Pevas Excitement

Instead of waking up to just roosters crowing, we also had the 6am morning news. The town of Pevas has one loudspeaker that is projected throughout the entire town. The announcements sound like a garbled mess, even the soundest of sleepers could not sleep through these. Our group called this the "Daily Jungle Announcements." We looked at Fransisco Grippa´s gallery with all his paintings and pottery. He told us we could buy whatever we wanted. Unfortunately we are all poor college students that do not have thousands of dollars to spend on a painting. He personally signed any item we bought though, even postcards, which was nice. After the gallery, we visited 2 tribes by Pevas. We all crammed into the peki-peki. I was wondering if it would hold all us since on the 3 day trek we had to keep bailing out water. There were small leaks all over the boat. We arrived to the first tribe which had a giant hill with well worn stairs. The moment we got out of the boat it started to rain. We all thought it would be a nice rainforest shower, but it turned into a torrential downpour. We walked, already soaked, into the large community hut. Some of the people performed typical dances for us, including an anaconda dance.

Afterwards, we could barter and trade with the people. It continued raining really hard, but we moved on to the next tribe, which was within walking distance. We tramped through large puddles of mud and grass and found ourselves in another large community hut. One of the rowers on the trip with us is in line to become the head tribesman of this tribe. They performed more dances for us, and we had more opportunity to barter with them. People were thrilled to have pencils, pens, and paper. They asked me for the shirt off my back, my hair, and even my eyelashes. Sorry, I could not give those up. We waited awhile longer, but the rain did not let up at all. So, we brought out a huge tarp, tried to get everyone under it, and walked the steep descent back down to the river.
We made it safely to our peki-peki, but once on, we were really frightened. Rain was pouring from the top, and water was filling in from the bottom. We all sat paralyzed to the side of the boat praying that it would not sink, or capsize, or stop working. The rain was pouring down on our tarp. Imagine being in the position for a tornado drill, but on a boat, for about an hour. Pure torture. Our engine kept cutting out and our boat would stall. Too much rain was getting in. One of the Drake students thought we should help our driver. All of us stared at him in disbelief--we did not know anything about motors. He crawled out from under our tarp and held a tarp over our engine. That was all it needed! The lack of water really worked and saved the day. We arrived safely back to Fransisco´s house, all worn out and completely freaked out. We all literally thought that could have been the end of us.
Good news though...we were cleaner than we had been in days!