Welcome to the Hotel Anaconda
[Tripadvisor: Picture of Anaconda Lodge Ecuador]
I took my guitar deep into the jungle.
It was in Ecuador on the Rio Napo in the eighties, and I was part of a Fulbright group of twelve New York City teachers. We just completed four weeks in Quito attending lectures and writing a curriculum on Ecuador for high school students in the United States, and at the end of the month we began a journey to the Amazon jungle.
Quito, 9,350 feet above sea level, is cool and dry, with the temperature around sixty-five degrees all year round. But drive east from there, and in a few hours you're in the rain forest, riding alongside rivers rushing east to the Amazon and the Atlantic, passing by hibiscus, oleander, banana trees and greenery as alien to Quito as palm trees are to Chicago.
A charter bus was supposed to pick us up at our Quito Hotel at 9:00 a.m. That hour passed, as did 10:00 and 11:00 and 12:00. Finally, at about 1:30, the bus rolled up to the front of our hotel, the driver offering only the mildest of apologies, implying that we should be aware that this was normal under Hora Ecuadoriano (Ecuadorian Time). Our plan was to take the bus to the remote town of Misahualli, where we'd board motorized canoes – the only route down river -- to an island Hotel,called the Anaconda. But after the delay, our Hora Ecuadoriano bus pulled into Misahualli just as we saw the last canoe of the day drift down the river. The only alternative was an unscheduled overnight stay at the one hotel in town, an establishment that made a Motel 6 seem like a Four Seasons.
Misahualli had a tropical Tombstone feel. Hanging around the town square were various locals, who in my fevered imagination were biding their time before figuring out how to separate the norteamericanos from their valuables. I joined a bunch of my colleagues in a poker game in the middle of the square. I was the big winner with 75 cents, but despite the low stakes, my first-world paranoia drove fantasies of imagined ladrones following my every step back across the square to the hotel. The accommodations were small rooms with three thin mattresses on the floor. I got onto mine and clutching my guitar in one hand and my passport in the other, managed to sleep for a few nervous hours.
Early the next morning, we boarded the 12-seat canoes that took us on an hour or so trip downriver to the Hotel Anaconda. The place was ethereal -- lush, but not oppressively hot because it was the high jungle -- the 1300 feet altitude made it bearable, even idyllic. The first sight on arrival was the place’s namesake, an actual anaconda slithering around in its chicken wire cage. Keeping a respectful distance, we continued to the rooms -- a group of thatched, open huts with no electricity. The huts were platforms with thatched roofs, leaving an opening all around. Everything had to be put away or tied down, lest omnipresent monkeys abscond with shorts or toothpaste or shaving cream. After unpacking and securing our personal property, we explored the area, and then returned to our thatched huts, about four of us in each one, to rest comfortably from the prior night's trials and prepare for dinner.
Near the equator, there is no lengthy dusk and sunset. Night just "falls" like a curtain, going from light to dark in a matter of minutes. Around that time, while the others were lying quietly in their huts, I took out my guitar and began playing some classical pieces -- a Bach Bouree, a Sor Study, a Dowland lute song -- as rain forest day turned into jungle night. Soon it was completely dark and still, except for the sounds of the guitar and the birds and insects of the tropical evening. Because of the open space, I knew the music was floating through the air into the other huts, creating a spell throughout the grounds, broken only by a bell calling us to dinner. On the way to the dining room, my friends said they all felt the magic of the moment, as Baroque and Renaissance music wafted through the jungle night where they lay resting.
Dinner was another matter.
We were joined by spirited groups of English, Dutch and German tourists, who sat with us at long tables lit only by candlelight. The food was local, with a very heavy emphasis on yucca and plaintains. After dinner and a couple of beers, I took out my guitar again, but this time the repertoire was Beatles, Stones and Paul Simon, rather than Bach and Saté. Following a half-hour of greatest Hits of the Sixties and Seventies, one of our group requested Satisfaction. I obliged with my minimalist solo acoustic version of the Stones classic, punctuated by the guitar-pounding, hand-clapping, foot-stomping hook, "Buh, Buh, buh-buh-buh, Buh -- That's what I say!"
You wouldn’t think a nylon-string Takimine classical guitar could rock out that well, but when I finished, the Dutch went crazy and begged me to do it again, chanting "Play Sat-ees-fac-shun!” I couldn’t refuse, but afterwards I tried to “take it down a bit” by playing Mr. Bojangles. There was respectful applause, followed by the Dutch resuming their urgent request for acoustic Stones. I did it again, and when I hesitated about a fourth time, they sent me a beer, giving me no choice but to reprise the Jagger/Richards anthem yet another time. After another couple of non-Stones tunes, the low-country folks (now joined by the Brits and Germans) again shouted "Play Sat-ees-fac-shun," this time simultaneously handing me the beer. The cycle went on for a couple of hours, until I had played Satisfaction about eight times, and had as many beers. Finally, the Dutch and I reached an elevated level of exhausted “satisfaction,” and I was released at last. I staggered back to my hut, oblivious even to the marauding apes, and fell asleep, dreaming of Bach, Rolling Stones, and jungle bliss.
Peter Janovsky © 2008