… treading in the footsteps of Shamans..

When you’re looking for adventures sometimes two turn up just at the same time.

I’ve just got up and showered and I’m sitting having breakfast my hair momentarily under control wrapped in up in towel turban. As I’m pushing something very suspicious round my plate, I wonder how this Sunday will pan out.

Outside the front of the kitchen I hear a motorbike. The kitchen is not great for people watching, the window being high up requiring you to bob up and down. As I bob up, someone calls ‘Good Morning’ and then again and then my name. When people arrive unexpected or when you enter a shop and no one is there (happens often as most people have them on the front of their houses and they’re not that busy) you’ll call out ‘Good Morning’ or ‘Good Evening’ until someone comes or a neighbour gets so tired of the shouting that they’ll come and tell you something to make you go away.

However it appeared that the man on motorcycle was for me, in fact there were two. In my excitement I go to kiss the first man on the cheek which is embarrassing as he is wearing a helmet and this doesn’t work. However we laugh. I know these guys, they are friends of the girl with the hair in the turban trying to kiss the helmet. My God son’s uncle and cousin.

I like how I can be sitting wondering what to do next, when an invitation comes in. We're going to visit their finca where there’s a cascade and natural pool.

So we go off in the afternoon, firstly watching a pig be castrated at the Grandmother’s house (not sure if this is part of the tour?!).. a long line has gathered of the ones who like gory things and then keeping well back are all the ones who don’t appreciate the sight nor sound of this spectacle. But after the usual confusions and procrastinations we bundle into a pickup and travel the 20 minutes to their finca, my hair now modelled into a superb pair of batman wings.

But the early morning call was worth it. The cascade is beautiful, the water fresh, the water shallow enough to immerse myself if the pool which is like a Jacuzzi from the pressure of the water falling over the giant rocks. And spectacularly for the first time my eyes are opened to another phenomenon. I can’t believe I had passed as much time near Tena without knowing about the petroglifos. Carved into the giant boulders in the rivers around Napo, little is known about them, their age or interpretation. Here at Batan Cocha, all they know was it was an area where Shamans used to gather to perform rituals. It’s steeped in legend. For me, except for the trees in the primary forest everything I know about Tena seems quite new. This place makes me realise how long everything has been here.

We all stand around the petroglifos talking about the possible meanings. We have no idea, we are making as educated guesses as possible. But then of course, I say, it could just have been a lone fisherman, bored and thinking.. I wonder if I draw something here then a load of people will stand around wondering what it means. This is not an educated guess, but luckily the joke is not lost in translation, or if it is they at least laugh and humour the girl with hair that has now moulded itself into a stylish version of a pufferfish.