A Week in Paradise

For us “city folk” a week in Amazonas was a little like a trip to “Little House on the Prairie” and a little like camping. Icy cold showers, dirt constantly on your feet and under your nails. Absolutely phenomenally beautiful surroundings: steep cliffs covered with jungle-like foliage, the sound of the river louder than any other sound, bright blue skies with puffy clouds, every color brighter and more alive than you expect.



The kids ran and played in the dirt streets. The front door was always open and the older kids in the house just took them around, or they walked two houses down to check on Elita in her mom’s house. We visited people’s chacras, their small plots of land where they cultivate random collections of cane sugar, fruit trees, vegetables and grains. We walked and walked up hills so steep that all of us were winded at the top, while the 90 year old chacra owner is trudging past us like he does all day, every day.

The kids were constantly entertained by chickens wandering around our front door, or cows and donkeys grazing on the side of the road, pigs and goats, cardboard boxes full of chicks and ducklings for sale at the market.


One day when Eliana was playing around a house where we were to have lunch, she apparently witnessed a chicken’s head be chopped off for lunch. She winced and said, “No lo mates! (Don’t kill it!)” And was then explained that this is how we get our food. She apparently accepted that answer because she never said anything about it and went on playing happily, until I told her we’re having chicken for lunch and she said, “Okay but I don’t want chicken with a face.” I told Elita (who told me that story) that many kids in American Suburbia don’t realize that chicken at KFC and chicken on a farm are the same until they’re practically teenagers. So Eliana missed her lessons at preschool for a week but learned a lot about real life, down and dirty, bare feet in the creation God made.

We took a zip line in a wooden box over a river to someone’s chacra on the other side. We visited a trout farm and a waterfall. We drove to a little town famous for manjar, a sweet kind of like dulce-de-leche, and watched them make it in a huge iron pot over an open fire.
For two people who have been struggling in this sunless, gray, polluted city, we spent a week in paradise and deeply enjoyed it!!