We took another long bus ride to the jungle. The bus ride started with an awesome Steven Seagal movie called Today You Die. A quick summary: Steven Seagal tries his hardest to be black, but lacks a tad of street cred since he is over 60 and well... picture him saying "homie" and "hitting the rock". Seagal wears his typical black trenchcoat throughout the film (which makes him look pregnant), even while in prison. Beyond the horrendous acting, nonsensical narrative (e.g. there are no guards at the prison except to fire futile shots at an escaping helicopter), and awful everything else, it wasn't a bad movie.  How do people get money to make these movies? Anyway, the bus ride was interrupted by a landslide (a typical problem in the Andes), and we got to Lago Agrio at 8am to catch a bus to the river where we would catch a boat into the jungle. The bus ride to the river was another 3 hours, following an oil pipeline and numerous towns built on the money from that oil. They all looked the same, they all looked out of place. We arrived to the river, where as usual we had to wait for an unknown amount of time in the blistering sun for our guide to arrive (in this case an hour and a half).  Once the bus/Steven Seagal/waiting travelling epic was over we headed down the river into the jungle. The motorized canoe ride was awesome as we weaved through the jungle, seeing blue butterflies, monkies, macaws, all other sorts of birds, and a young 5 feet long Anaconda (they can be 30 feet if not more). After 2 hours or so, we arrived to our rustic cabins next to Lago Grande, a beautiful, clear water lake. We spent the rest of the first day floating on the lake, swimming, and watching an amazing sunset. By the second day we realized that our guide was awesome (his name was Victor, booked through the agency Green Planet in Quito, highly recommended), but our group not so much, which is the risk of tours . It was formed by 5 women, one an old petit burgeosie woman from Quito, her spoiled and bratty daughter, the maid of these two women, and 2 more girls from the tour agency hired to guide the matriarch and her daughter. The two petit burgeois women were rather dumb (hence all the "help"), especially with their high pitched exclamation of the obvious: "Que bonito!" "Que increible!". We wish we would have stayed with the chilled out monkeys... The second day we went downriver to the visit the Shamen (a doctor/witch who is very knowledgable and also kind of scary). During a strangely touristy hour he told us about himself, the Shamen's duties and training, their vast knowledge of medicinal plants among other things. Even within the tourist setting, he still looked otherwordly (due to his tunic, dozens of necklaces made from seashells to jaguar teeth, and countless colorful feathers) and a force to be reckoned with, albeit not in terms of brute force. Then we went to have lunch at the house of an indigenous community where they showed us how they use the roots of the Yuca as a substite for flour. Very cool, very surprising. We headed home, where we saw river dolfins swimming around the lake (*incredibly high pitched voice* "Mira! Que bonito!") The third day we went on a walk through the jungle. Tall trees, epyphytes (plants or trees that grow on trees), and vines were the norm. It was really amazing to see that many of these trees and vines had medicinal or poisonous uses, such as one tree is used to make Shampoo, while a certain vine was extremely poisonous (and cancerous), and yet another could save your life if bitten by a snake. We didn't see much animal life here except for termites, incredible itchy ants, and a spider carryng her egg somewhere safer, away from us apparently. To see things we also had to deal with the spoiled brat who wouldn't relinquish the lead, would cut us to get close to the front of the line, and would scare anything that you wanted to see with her stick (such as yellow and black poisonous frog) or her screamings ("Mira!" *poke, poke* *destroy*). Eventually we played ball and cut her to get to the front and we were able to hear Victor's knowlegde of the jungle. Afterwards Victor took us to the lake once more to swim. We decided to stay on the boat as we left our swimsuits in Quito (nobody told us you could swim, but yes, still dumb) and we didn't want to get more clothes wet. So we sat there and watched the rest of the group go into the water. Since Quito is in the middle of Ecuador a lot of people don't know to swim, so all the women were swimming (well, floating) with life vests. Suddenly we hear splashing noises and notice that the maid's life vest somehow turned sideways and she was trying her hardest to keep her head out of the water (i.e. not drown) while the daughter looked on about a foot away. Victor called to his brother who was in the water to help the maid out as we all started to crack up at the ridiculous situation. Again, the daughter kept watching the maid struggle from a foot away until Victor's brother turned the maid on her back. Hilarious (the daughter, not the maid, we are not bastards). Although its pretty damn hard to drown with a life vest on but the maid was doing a good job.
At night we went fishing for pirañas, but caught nothing and headed home, where as usual ate a delicious meal. During dinner we found a big frog with a yellow stripe down its back. But we were far more surprised when Victor left to wonder along the shore of the lake, and suddenly brought back a baby caiman with a bit of a triumphant smile. This was pretty incredible (also kind of cruel, yes) especially since the mother was right there too. So we looked at the caiman and touched it (quite cold and its skin was rough but very pretty), while trying not to scare it, which was accomplished by the women's screams ("Que increible!" and camera flashes). Soon therefter Victor went looking for the mother and returned the baby. The last day we woke up at 5:30 to go birdwatching. We saw numerous birds obviously, but the coolest was the Tucan, which has an awesome song and its quite a sight as well (again, pictures due for late June). We then went to the cabins, hung out, and rode the boat upriver again. Before riding the bus back, the matriarch made us see pictures from her camera because she said she got lucky and captured the dolphins (which is really difficult, she had a nice picture). But then in her verbal diarrhea, and amidst her daughter cries ("Que bonito!") she started making mindless talk and asked us if we thought it was a caiman. Not quite the same. Enough of these people! Let´s go to Quito!... Again

I know you´re skeptical about the term Ecuadorian Amazon. Prior to this trip, I too thought that the Amazon was in Brazil. Turns out half of the Amazon basin is in Brazil, and the other half is shared by Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Venezuela. Who knew.

We booked our trip –- four days, three nights -- in Quito through a company called Neotropic Turis; it was a bit more expensive than the others, but it advertised its eco-friendliness. Among other things, this means that they didn´t cut down trees in the jungle to build their camp and they don´t do their laundry there. We felt a little guilty about being tourists in the jungle (though we told ourselves that some amount of tourism is keeping it from being used for more consumptive purposes), so we happily paid an eco-premium.

We visited a part of the jungle called the Cuyabeno Reserve. All tours of the Reserve leave from the town of Lago Agrio, 170 miles east of Quito. One of our guidebooks describes some jungle frontier town as a “dusty oil town” -– I think this actually referred to a different town, and while Lago Agrio is not particularly dusty (too humid), if you picture it as a dusty oil town you get the right idea. Lago Agrio means Sour Lake in Spanish; it’s named after the original Texas headquarters of Texaco. The town´s official name is actually Nueva Loja, but even the bus schedules say Lago Agrio.

There are two ways to get to Lago Agrio from Quito -– bus (7-8 hours) or plane (1/2 hour). We decided on the bus. Maybe this sounds like a waste of a day, but I like long bus rides in foreign countries. It´s a good way to see more. Plus it was $52 cheaper than the plane.

We arrived at the bus station in the morning ahead of time, so we took the opportunity to brush our teeth by a trash can. (We´d run out of bottled water the night before and had only just bought some more). A few minutes later I went look around. I returned to find Nick being interrogated by two uniformed armed men. Oh no, I thought, what if it´s a crime Ecuador to brush your teeth at a trash can? I was sure we were going to be carted off to jail. Actually the armed men were employees/security guards of the bus company (many businesses in Ecuador have their own armed security guards), and they were just trying to figure out what bus Nick was supposed to be on. The bus to Lago Agrio had been cancelled. The official reason was mechanical problems, but as there was no one else in line for a refund, we deduced that it was because we were the only people on it.

We stood around fretting for a few minutes (was it too late to catch a flight? would we have to take the sketchy night bus?), until one of the security guards told us there was another bus to Lago Agrio leaving from the main station. He hailed us a taxi and gave the driver instructions to take us to that bus. As we arrived, the bus was pulling out, but our driver shouted at it and they found us two seats together.

I spent most of the bus ride looking out the window and paying half attention to the movies being shown (first, an awful American action film called Half Past Dead that involved Russian thugs, the FBI, and prison riots –-possibly a big hit in Ecuador? -- and then Ocean´s Eleven, dubbed in Spanish). It was a pretty drive through a green, mountainous region with a river and several waterfalls. Up to this point, we hadn´t planned how we were going to get back to Quito, but we decided the number of narrow cliff passes, lack of guardrails, and daredevil passing habits of Ecuadorian drivers ruled out a nighttime return on the bus. We stopped once, at lunchtime –- the local specialty was trout any way you want it, but we´d brought our own PBJs, assembled after a trip to an amazingly nice Ecuadorian grocery store called the SuperMaxi. Seriously, if SuperMaxi decided to expand operations to America, I would shop there. They might be wise to change their name though.

We got to Lago Agrio, a town of 34,000 people, with the whole night before us. There is nothing –- nothing –- to see or do in Lago Agrio, so we stuck to our hotel´s restaurant for dinner (name: D´Mario Hotel Pizza Restaurant) and went to bed early.

Our guide was supposed to pick us up the next morning at 7. Suffice it to say that no one showed up until 10, after I called the office in Quito to find out what was going on. (The phone cabin store where I made the call was two businesses in one –- telecommunications provider and underwear vendor. So the next time you´re in Lago Agrio and you need both to make a call and buy underwear, you should definitely save time and go to this place). There had been a miscommunication between the Quito office and the local operation, so they arranged for us to take a truck-taxi for the approximately two hour ride from Lago Agrio to the Cuyabeno river.

The motorized-canoe ride down the river was incredible. It was just like the jungle boat ride at Disneyland -– or at least that´s the closest thing either of us had experienced before. The river was maybe 25 feet at its narrowest, 50 at the widest, and smooth. It was surrounded by the jungle on both sides; at the narrow parts of the river, the jungle formed a canopy over us. I´ll post pictures of it, but they won´t be any good. First, the visual experience was all in the details –- colourful butterflies, snarled roots, flowers, mosses, nests, vines, jumping fish. Then there was the soundtrack –- a constant buzz of insects and calls of birds, and occasionally what we thought might have been monkey chatter. The smell was earthy and sweet. Because the boat was moving fast, we kept getting pelted by large flying insects.  It really stung when they hit our faces.  Well, sometimes you´re the windshield, sometimes you´re the bug...

It was surprisingly sunny during our boatride. We had been led to expect constant rain, but it never once rained during the day while we were in the jungle (disappointing -– we kind of wanted to see rain in the rainforest). It was a good thing though that we were resigned to the idea of being wet for four days straight, because everything dry turns damp in the jungle. Even when it doesn´t rain, the humidity hovers around 99 percent.

We arrived at the camp after a couple hours on the river. We met our guide, Marcelo, who is 24 years old and has a wife and a month-old baby in Quito. He had been in the jungle for the last fifteen days and was looking forward to getting back to Quito after another five. Later we found out that his fifteen days comprised his entire tenure as a Cuyabeno guide, but he such a sweet guy that we couldn’t be irritated with any lack of expertise. Marcelo learned English in college, and while his English is definitely better than my Spanish, at least as far as jungle vocabulary is concerned, I fear we lost much in translation. On our first afternoon there, I was trying to figure out how many times we had crossed the Equator during our journey from Quito to the jungle. “Marcelo, are we north or south of the Equator here?” I asked. “We are north,” he replied.  He paused and added, “Northeast.”

We settled into our cabana, which had a palm roof, open sides, two beds with mosquito nets, and a bathroom with flush toilet and hot shower -- not bad digs for the jungle -– and headed up to the lodge for some hammock time. There we met the only two other tourists at the camp, which at peak holds 50 guests. Ian and Shannon are New Zealanders who’ve been living in London for years. He’s an economist; she’s an investment banker. They were at the start of an eight month vacation. We were glad to have them there –- they were unfailingly pleasant, and they also provided most of the amusement.

Our campground was located off a large lagoon; each night around sunset, we took the canoe out to the middle and went for a swim. The lagoon is a popular spot for the jungle tours, so we’d usually see another canoe or two of tourists. It was shallow enough in most places to stand on the bottom, and it had weirdly abrupt cold and warm pockets. Once in a while you´d feel something brush you.  Piranhas, most likely. Piranhas don´t attack people unless they are starving, which only happens during the dry months, so we were okay.

Or, perhaps I should say that piranhas do not attack people unless they are starving or you provoke them. When we first met Ian, he had a scab on the middle of his bottom lip and his t-shirt was spattered with what appeared to be blood. The injury, we learned, was a piranha bite. The group had gone piranha fishing a couple days earlier, and Ian was put in charge of releasing all the piranhas that were too small to keep. A little girl caught a small one; she gave it to Ian to remove the hook. Ian decided to give it a quick kiss before he tossed it back; the piranha decided to take a quick bite of Ian’s lip.

I should mention here that in addition to their day jobs, Ian is a sketch artist and Shannon is an amateur videographer. They are putting together a video of their travel adventures, which they intend to shop around when they get back to London. The series is called the Traveling Artist; it will feature Ian and his sketchbook in various exotic locations. If this sounds boring, you have to understand that Ian pictures himself the new Crocodile Hunter with an artistic Kiwi twist.

Shannon did not catch Ian´s piranha bite on film, but the incident alerted them to the entertainment potential of piranha infested waters. A couple days later, Ian obtained a slab of raw meat from the lodge kitchen, tied it to a string, tied the other end of the string to his leg, and went for a swim. This time Shannon was ready with the camera, though Ian escaped unscathed. The guides had taken him to an area where they thought there would be few piranhas, but you never know. For dramatic effect, they then took the meat to a piranha-heavy area, dangled it in the water, and showed the bite marks on tape.

After the evening swim, we gathered in the lodge for dinner. The cook, Celia, has perfected the art of cooking for up to fifty people without electricity. With only the four of us plus staff, it must have been like vacation for her. The food was always good, simple and healthy, and we felt comfortable eating her ceviche.

After dinner, we returned to our cabana for bed. It was only 9 o’clock, but there isn´t a lot of nightlife in the jungle. When we stepped into the cabana with our flashlights, several dark things scurried across the floor. Investigation revealed these to be humongous jungle cockroaches. We discovered at least one source of their attraction -- lemonade glasses that we had stupidly left out on the bedside table. The roaches were crawling all over them. I was ready to run back to the lodge and spend the night in the hammocks, but Nick bravely picked up the glasses and hurried them outside. The obvious hazard disposed of, I lifted up the mosquito net and climbed into bed. I shined the flashlight around the edges, hoping to reassure myself that what my mom said about your bed being a safe-zone from bugs was true. That’s when I saw the huge roach clinging to the bottom of the mosquito net. I shrieked (duh). It started climbing up the net. And then, somehow, it was ON OUR BED. I was unable to summon the courage to do anything other than continue to direct my flashlight at it. It ran all the way across the bed before miraculously falling off the edge. I don’t think I need to tell you that we slept uneasily.

The next morning we went for a hike in the jungle with Marcelo and Julio, our native guide, who has lived in the Cuyabeno his whole life and knows everything about it.  Julio didn’t speak any English, but I could understand him fairly well, and Marcelo could translate a lot of the jungle vocab.  Julio led us along a very muddy path (they had provided us with rubber boots), pointing out notable flora and fauna and occassionally whacking at something with his machete.  It seemed like we saw one of everything –- one frog, one spider, one snake, one of each kind of bird, one monkey (though later we saw many more).  Oh, and we saw a whole stream of ants crawling up a tree.  Julio suggested that we might have a few for a snack -– apparently they taste like lemon, but I suppose we´ll never know for sure.

On the way back to our cabana to rest, we noticed Ian in his “traveling artist” uniform, a long-sleeved sweater with broad black and white stripes.  This meant they were filming.  We were lucky enough to overhear the following scene from our cabana (but sadly missed the visual).  Ian: “This is the life! Palm roof. No electricity. A mosquito net to keep the mozzies out. Think I’ll grab my sketchbook and head down to the lagoon.”  Then he repeated this monologue fifteen times -- or, almost repeated it fifteen times.  Each time he would flub a different line. Shannon, a woman of infinite patience, never showed any annoyance. “That one was really good babe, really good,” she’d say. “One more for good measure.”

If you´re not familiar with the term “mozzies,” you are not alone.  Nick first heard “the mozzies” as “them Aussies” and thought it a weak attempt at Down Under humor.  Later on we heard Shannon say she’d just been bitten by a mozzie; there being no Australians around, the ambiguity was resolved.

That night, we went piranha fishing.  The piranhas have learned to swipe the bait from the hook without getting hooked themselves.  I had to replace my bait ten times.  Scratch that -- the bait being raw meat, Julio had to replace my bait ten times.  I didn´t catch any piranhas, which I can´t say disappointed me terribly.

The next morning, we got up at 6:30 to go birdwatching with Marcelo in the canoe.  We hardly felt the need to go out looking for birds as we had a lively bunch of them in the tree right outside our cabana.  They were black and yellow birds called caciques, and they make a racket like I´ve never heard before.  They imitate the calls of other birds (the jungle´s mockingbird, I guess), but they also make a sound that sounds exactly like a video game machine gun.  At any rate, it was not very hard to get up at that hour, because our caciques were already at it.  We saw a lot of other birds on our trip, which I´m going to list, not because all the names will mean much to you, not that they mean much to me either, but if I become a more experienced birder someday I´ll want to remember.  We saw a woodpecker, some pigeons, some vultures, yellow-rumped caciques, a striated heron, a white-winged swallow, a tirano, crested-head hoatzins (look like a turkey), russet backed oropendolas (hang from trees in nests that look like socks; make a sound like water dripping from the bathtub faucet), lots of anis (make a sound like water boiling), some ringed kingfishers, a black capped donocobius, a red capped cardinal, a screaming pika, a quetzal, and a tucan. 

On our last night in the jungle, Marcelo offered to take us on a night walk.  The main attraction of the night walk being insects, we decided against it (plenty of those in our cabana, thanks).  We did go along for the caiman spotting trip later in the motorized canoe.  We took our flashlights, and we saw seven caimans.  Or rather, we saw seven pairs of orange eyes glowing in the dark.

On Monday morning, we took the boat back up the river.  After a very dusty and rattly bus ride back to Lago Agrio, we luckily found seats on the plane to Quito, saving us from the equally unappealing options of taking the night bus back to Quito or another night in Lago Agrio.

well, had my fuckin camera stolen or lost it....not sure which, and no i wasnt drunk or passed out.    Anyway, obviously still bitter about it. Took an overnight bus from quito to lago leaving quito at 10....bus ride was all downhill, couldnt sleep cuz I kept sliding down in my seat, got into lago about 4 in the morning and was able to stay on the bus and sleep til 715.  Went to the hotel to leave my stuff, grabbed some breakfast, walked around.   Not a whole lot to Lago, one main street with a lot of clothe shops and street food.  Met up with the rest of my jungle adventure group (Rainforestur) and headed out around 11.  A 3 hour bumpy ride later we arrived at a bridge, ate lunch, and took another 3 hour motorized canoe into the deep, dense animal infested jungle. 

The camp was a decent spot with mosquito netted tents for each person, occasional showers depending on rainfall, and the eating area.  A lot of crazy bugs and insects at night, thats for dam sure.  Our guide Lenny was an interesting fellow, knowledgeable.  A couple long hikes, bathing in the river, soccer with the local children, fishing for pirahna, eating in our boat, elias n josè, hanging with the others, monkey, caiman, bird, lizard, spider sightings, bottles of rum, devil bug worshipers, shaman encounters and blessings, starry nights and early mornings later I emerged.....a goood trip in all. Hung out in Lago long enough to get some food and watch the Colombian patria festival taking part in Ecuador`s town of Lago before catching another overnight bus back to Quito.

The adventure began on the beach of the River Napo near the Jatun Sacha station…. At eight in the morning… In a “canoa” with a sea faring Ecuadorian named Jonas. The boat trip lasted approximately 6 hours with a quick luncheon break in Coca, which was delightful.

Our next destination…. Limoncocha…. A small village, which interestingly was previously a missionary town. The hostel where we stayed was in fact the missionary building… amazing. After a scrumptious dinner of chicken (beans for the vegetarians) we embarked on our most dangerous expedition yet…. Late night cayman watching on the lake of Limoncocha, truly terrifying…

All of us sitting in the small canoa with a guia scanning the lake with a torch on the look out for red dots, which are…. Cayman eyes… once again… amazement…

Our first encounter with a cayman was with a small child of a caymen…yes. La guia bravely plunged his hand into the still dark waters and then he revealed unto us a small baby cayman. The cayman was missing a leg because of the mean piranhas who also inhabit the lake who decided to have a nibble one day. The cayman, named Billy Bob, was then passed around the group for photo opportunities. I being a true animal lover would not hold the pobrecito just for a photograph, I am too loving, like Jesus…

Following our encounter with Billy Bob we had muchos suerte. We saw 5 cayman  2 of which were of average size, approximately 5 foot, who were less than three metres from our small wooden canoe, believe me when I say my heart was beating as fast as a drum and bass track in a bar in the amazon rainforest. The other 2 cayman were more vast in size and came to wish us a Buenos noches.

In the hostel during the night, 3 rats were spotted, thrilling.

The morning of Limoncocha proceeded with a 5am start. We returned to the lake to see the beautiful dawn and Katie throwing up. We saw another cayman, who once again showed the courtesy not to eat me. We went searching for piranhas but sadly none were banging about in their usual hang outs so we had to make do with “here’s one I caught earlier” which sadly was practically dead… RIP baby RIP.

After our final experience on the lake we started to make the journey to Coca, one and a half hours of waiting for transport later we manage to hitch a ride on a pick up truck, some of us sat in the back… some in the comfort of the front… those sitting in the comfort also considerately ate all my biscuits… I am forever in your debt… you know who you are, don’t be shy.

After three hours of driving we arrive in Coca, I race to the swimming pool like a small excited child on ecstasy. After approximately 5 minutes enjoying the cool waters beneath the blazing sun the unexpected happened… it rained… in the rain forest… how absurd. Swimming was terminated… tear.

In the evening we munched in a delightful Italian pizzeria, after which, myself, Kate, Audrey and Ben ventured into the unknown… a karaoke bar. The first few songs we were finding our feet, but when we got the jist we rocked that joint. A very kind Ecuadorian man insisted on blowing us kisses and miming to me that he liked my breasts, life could not possibly get any better than this… surely not.