which took a bit more time. We each were given a chance to whittle on an arrow, but that was a lost cause…

•Finally, we had a goodbye dinner with the entire group. We were supposed to have a bonfire and learn some of the local stories, but the weather decided not to cooperate. The evening went by better than we expected though, as we still had a chance to learn more about the community and say our goodbyes. The elders of the group shared some of their traditional songs with us and in return we sang one of the Quechua songs we had learned in class and Rosario sang a Native American song. At the end of the evening they thanked us all for coming and learning from the community with gifts of arrows and seed necklaces.