Living in Ecuador where the Andes meet the Amazon forest

With the car, we drove around Tena in several places to explore the area. We went to this place called Puerto Misahuallí. From there we started to walk around the river. There is a little path where dozens of little monkeys will try to steal your belongings. From the port, you can take various kinds of transportation boats. The bigger ones bring you to the deep Amazonian towns whereas the little ones bring you to closer local communities. We boarded one of them which brought us to a touristic little Quechua community. There we learned how to make Chicha in a traditional way and practiced our dancing skills. The town in itself is very pretty but it is hard to image that they still live the way they used to live despite the big groups of tourists flowing in every day. However, this is a must-do for tourists visiting Tena in Ecuador!

For three weeks, I stayed at the house of my friend François located a dozen kilometers away from the city of Tena. He lives there with his wife Ana and his two children Ana-Sylvie and Gaël. They live among a community called Las Palmas which is a big Quechua family. They live out of growing fruits and vegetables, hunting animals in the forest and occasionally selling cacao beans. I learned a lot from them. With a lot of interest, they taught me how to make chocolate directly from the cacao fruits. I helped them with the daily farming tasks and I got involved into a lot of unusual activities like collecting big worms from rotten palm trees and hiking during the night in the jungle. I participated in community activities which was mainly about doing sport like playing soccer and volleyball every night from 8 pm to sometimes 1 am!