a nice dinner in tena

one of my amazing canadian buddies, heather, is volunteering in a clinic in the jungle in a town outside of tena. we went to visit last weekend and ended up having a number of outside the lines adventures.

the six hour bus ride from quito is a thrilling survey of the eastern offerings of ecuador's topography and climate diversity. distinct mountains become severe ranges, gradually thickening in flora to denser and denser rainforest on lower foot hills. The trip is broken only by the occasional rest stop and passport check, and by personal election card games and shakey book reading.

after arriving and orienting a bit on friday night, we hit the hay to get out to misahualli(pronounced ms. hawaii) early the next day where heather spends most of her time. We helped out filling prescriptions, filing patient histories and wrapping tongue depressors to be sterilized. In the meantime, we practiced taking each others' vital signs. After having such a blast with the doctor and nurse (who was satisfying the national requirement for all health professionals to serve a year in the jungle or the coast) we couldn't turn down their offer to come back and dance at the salsa bar in the middle of the jungle. We went back to tena to gather our things and grab a bite. Dinner was much more than we bargained for.

Five dollars bought filet mignon in a red wine sauce with baked potatoes and steamed veg. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing. Just as we were finishing and thinking about dessert, a rustling on the wall above our table caught my eye. Looking at the fuzzy form for a bit, i eventually registered the creepy crawly as a sloth. Yes. A sloth. it crawled from one hiding spot to another some four feet away, moving like it had a different allotment of space and time than the rest of us. We got so worked up by the sight of it we had to ask the owner if there were more, to which he replied in proud broken english, "yes. i have another in back. it is - how do you say - extinction?" "endangered!?" we asked "oh yes, that is what i meaning, there only 200 left in jungle." And he had one in his restaurant. He brought it out and the little pygmy sloth peed on his shoulder in silent protest.

We went back out to Misahualli by taxi, found our clinic folks and went out dancing. At some point i some how got paired off with a girl named Belgica. After a couple rounds of salsa, i went to buy another round and the whole staff had their eyes on me. After a bit, the youngest among the staff asked with eyes darting around sheepishly, "are you belgica's boyfriend?"

Uh oh. Decided it'd be safer just to dance within our own group.

The next day we worked a bit more in the clinic before heading out. It was a lot busier, so we filled more prescriptions and I helped take out stitches on an especially tough munchkin. I'm quite jealous of the scar he's going to get.