Day 4: Leaving the Jungle

We woke up in the pouring rain with 7/12 filters left to install. Although the weather was not on our side, we had to get our work done. We split up into groups and managed to finish with only a couple issues. 1) we did not have enough sand for our 12th filter, but our savior Joselo worked it out. 2) one group set up a whole filter with all the layers (over 250 lbs) and then spent a very long time waiting for it to work. It didn’t. We realized the water tube must’ve been blocked, so we had to take it all apart and fix it. We used a soccer ball inflator to blow it out. The culprit was a piece of wet paper. We put he filter back together and it worked! Success! We had installed all 12 filters!! And the filter we installed at the school the day before was now putting out clear water which was so great to hear. We got to take a boat ride down the river out of the community which was soo cool. We were in the JUNGLE. Isn’t that awesome? On the boat ride back to Rurre, out engine stopped working… After like 20 minutes it finally started working again and we were back in Rurre in about 2 hours. We spent the afternoon with Josélo and checked out the town across the river which had stockades that THEY STILL USED. Wild. That night we gathered with Joselo and a few families from the Rio Beni Health Foundation for a farewell dinner. It was extremely hard to put into a toast how much the past week with Joselo meant to us but we tried. We spent one last night lying in the hammocks talking before bed, reflecting on our time in Rurre and getting excited for our next adventure.