The Amazon Basin

On Monday, March 31st, we continued our descent into the Amazon basin, initially on a good but steeply winding road. Not long after starting we got our first glimpse of one of the high volcanoes. Antisana (more on this in the volcano posting). The road quickly deteriorated to a very rough route of large rocks, soft sand and mud, with occasional detours around landslides. We had to share the road with slow moving cattle and fast moving local buses who define the correct speed for any road condition as being faster than anything that has the misfortune to be in front of them.
We eventually reached Cotocochi (neck of the lake/water) lodge on the Napo river after lunch in the nearby town of Tena. The lodge has been around for a number of years and changed hands several times. The lodge is in an area of largely secondary forest, with a few islands of primary rainforest, and is staffed largely by local indigenous people from a nearby village.
Our first day there, we motored upstream in the lodge canoe, a long narrow and somewhat scarily unstable vessel driven by a 40 hp outboard, to hike up the surrounding hills to a secluded waterfall on one of the Napo tributaries.The boat did handle rapids quite well, although sometimes we were looking up at the white water.

Definite rubber boot territory! We had a lovely swim in the pool at base of the waterfall as did Jorge and Alfredo, our local guide.(a bit blurry, taken with the underwater camera in heavy spray).

We then went for a walk in a nearby area of forest preserve, really getting into the rainforest atmosphere by doing the walk under massive rubber ponchos in a thunderstorm. We saw a lot of interesting insects, although the near darkness of the storm made photography difficult.

The following day we went downstream through a bewildering array of branching rivers and rapids to visit a wildlife rescue centre. We had to stop at a local river checkpoint in a small town where the local plaza has been taken over by a family of white faced capuchin monkeys.

No-one else wanted to hold the resident boa constrictor – he was really quite friendly.

After a shore lunch, we headed back upstream to visit Alfredo’s village to see traditional gold panning (by his 66 year old mother), ceramic making (yes, of course we bought some!), to sample some chicha, beer made from yucca (let’s just say it is an acquired taste) and try our skill with a blow dart.

Jane seriously skewered a balsa wood parrot with this shot.

This is Jane's favourite Amazon plant. When the green pods go yellow they are the source of CHOCOLATE! It is actually quite difficult to find much Ecuadorian made chocolate - most of the raw material goes to Europe.

More about Amazon bugs on the next post!