Sarah Hofkamp reflects on her time on the Zabalo River:
Camping in the jungle with the Cofans included a lot of canoeing up and down the small Zabalo River. In one specific instance, some of us traveled in large motorized canoes, others were floating down-river in small canoes, about 2/3rds the size of canoes that I´m used to in the States. We were all making our way back to camp when the large canoe met up with the smaller canoes and we decided to switch places.
I decided to try my hand at the smaller canoe with the help of David Shenk, a GC grad working in Quito. Perhaps we made it 100 yards down the river before the canoe started to fill with water. Soon David and I were swimming. We struggled with the canoe for a while until it got stuck in the vines or roots underwater. We decided, then, to wait and trust that eventually someone would wonder where we were and come back for us. And so we sat in the river, holding onto a tree, silently praying that we wouldn’t be shocked by an electric eel, and outwardly singing hymns and folk songs to calm our nerves.
About an hour and a half later we heard the beautiful hum of a motor coming back to rescue us. Thankfully we came out of the experience with no injuries except for some bothersome fire ant bites. We asked our rescuer, Romel, what the Cofans do when they tip a canoe. “We don’t tip,” was the seemingly obvious response.
