Yully, Raquel and I made the trip from Nauta to Puerto Miguel on the Yarapa River in two hours instead of three when the wooden lancha is full with 30 passengers.
Puerto Miguel was founded 90 years ago by 5 familes including one man named Miguel. It now has 80 families who mostly live in neat houses on both sides of a new sidewalk. One had an exhibition of colorful jungle scene paintings created after lessons from a neighboring artist.
When entering Raquel's house, I saw a pair of young three toed sloths munching on some cetico leaves. Raquel had rescued these and other local wildlife for many years. Their diet dictates a slow pace, but I felt my yoga teacher would also appreciate their graceful economy of motion.
After lunch, Yully and I met with the village artisans. Their regular house needed renovations so we met in a covered open building where the artisans had laid out their crafts on three rows of tables. I introduced myself to each woman and was happy to share some fun banter with many.
While there are 7 eco-tourism lodges in the area, only one regularly brings its clients to the village to shop for crafts. The other lodges pay a fee to the community for every client that passes through on a forest walk, but this doesn't help the artisans directly.
I shared a presentation about our work, and while they didn't have any crafts we could resell, they were very interested to learn how to make bird ornaments that we could buy in quantity.
We next walked through the school and passed by soccer and volleyball games, an abandoned building that was supposed to be an internet project, a house where French volunteers offer English lessons, and a lodge for backpackers. Economic times are very tough now because there are few tourists and prices for basic commodities have steadily risen.
We had a simple dinner and went to bed knowing we would need to get up at 3:30 am. I had a hard time falling asleep because I kept hearing an animal chewing on something several feet from my hammock. It turns out it was a fox not a rat that was foraging. Bad luck for it when went into Raquel's room and didn't come out.
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