These last couple days have been a doozy, as on May 18, we woke up at 5:30 am to go get ready for our long day ahead. We had breakfast and then took a 2 hourish bus ride to our boat spot. It got to a point in the ride where we went completely into gravel road which shook the bus quite a bit. We eventually made it to our spot where we were split up into 3 separate canoes to balance the weight distribution. It was a very long canoe ride that took around 6 hours, but we finally made it to the lodge around 5 pm. We had dinner and settled down for the night as we prepared for our visit to the Waorani Nation.

On the morning of May 19, we woke up for breakfast around 8ish and gathered around our guide, Elly, for the morning to learn more about background and history with the Waorani Nation. She then took us to these tree vines that people would climb to call out to birds and monkeys so they could hunt them. These people were insanely strong as they were able to easily climb up the tree vines and branches to call out for them. She then brought us to the Ceiba tree which was a sacred tree for their culture. After learning more about the Waorani Nation, we headed back to the lodge to eat dinner and get ready for our soccer game later against some of the Waorani Nation members.

We took our canoes over to the Waorani Nation homeland to meet some of the members and practice our spear throwing. While they were almost able to completely impale the wooden pole most of the time, we all struggled with even getting the spear to stick into the ground. We then separated ourselves into two teams and played a game of soccer on one of the muddiest fields I have ever seen. Everywhere you went, there were either puddles of water or patches of mud, which made it a bit hard to play. Despite the difficulty, it was very fun as everyone was just slipping and sliding everywhere and barely anyone could even run. Before going back to the lodge again for dinner, we jumped into the river to clean the mud off ourselves and to just enjoy ourselves.

After eating dinner, we knew that we had to prepare a dance for the Waorani Nation as they had a special dance/ceremony prepared for us. We practiced for around 30 minutes before setting off back to the Waorani Nation. As we arrived, we all sat down on the benches that they had sat out for us and watched their special ceremony which consisted of dancing and “marrying”. We then got our new indigenous names from them and learned the meaning behind each of them. While I don’t remember my name, I do remember my main skill being the best at organizing parties. We then performed our own dance for them, which was a mixture of the Cup song/Macarana/Cotton Eye Joe. I’m pretty sure they liked it, as some of the members learned the Cotton Eye Joe and danced with us. They then handed us a special drink made of plantains, which was drank mainly on rainy days. It had an interesting flavor, but I thought that it was pretty decent. We then ended our visit by buying some hand-crafted items from them and taking pictures with some of the members before getting back on the canoes and driving back in the pitch-black.

The next morning, May 21, we woke up very early once again and had an early breakfast so we could beat the setting sun on the way back to the Iyarina Lodge. We got everything packed and ready around 8 and got on the boats around 8:30. None of us knew what to expect, but we just hoped that it would be pushing double digit hours in the boat. Atleast for this time, I was able to nap a bit in the boat which made time pass quicker, but forgetting to sunscreen meant that my feet got completely burnt up. We eventually made it back to the original landing spot at around 4:30, which was a bit surprising as I thought that the ride back was much shorter than the ride there. The bus was a blur and once we got back to the lodge, everyone ate dinner and passed out as the day had completely taken everything out of us. Visiting the Waorani Nation was a once in a lifetime kind of experience, and I’ll make sure to always remember and cherish my moments out there where I was in the depths of the Amazon Rain forest.