After our winter excursion and the post about "How to Poop in the Woods", you probably suspected this one was coming. You were right. Here is what I've learned so far about pooping and not pooping in the Amazon.
Before going any further, let's just remember we are working with animals in the jungle and poop is everywhere! We clean poop from animal enclosures everyday and Paul was dumped on by a rather large wild macaw while guiding a tour of Canadians! Ok, back to the story...From what we've observed, flush toilets are common in Ecuador. However, in most places septic or city sewage systems are not robust enough to handle flushing toilet paper. The solution - put the tp in the waste basket next to the toilet. As you can imagine the crappiest (pun intended) and my least favourite volunteer chore at AmaZOOnico is "Basura" because for this job you empty all garbages - bathroom toilet paper baskets included. Gloves are a must, as is hand washing every 5 seconds!!!
You will be pleased to hear that 2 bathrooms in the tour reception area are "toilet paper positive." If you know it's going to get messy, you'll want to head there! Nuff said.
Now, for my bathroom travel reality. Often when I'm new to a place, I get a little "bunged up", as my parents used to say. This is probably due to different food and lack of hydration, which is completely my own fault. Full disclosure - I recently got a little constipated and after 4 days of struggle, I had an epiphany, "I'm in the Amazon, so there must be a medicinal plant to help with my ailment." I went to our Admin, bared my soul. Having no answer, what did she do? She went to the local Indigenous Kichwa staffers, of course. The general consensus was to eat papaya and in more severe cases, eat papaya seeds. Easy. We feed papaya to almost every animal so there is no shortage of these slimly little round seeds.
I went directly to the "bodega" and soon I was crunching down on a tablespoon of papaya seeds. If you've not tried them, I recommend it. They are quite tangy, with a fair bit of spice and crunch. I took another tablespoon of seeds later in the day, just in case. I'm not sure if I ate the fast acting seeds, but in about 10 hours things were moving and I POOPED!!! Big sigh of relief.
I think I'll leave it there. If you have any specific questions, email or text. I'm happy to share more. But something tells me I've already shared too much.