Playa de Oro: Breakin' It Down, Gringo Style

After a short week (turned even shorter by two day flu, my latest Ecuadorian illness) all of the gringos stumbled to the bus for a midnight departure for our trip to the province of Esmeraldas. Around 9 in the morning and probably about 3 hours of sleep total, we arrived at a small town and "all aboard!" we all loaded in to the now familiar canoes. We rode for an hour in the bright green river that get its emerald color from the rocky bottom.

As we arrived at Playa de Oro (direct translation: Beach of Gold), an Afro-Ecuatorian community, a small group of community members were playing music and singing to welcome our arrival.

We settled into our cabañas, which were luckily outfitted with running water and mosquito nets, a huge step up from the Amazon.

Next we had a delicious meal of fried fish and rice and then settled into our seats for a charla. This chat was about a form of poetry that the Afro-Ecuadorians write and how they use it to pass down stories from their ancestors. Although one of the men from the community showed us several poems that he had composed (which we were actually more like spoken word, a form of poetry that is performed like rap), everyone was dead tired and had heard about la palabra in class one too many (...or ten times too many) times and had trouble staying awake. After the marathon of the talk, we were given the first of many spurts of free time, something that was a foreign concept on all of our other group trips.

After dinner we went on a walk around the community, which is composed of a bunch of wooden building on stilts (a lot of them had DirectTV...in the middle of the rainforest?), a school, and a soccer field where we watched a game between some of the adults in the community.

Some of the houses (with their satellites)

The soccer field/the town center

Friday morning (after almost 11 hours of sleep, a big record for group trips) we woke up and got ready to go on a long hike through the thick jungle. We rode in the canoes for another hour until we passed all forms of civilization and were in the middle of the jungle.

Hannah, Tori, Melody, Kaitlyn, me, Jacqueline, and Stephanie cheesin' before the hike

We then commenced on a two hour hike through the wonderfully muddy rain forest where we learned about different types of trees, saw a tiger footprint (!), and got to swing on a homemade vine swing.

Fearless me

We hiked down a treacherous hill and arrived at a beautiful waterfall. After the sweaty hike, the brisk water was a welcome invitation and when the clock changed to 11:11 on 11/11/11, I felt so lucky that I couldn't even think of something to wish for.

The steep hike down to the stream

Basking in the beautiful waterfall

After making it up the rough and muddy hike back, we went to pan for gold. Although the men from the community made it look easy, it was nearly impossible. We obtained about 5 specks of gold from all of our hard work...the first step towards paying off my Duke tuition! Not.

Panning for gold...like a boss

We returned to the camp ravenously hungry and were treated to shrimp with rice, yum! Following lunch, we spent the almost the rest of the day catching up on reading, gossip, and creating friendship bracelets. Although it was really nice to catch up with everyone, it was rather unfortunate that we did not spend more time with the community members, which we were, after all, there to learn about.

After our long descanso, we rode across the river in order to learn how to make sugar cane juice. This involved using a wooden machine and sending the sugar cane stalks through wheels to squish the juice out. Qué rico!

Sugarcane machine

Everyone helping to spin the wheels to crush the stalks

The "fruit" of our labor. So punny.

At night, the rest of the community crammed into the main building for a jam sesh. A group played three different types of drums, the marimba, and a guitar while a group of six teenagers dressed in traditional outfits performed several dances.

After their beautiful performance, they asked us to dance and attempted to teach us the dances. Attempt is the key word here. Even though the steps were relatively simple, I quickly decided the rest of the community probably came to observe (aka laugh at) us for the night. I totally can not blame them because a bunch of gringos stomping around in large rain boots was probably well worth their while.

Saturday morning we woke up, ate breakfast and packed our stuff. After another canoe trip, we piled back on the bus and rode to Borbón to see Papa Roncón, who, from what I can tell, is famous for teaching other people how to play the marimba so that the traditon would never be forgotten. Regardless, we arrived in the middle of the coastal heat to Papa Roncón's house for lunch. After we waited around for awhile (apparently this was the theme of the trip), Papa Roncón didn't seem to be feeling very festive so he only played a couple of songs on the marimba.

Later we rode the nine hour bus ride home in tune to my ballin' 90s playlist I created. Although we said "Bye bye bye" to the "Wide Open Spaces" of Playa de Oro, "Hakuna Matata" because a trip to the beach was in the planning stages for the next weekend...