The Artful Nomad: The Jungle

Greetings world! I probably seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth after passing my birthday, but even thought I think sharing a birth and death day would be perversely interesting, I have no desire for this to happen anytime soon and strongly believe this situation is far from likely. Today I am in Loja, Ecuador, and being inefficient with my time, but I am at least poking my head on over to let anyone who may be interested in knowing, that yes, I am alive and well.

I have finally visited the jungle, something I have thought about doing for a while now but had not yet done due to lack of opportunity mixed with fear of an excessive number of mosquitos. While in general, creepy-crawly insects, nor jungle animals, scare me, small, buzzing and blood-sucking and itchiness bringing mosquitos are not my friends. Amazingly, while I was in the lodge on my tour, I did not receive a single mosquito bite, and the only reason I was covered was bites was because I arranged a special night to go camping in my tent in the middle of the jungle. While in the canoe tours I was in awe of the trees in the middle of one part of the river, and yearned to take photos in these trees. A bit of charm, the luck that my guide was about to go on vacation after our tour was over, a fair sum of money, and likely the fact that I would be naked, and I was soon signed up on my own camping trip with one guide and a girl that had been volunteering at the lodge. One of my stipulations for this extra night was that I wanted to take a photo in one of the amazing trees, which I discovered is illegal after I already go the idea in my head, and that my photo had to be with me nude. While the photos the guide took with my iphone leave much to be desired in terms of technical value, at least I fulfilled my desire to pose for a brief moment on these amazing trees. In these photos, the tree appears large and beautiful, but the remarkableness is not seen. These trees remind me of something out of Dr. Seuss, as they have an abundance of other plants growing out of them, and the plants are truly fantastic. I would love to return with a photographer or two someday, and set up an independent tour to make a real session of photos here. Aside from my quick amateur photo session in the jungle, I went on hikes, saw birds and monkeys, saw a huge anaconda, got lost walking in the jungle without my shoes (at least I had wool socks) late at night in the jungle, with a flashlight which was rapidly running out of battery power, woke up to a view of a termite covered tent (fortunately I was safely protected inside), went skinnydipping in the river and rowed the canoe nude for a short moment, saw pink dolphins and spoke a lot of English.