…a day in the finca..

I was very lucky as a child to be brought up with a garden on ¾ acre of land. It’s amazing what you can do in a garden of that size, the activities are endless and the excitement the same. It’s difficult to recapture that same excitement and yearning to jump out of bed and be the first one up. To pack yourself a lunchbox full of breakfast and depart on the days adventure.

But the offer of going to spend the day at the family’s finca (jungle farm) is very much like that. I jump at the chance; to get out of the town and wind my way down even narrower and bumpier tracks to the river and community at Puni. The day must start with the obligatory getting up at the crack of dawn. Then follows the bus ride where everyone falls asleep. You then all scramble off the bus, every man, child and chainsaw and get left in a cloud of dust on a road next to a cut path through the forest.

When we arrive at the river it has been raining. There is no way we can walk across, especially with a child and baby in tow. One man from the community strips off down to his pants and wades across the river. He returns shortly in a wooden dugout canoe. (We chat to his family, Maria says later so we can get a ride!) Six of us wobble the distance across the river and climb out. Ten minutes walk later we arrive at the family’s hut. We collect wood and make a fire. We construct a makeshift hammock for the baby from a sheet and old clothes. But the baby is not content to be left alone in the hammock and trying food and milk similarly does not work. The baby wants to be washed. We go to the river, collect water, lightly heat it and sit the baby in a pot and pour water over it. Breakfast is delayed until said baby is contently swinging in the hammock. We make a pan of hot chocolate and hierba luisa and chicken soup and stand around a giant table slurping off spoons.

Maria is planting platano and yucca and I am searching for seeds in the forest. Margarita gets the help of the couple that live ‘next door’ in the forest. They help to carry the platano through the forest into the canoe and up to the road ready to take back to Tena. Their children stay with us and sit silently. They eat and drink everything they are given. They are the polar opposite to my godson! My godson who has come with us to the forest is a four year old tantrum waiting to happen. He is obsessed by Spiderman, Power rangers, computers games and smashing things up. I’m hoping it’s just a phase!

The afternoon is defined by a mad scramble up the river for forty-five minutes on a dug out canoe. Tarquino wants to show me the community tourism project so I can take some photos. There are seven of us in the canoe and it sits about 3-4 inches proud of the water. It is extremely tippy. We are racing to get the bus back to Tena, there is only one a day .

We keep taking in water on the rapids coming back down the river and it’s all hands to the pump as the canoe fills half way up with water. Wellingtons are removed and used as bailers. The baby plays contently in the bottom of the canoe in a giant water bath. After unloading the canoe we race through the forest, a baby (fantastically heavy beast!) in my arms. We arrive at the road just in time. We arrive back in Tena. I am completely filthy, tired but very happy… the kind of happiness you rarely get as an adult, the kind that reminds you of spending a day making dens, mud pies and floral perfumes from rose petals.