The Amazon

Luck was on our side once again! I must say that we have not suffered one little bit by organizing our trip ourselves. Sometimes the logistics have worked out so smoothly for us we have been amazed!

A great example of this was our Amazon Adventure. We arrived in Quito, Ecuador by bus at about 1:00 pm on Boxing Day. We knew that most Amazon trips left from Quito but we knew that they were very expensive (about $1200 US per person for 4 days) and we knew that it would be difficult to find something last minute over the busy Christmas break.

We were all sitting in a little park trying to get our bearings with a map to find Amazon outfitters in the area. We had not been there for more than 10 minutes when a nice lady approached us with perfect English asking if we needed directions. I told her that we were looking for some agents in the area and she quickly replied with a smile, "oh, I might be able to help you, I own a travel agency." Trusting our gut and knowing that these coincidences have continually worked for us, we followed her to her shop.

She was like an angel! She started making phone calls and within a couple of hours she had a van and driver lined up to take us that night to Lago Agrio, an 8 hour drive away. Our Amazon adventure was going to start at 9:00 am the very next day. She knew the owner of a lodge and they custom designed a 6 day trip for us. We were with 3 other travellers for the first 4 days and then the last 2 days we had our guide and driver all to ourselves.

It was an amazing trip and a perfect grand finale to Todd, Cleo, and Ben's time with us. The accommodation was great, the food was great (except for the fancy bone-shaped breakfast wieners), and our guide and our driver were both nothing short of exceptional. We couldn't have asked for better quality or better timing and it worked out to less than $350 per person for 6 action packed days!

The Amazon has 66% of the world's fresh water, a rainforest of unique beauty and diversity of both plant and animal life. We saw monkeys (capuchin, wooly, spider, and squirrel), sloths, fresh water dolphins (pink and grey), tree snakes, red snakes, anacondas, caiman (alligators), toucans, parrots, paiche fish (measuring over 3 meters long), pencil fish, bats (long nosed, flat nosed and fishing bats), king fishers, falcons, stinky turkeys, owls, ospreys, parakeets, pelicans, cranes, bright blue butterflies, vultures, king vultures, spiders (golden silk, wolf), snake birds, toads, crystal frogs, mackaws, beetles, ants (army, leaf cutter, giant), centipedes, turtles...... It was amazing.

We trekked into the primary rainforest to learn about medicinal plants and all sorts of other interesting flora and fauna.

We also spent a lot of time in a swimming hole to cool off from the heat and to play in the goopy mud.

Most evenings we were on the river scouting for nocturnal wildlife. We were breathless as our guide's flashlight would catch the orange reflection of a caiman's eyes. Our river boat would get so close to the creatures .... we were all with wide eyes ourselves. We saw both black caiman and speckled caiman. The black ones can get up to 6 meters long. I think the biggest one we saw was about 5 meters in length.

Our guide Fabricio could see things in the trees and in the water that we would never pick out, we were constantly impressed and amazed at his eyesight, how he identified hundreds of different species and then knew all kinds of interesting facts about them. His English was great (self-taught) and we were in awe of his maturity and wisdom and knowledge since he was only 22 years old and had only been guiding for 2 years. His goal is to one day be an environmental engineer and work advising the numerous oil companies in Ecuador on environmental stewardship and protection of the Amazon. He is so smart, we hope all his dreams come true.

One day we spent down river at the Tarapuy Siona Community where we learned about their culture and traditions and we participated in making bread out of yucca. Then we went further downstream to visit a Quichua community where we met an authentic village Shaman. Because this day totally aligned with some of Levi's grade 5 Social Studies curriculum, he covers more detail about this part of our Amazon Adventure in his own blog, check it out.

The river ride to get to these communities was rich with culture as well. I loved passing the women along the shore who were doing their laundry, almost always accompanied by at least one naked toddler running around.

A real highlight for us was when we went 4 hours further downstream in the river boat to spend the night at a different jungle lodge. It was from here that we had a 5:00 am early dark and dusky start to the day in search of the mysterious fresh water dolphins. This was a dream for Cleo to see dolphins and we were so lucky to stop the boat in a fresh water cove and watch both pink and grey dolphins swimming around us. Our 4 hour boat ride back to our original jungle lodge was in pouring rain but we were all still smiling.

Our Amazon trip was over on New Years Day. We reflected on our favourite parts of the excursion:

• Our skilled river boat driver -- ramming the boat into freshly fallen trees to break off branches so we could pass through, we also had some river passages where we had to duck down in the boat so that we could get through overhanging branches of fallen trees. And then of course, our favourite.... when the driver would speed up and take a run at a fallen tree in the river, lifting the motor out of the water at the last second and the boat would coast across the top of the tree out of the water. It was quite a ride! 

• Our jungle lodge neighbour who was stomping and making a great amount of noise in the middle of the night having met a snake in her bathroom when she got up to pee.
• Our guide removing 2 slivers from Ben's foot. I offered him my tweezers but he went into the jungle instead and got a sharp plant thorn to do it and it worked perfectly!
• Swimming and sliding in the inlet until dusk with the mud and slippery goop (and the mysterious rash that the kids got that we think was from the mud).
• Watching the guides remove about 40 spurs from a European traveller's foot after he stepped on a spiny palm bark branch in the swimming hole. It took 3 evenings to get them all out. It was painful to watch. We bought him beer.
• Quinn discovering a tic embedded in her calf. We learned how to first apply butter to it and then used a lighter to help pry it out intact.
• Going on a land hike and getting seriously stuck in mud up to the top of our calves. Good thing we had rubber boots to wear! We left understanding how quicksand works.

• Watching another groups guide handle the anaconda on the shore and then getting bit by the snake with the snake leaving a tooth in the fleshy part of the guide's thumb.
• We laughed about the fact that we were asked to wear our lifejackets when we first got into our boat on the first day of our trip and then again 5 minutes before we arrived back at the port at the end of the trip.
•  The horrible stench of our wet clothes.
• And, one of my favourite memories will be a little girl named Melody. Melody was one of the lodge workers children, about 4 years old. Greg started playing with her, showing her how to spin a top, playing cards, drawing games on the ipad..... We would wake up in the morning and the first thing we would see was Melody standing at the bottom of our stilted bungalow stairs, just patiently waiting for Greg to get up so that they could play. She then warmed up to all the kids and was pretty sad on the day we were leaving.

I don't ever want to forget the sounds of the Amazon jungle when waking up.