The jungle book

I feel extremely privileged to have experienced an Amazonian encounter. We were in a very pristine part of the jungle, for a real authentic look close up.

The trip from Quito was a fairly long one but not extremely arduous. It was a half hour flight from Quito over the Andes mountain range to Coca, a small town on the edge of the jungle. Our flight was full with a mixture of tourists and oil workers going back after a break. There are a few oil fields around this area which is a shame as they have cut into the amazon to extract the oil but this is not a political commentary or about the dangers facing the amazon, just of our experience.

From Coca we took a canoe down the Napa river for approx 2 hours. This canoe sat about 15 people, had a canopy over the top and a powerful motor driven by a very skilled boatman. The river is very wide but shallow in a lot of places so he had to zig zag from side to side to find the channels and avoid the large floating logs and other  floatsum bobbing in the water. The sides of the river where mainly full of trees clinging to the sides of steep banks with the occasional clearing revealing a thatched hut or lean-to or a busy oil port. Eventually we arrived at the landing site for Sacha Lodge. From here we had a half hour trek through the jungle over a boardwalk. We had to be careful where we stepped as half of the wood was rotten and there were big holes and missing boards in places. The jungle seemed very quiet with just a few brilliant iridescent large blue butterflies flapping across the track and back into the trees. There was also a handful of monkeys swinging by and a couple of exotic looking birds. 

At the end of the trek was a boathouse with another smaller canoe, this one with just a wooden paddle waiting to take us on a half hour trip across the black water lake of Pilchicocha.

This lake is called a Blackwater lake due to its very dark colour caused by the staining of the tannins from the leaves dropped into it. It's like a large bowl of tea. It is also the home to electric eels, piranha fish, giant otters, caimans, turtles and an assortment of frogs to name just a few.

We finally arrived at our destination and were ushered into the building that served as 

The breakfast and lunch dining area for a briefing. This was a large open air building with a very high thatched roof built over the edge of the lake. Underneath swum caimans, turtles, otters(not that we saw any this time) and clinging onto the wooden stilts were tiny bats sheltering from the hot sun. At the end of the building was the swimming pool. It was part of the lake with a floating dock and a mesh that dropped down to isolate it so that no nasties could get in, or so we thought. We had a lovely swim in it the next day, the water was so warm but refreshing, feeling safe in the knowledge that nothing would get us. It wasn't until we went piranha fishing with our guide that we found out that in fact the mesh wasn't small enough to keep out the piranha so they were also happily swimming about in our pool. Thank god I didn't know that at the time. It seems they have had a bad wrap tho as they are not as nearly fearsome as they have been made out to be. Contrary to popular belief they do not attack people or strip them to the bone. It's true they do have very sharp teeth but that is mostly for cracking the nuts that fall into the water from the trees above. I think barracuda look far more fearsome than these little fish. We didn't catch any when we went fishing, they were far to clever but they did have a nice feed. Our native guide caught two so we could at least see what they looked like. They were white bellied piranha as opposed to red bellied which are the ones who have the bad reputation.

 

Our adventures were to start right away, we were only given a short rest before our first jungle excursion. It was very hot and humid, like the Gold Coast on its worst summer day, but much like we had expected it to be. Anyway, lucky for us our first trip was sitting in the canoe and paddled out to the lake then into a narrow estuary where the jungle was very dense and sometimes hard going. We needed the machete at one point to cut thru a fallen tree that completely blocked the waterway. It must have just happened as they use this estuary every day. We saw the nose of a giant otter but as soon as he saw us he took off in the other direction, bit of a shame as that was the only sighting we had of one. We also saw a big tribe of Capuchin monkeys, our guide estimated the group to be over two hundred. They were swinging in the branches above us and running up the trunks of the trees. I think they took exception at our presence as a couple were behaving in a very aggressive way towards us, baring their sharp little teeth and jumping up and down on the branches above trying to break them on us, charming welcome. We also saw a heap of squirrel monkeys that day too.

We just had a small group of six, an older couple from the UK and two girls from Melbourne in their early 50s so it was a nice intimate group. We decided we were all too tired to do the night walk so after dinner we all went back to our cabins to crash.

The cabins were wonderful. The whole lodge was built on stilts as it was mostly mud beneath us so there were walkways everywhere, branching off to the various cabins.  Ours was one of the first so we didn't have too far to walk. There were two cabins together but each one had its own walkway to get to the front door. There are no locks, just a bolt either side to close the door. Once inside it was huge, big lounge/ bedroom which opened up onto a large covered deck with two hammocks either side. The bathroom ran the length of the cabin with the shower at the end and large window, floor to ceiling looking straight out into the forest. There was no glass in any of the windows, just a fine mesh so there was not much between you and the jungle. There were large mesh windows in the bedroom going out to the balcony too, you woke up to the sounds of the forest waking up. Surprisingly there weren't too many insects at night but you had to make sure you didn't leave any of your doors open. One night we were walking back when we saw a tarantula slowly walking along the broad walk. He was very shy as he didn't like the torch being shone on him and tried to duck away. Not as quick as I tried to duck away I must admit.

Over the next two days we went hiking thru the jungle, paddling in the canoes, climbed up a 38 metre kapok tree and a 40 metre skywalk trying to spot as much wildlife as possible. They had just built a new set of stairs to climb the kapok tree which had only been open for a week. It was an impressive metal construction with 199 stairs. Up until then was a wooden structure that I am sure would never pass any health and safety inspection and we were all very pleased we didn't come a week earlier. The funniest thing happened, our guide was so knowledgeable in all things flora and fauna.  When he heard the cry of a bird he could identify it instantly.  The call tone on my messages in the phone is a magpie and we must have got signal when we reached the top of the tree so a message came through loud and clear.  It stunned our guide and he had a look of such confusion, what is that bird??  I causally said "Australian magpie".

Our days started with a 5am wake call, 5.30am breakfast and first excursion was by 6am. That lasted until lunch then there was a break as the animals all settled down in the heat of the day then another excursion before dinner then the night excursion. In this time we saw several different groups of monkeys (black tamarind, squirrel and capuchin) jumping through the trees from above which was a different perspective, toucans, vultures, hummingbirds, kites, tarantulas, frogs (heard the poison dart frog), caimans, bats and a multitude of different bugs, birds and reptiles that I never made a note of.  It was a surprisingly peaceful place despite what it may Sound like and on a rare moment when we got time off it was the most relaxing thing to swing gently on the hammock and listen to the crickets and other bush noise while trying not to think that a giant tarantula may be creeping around below you. The morning we left it was pouring rain, had started in the middle of the night and continued on so we were handed out ponchos and were allowed to wear the boots they gave us for our bush walks until we had got back to the napa river after our half hour canoe ride across the lake and trek back thru the jungle. It wasn't bad enough to be miserable, more refreshing and a nice way to finish off our visit to the rain forest they call the Amazon jungle.