It took the best part of a day to get to our accommodation in the reserve. First I had to take an overnight bus from Quito to Lago Agrio, where I met up with the rest of the group. A private minibus then took us to the end of the road in Cuyabeno, and finally we had a two hour ride down the river to the lodge in a motorised canoe. We stayed at Jamu Lodge, which is one of a handful of lodges in the reserve. There were twelve of us in total, including people from the USA, France, Germany, Malta, as well as me from the UK. Half of us (including myself) stayed for five days, and the rest stayed for only four days. There's a group photo below.
We saw our first wildlife even before we arrived at the lodge. We saw a couple of different types of monkey (here and here), as well as a stinky turkey (or hoatzin to be more scientifically accurate). Time and time again our guide, Rodrigo, or our motorboat driver would spot animals in the jungle that the rest of us would never have noticed - it was pretty amazing. The exception to this was the stinky turkey, which was quite difficult to miss.
We arrived at the lodge in the late afternoon, and after a short break to settle in, we set off in the canoe again to the Laguna Grande, for a swim and to see the sunset, which was pretty impressive, as you can see here and below.
It was dark when we left the lake to return to the lodge, which made it an even better time to see wildlife, because it's estimated that around 70% of species in the Amazon rainforest are nocturnal. Luckily for us, a caiman came right up next to the boat, and we got a great view of it.
When we returned to the lodge, we realised that we were most definitely not alone there. We had quite a few visitors, including hundreds of moths circulating around any light sources, a large gold-coloured cockroach, as well as this little chap. The noise from the creatures in the jungle, particularly at night, was pretty incredible - it was probably about as noisy as a busy road, but strangely it didn't stop any of us from sleeping.
On the morning of the second day we went for a hike in the jungle, and we saw a few more interesting jungle species, including a walking palm tree (socratea exorrhiza) and a leaf frog. It was a pretty wet and muddy hike, as you can see here, and I ended up with both wellies full of water, as did just about everybody else. One thing I learnt is that once something gets wet in the jungle, it tends to stay wet, because there's so much moisture in the air. Most of my clothes got wet on the initial canoe trip to the lodge, so I ended up wearing wet clothes pretty much for the whole five days.
In the afternoon we went piranha fishing, and by a considerable fluke I managed to catch the only piranha that was big enough to be worth eating. And here is the same fish on a plate a few hours later. Because I caught the fish, everyone felt they had to ask my permission to try a bit of it, which I found quite amusing. After the piranha fishing we returned to the Laguna Grande for another swim, and this time I have proof that I actually went in. We then went for a night canoe trip to look for a bit more wildlife, and we managed to see an Amazon tree boa.
Day three was our opportunity to see how the indigenous Siona people live. On our way to the village we spotted a pink river dolphin (we saw quite a few of these, but this was the only time I managed to catch one on camera). Firstly we had an audience with the village's shaman (here's a photo of me with him), who told us a bit about the role of a shaman and answered any questions that we had. He then asked for a volunteer for a demonstration of a medicinal plant that's meant to be good for the circulation. Erin volunteered, but she ended up regretting it, because the shaman beat her back for a couple of minutes with a branch of this plant, and she ended up with a horrible-looking rash that still hadn't gone away by the end of the trip.
We then went to an isolated house about twenty minutes from the village, where we learnt how the Siona make a type of bread called casabe, which is made from a root vegetable called yuca (or cassava). We went through the whole process, starting with digging the yuca out of the ground, peeling and then grating it, drying it, sieving the dried yuca, and finally cooking it and eating it, and amazingly it actually did taste very good. Apparently this bread will keep for several months without any preservatives, and it will remain as good to eat as it was the day it was made.
This was also the day we saw an anaconda, which is a pretty rare sighting. It was just a few metres from our boat, and I managed to get some great shots of it, one of which you can see below.
In the evening we went for a night hike in the jungle, and we saw a few more fairly horrifying creatures, including a couple of types of large spider (here and here), and a venomous snake whose name I can't remember. According to Rodrigo, if we were bitten by this snake, we'd have about two to three hours left to live, unless we could get medical help in time, which is pretty unlikely this deep in the rainforest.
On day four, half of the group went home, and the rest of us went on an all-day canoe paddling trip, which was a great opportunity to see our surroundings without the noise of a motorised canoe. We saw more wildlife, including a woodpecker, and paddled to a laguna which had an interesting ecosystem of trees growing in the lake. Here we did a bit more piranha fishing, but I had no luck this time. We went ashore for lunch, and then we went for a short walk in an area of completely unspoilt rainforest, which Rodrigo told us that only his company go to. We spotted this scorpion there. We also encountered an army of giant ants, which caused problems for those of us that had left our wellies at the lodge. Here you can see Thomas having a few problems with them. The ant bite situation got so bad that we ended up running back to the canoes. An ant bit me on the foot at this point, and it hung on so firmly that I had trouble removing it. Rodrigo offered to help, but when he saw how huge its pincers were, rather than removing it, he started showing it off to the rest of the group while it was still attached to my foot, which was very kind of him!
And that's pretty much all I have to report, because the following morning the remaining six of us left the lodge for the long journey back to Quito. All in all it was a great five days, a lot of fun, and definitely another highlight of my trip so far.
This also brings an end to my time in Ecuador, even though there are so many places that I haven't had time to see (to name just a few: Cotopaxi, Otavalo, Mindo, the Quilotoa Loop, the Pacific coast, and the Galápagos Islands). I guess that means I'll have to come back one day.
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