Jungle Life

That’s what most people in Medellín said when I told them I was leaving the city for the jungle, the thought of spending so much time in such a wild place actually incomprehensible to them. To me, nothing made more sense. 

Medellín and I have had a long and complicated relationship and being there was making me physically ill. Literally. I spent more time with doctors in the six months I was there than I did with friends. Diagnosis? Anxiety, stress. Cause? Mede-fucking-llín. It was time to go. 

So I left. Not across the Atlantic, like I’d hoped, but south, to the Amazon, like I wished. Because I wished this journey to life months (years?) before I started planning it, before I thought it could actually happen. 

I always knew I’d come back to the Amazon and once I got it in my head that I would return on the tenth year anniversary of my last journey, there was no changing my mind.

I also happen to love crazy, life-altering ideas, the kind that get my blood pumping and my mind racing—and not in the “I need to go to the emergency room in the middle of night” kind of way but in the “oh my god I can’t believe I’m actually doing this, this is so scary and amazing” way. 

But this time, I would travel with purpose rather than just letting the current take me where it pleased—as tempting as that was—because I knew if I didn’t make a plan, I’d let the slow boat take me all the way to Belém do Pará in Brazil again just so I could eat fried fish with açaí and drink cachaça de jambú served with a shot of beef stew. (Trust me.)

Even as I write this, I have to control the urge to run off to the port of Tabatinga and buy myself a ticket for the next boat sailing downriver to Manaus. I have to remind myself that I came here to learn and write and take photos and explore and connect with nature and seek adventure—but with a clear focus to share local stories about pertinent topics affecting the Amazon. 

I like to move slowly, like the boats that take days to carry people and goods between Amazonian towns and cities. So it’ll take me a while to curate the stories and photo essays and interviews I’ve been working on and to get all the material ready, but I’ll get there. Some things just take time. Right, snake? She knows what I mean. 

For now, these are some of my favourite photos (all #ShotOniPhone because my DSLR was too heavy) of my first jungle trek, which I was (happily) thrown into just twelve hours after landing in Leticia. I hope to go on more tours soon, but in the meantime, you can find me at the public library, drinking caipirinhas at the Santander Park, or crossing into Brazil for some açaí. 

Honestly, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than right here, even when being here means being covered in mud and sweat for days and hiding behind a tree to use the toilet in the middle of the night. Or worse, in broad daylight. 

Coming back to Leticia was a wild idea and every day I’m here is a reminder that it was the right choice.