I guess I´m going soft... I decided to take the early morning flight to Coca, the edge of the Amazon. Can you blame me though when the alternative was a 10 hour bus ride and the flight only cost $45? I think not... I arrived bleary-eyed into Coca and was promptly dropped off at a hotel to await the other souls heading into the jungle with myself. A couple hours passed and I was beginning to get a little grumpy when my companions finally arrived. Travelling into the jungle with me would be Ryan and Kate (an early 30´s couple from [View Full Entry]

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Destination two on the world tour is Ecuador. We arrived in Quito from Mexico City, via a short stopover in Panama City and spent the first night in the old town of Quito. Quito is the second highest capital in the world at nearly 3,000m (that's 3 times the height of Ben Nevis) so it is cold here at night and breathing is a little harder than normal. The old city is situated on the hillside with cobbled streets, plazas, cathedrals etc. The next day we headed back to Quito airport to embark on our tour of the Ecuadorian Amazon. The [View Full Entry]

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Theres a reason these places are called Rainforests More an experience than a photographic subject, the rain and the animals having little respect for us tourists. Leaf-cutter ants chew off pieces of the leaves of trees and carry them, single file, to their underground nest, where the leaves stored in warm humid conditions will develop a fungus growth. This fungus is food for the ants. Stepping over a procession of leaf-cutter ants while walking through the Amazon rainforest in the pouring rain is one of those priceless experiences that so typifies this part of the world. The Amazon is a wet [View Full Entry]

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Arriving in South America was an instant wake up to all our senses as we were immersed in a different culture once again. For the first few days we found our feet and our breath in Quito which stands at a dizzy 2850m above sea level. We explored the colonial old town and started to tune in our ears to the local lingo, Sima was putting her GCSE Spanish gained from evening classes to good use. In Quito we meet up with our fellow expedition members (EMs) joining us on the Global Vision International (GVI) rainforest conservation project, in total there [View Full Entry]

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Teleportation I sit perched on the edge of the boat's bow with my bare feet dangling in the water. This isn't one of the long, wooden river canoes, but the fiberglass outboard motor boat we had when I was a kid. Rusty orange. Thirty-five horsepower. This isn't even the Napo River. It's a lake somewhere in Oklahoma. I am sitting at the very front of the bow - just on the port side where the two halves of the hull come together at a point. I look out at the expanse of the lake and try to identify it. Definitely not [View Full Entry]

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From Quito to Rio Napa We arrived finally in Ecuador after flying forever from NZ with a v. brief stopover in Santiago. Quito, I could take or leave to be honest. Its not the nicest place in the world, and the Old Town, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was nice enough, but a bit, ummm, grotty really. There were some beautiful churches, covered with gold leaf on this inside, and museums, and we went to the Vivarium (snake house) which was pretty cool. But there is definatey an undercurrent of unsafe in Quito and we met people who´d been [View Full Entry]

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Opprørerne i Bolivia hindret oss tidligere å komme inn i Amazonasjungelen, men nå var det en ny sjanse. I Coca ble vi plukket opp med motorisert kano, så bar det nedover Rio Napa. Elven var flomstor denne dagen, og luktet jord og halvråtne planter... Det var nærmest en luksustilværelse vi ble innlosjerte i da vi ankom Yarina Lodge. Egen bambushytte med bad, rennende vann (tidvis varmt), samt strøm fra kl 1800 til 2200. Det var et ”hovedbygg” med rader av hengekøyer, noen bord hvor måltidene ble inntatt, og en bar. Bygget var i utgangspunktet en stor platting med tak over. Lodgen [View Full Entry]

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Heat, humidity, and chocolatelessness are 3 things I generally seek to minimise in my life, so heading into El Oriente had the potential to cause me some major trauma. El Oriente is Ecuador's slice of the Amazon basin, that sprawling stretch of steaming selva that occupies nearly 50% of South America and functions as something of a lung for the planet as a whole. I had ambitions to see tarantulas, piranhas, and anacondas in the wild and it was here that I was hoping to meet them. Leaving a chilly Quito under grey skies, the first leg of my journey was [View Full Entry]

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The streak of bad luck that had started in Bolivia didn't show any signs of letting up when I got to Ecuador. I hadn't been there 48hours before I was robbed by what I can only describe as a magician. I had my camera stolen and my purse emptied. I have absolutely no idea how they did it or when it happened. I can only guess that it happened on the bus during the 5 minutes that my bag was up above my head on the luggage rack. Put up there by a man that I later realised was only pretending [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone here is the Amazon jungle blog. Make the most of them there are only two more to go!!! I´d been wanting to visit the Amazon since landing in Latin American having heard so much about it. The jungle and Banos were the last two visits in Ecuador and it would have meant having seen everything on the list and spending two months in the country!! Previously the most time I´d spent in one country was Oz and that was five weeks. After putting back my flights to Rio by 2 weeks I set about trying to pick a lodge [View Full Entry]

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