As I mentioned in the last blog,we had quite the adventure on the ride home from Valle Del Sade. During the week we were there, we drove the truck literally everywhere, for no reason. Nathan kept saying that we were going to run out of gas in the middle of the jungle if we kept driving the truck twenty feet to the smoothie stand, but Percy, our contact, wouldn’t let us walk. We obviously want to honor our contacts the best we can, so we kept quiet and hopped in the truck every time he wanted us to go somewhere.
Friday morning, we loaded everything up and headed out on the very bumpy dirt road back to civilization. As we piled in, I volunteered to take one of the three seats in the dreaded back seat of death (aka the land of no air flow). Having not been feeling well earlier in the week, I thought it might be better to be inside than out.
Now as I’m sure you can tell where this story is going, I will pause to say that it was not my fault. There are many people on video blogs saying that it was my fault, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t.
So, we are bumping along, going much too fast for the condition of the road, and I start to feel nauseous. I had my eyes closed as we flew over a massive bump and all of a sudden, I could smell gas. It was so strong that I literally thought I was going to throw up all over the poor, nice man driving, so I prayed. I said, “Jesus, I really need to get out of this truck”. And about a minute later, we sputtered to a stop. In the middle of the Amazon jungle. On a narrow dirt road. We had no gas.
Luckily, there was another truck that was traveling with us so we just siphoned some gas from that truck. No big deal. Problem solved, right?
Siphoning gas
Yes. Until they realized that they couldn’t start the truck even with siphoned gas in it. They looked under the vehicle, and lo and behold! The gas line was broken. So by this point, we were laughing, making videos about the ridiculous situation and how we were happy that we had our tents with us because we were going to die in the middle of nowhere.
Realizing the gas line was broken.
Ricardo, the man who knows how to fix everything, fixed it in about five minutes. Then we realized we had a flat tire. Us girls laughed and cheered as our men literally lifted up the truck in order to get the tire off and the new one on. Then we were on our way again.
We got to El Carmen, said our ‘see you later’s to the other team and started out on the last leg of the journey. About two hours later, Percy’s phone starts ringing. He yelled something in Spanish at the driver and we pulled over. Looking at our confused faces, Percy explains that the other truck was now broken down.
Oh, it gets better…
We drive back a couple kilometers to the truck and try to see if they can fix it. We lounged around and waited for a good hour. We yelled at some cows, found some bread in the truck and munched on that, listened to Evan talk in his crazy accents (I really wish I could explain in words how ridiculously funny it is to hear him do this). After some unsuccessful attempts to fix it, we decided we would try to pull the truck behind ours. We made it about two feet before the rope snapped. We drove around to find some other rope and tried again. This time we drove for a good 15 minutes before the rope got caught behind the tire and melted.
Jenna holding the melted rope
We pulled over again, for the third time and waited for them to tell us what was going on and how we were going to get home. Our truck worked fine, but the other one was carrying all of our gear, and there was absolutely no room for all our bags plus all 20 of us in one truck. They called a mechanic from Portoviejo, which was still two hours away, and then we waited. We watched the sun go down and we played the thankful game. We watched Hot Rod. We laughed and worshiped. Then we got grumpy. It had been almost 12 hours. We were tired, hungry, and being eaten alive by every bug lucky enough to come across us.
Beautiful sunset.
The mechanic arrived in a massive truck, and looked over the vehicle, only to decide that he had to fix it at his shop. They put all our stuff in the mechanics massive truck, helped us climb up, and he whisked us off to our beds. By this point we all just wanted to be in bed.
It was past midnight when I rolled into my bed and covered myself in the thin sheet. I was home. Finally. But not for long. We are leaving this evening for another town in the jungle, this time to the east. We are supposed to be there for the last two weeks, so I won’t have internet until I get to Peru. Please pray for me, as sometime in the next two weeks, I have to head back to Quito to pick up my passport, and for my team as we are traveling to Peru on our own because we are so far south already. It wouldn’t make sense for us to go up to Quito to meet up with everyone else.
Love you guys so much. Talk to you in Peru.
Here’s a happy little video one of my squadmates made documenting the adventure. Enjoy!
