Blogs from Tena, East, Ecuador, South America

The following day we headed into town early to pick up some supplies for the following days bus trip, and get Joshes hair cut for $1.20 which is difficult when you don’t know how to say stop!! After Josh’s hair looked like he was joining the army we headed back to the lodge for lunch, which consisted of fish cooked in banana leaves with chillies and heart of palm then baked on the fire (yummy!!). Shortly after lunch Francois took us on a tour of his garden to show us all the local medicinal and food source plants in his garden, this included Guayasa a creeper that you make tea out of which keeps all the locals teeth white and strong, coca, pineapples and a local palm which is used for making houses. In ... read more

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August 6th We were introduced this morning to Gus (short for Agustus) who is our truck and will be our home for the next 3 weeks. As a great introduction we were stuck on there for 6 hours as we drove to an incredible eco lodge, Shangrila, just outside of Tena where we will be for the next 3 nights. It is an amazing colection of tree house type structures situated on a cliff above a huge river and overlooking miles of forest. After lunch we headed out for a ¨walk¨through the jungle which actually turned out to be a walk/trek/canyoning adventure. I had tons of fun and it was a great introduction to the Amazon. We began just walking through the jungle, learning about different types of plants, before starting to walk through a stream. ... read more

In the last few days I was able to finish painting and posting the chichico (tamarin) monkey crossing signs to post near the reserve with the help of a fellow volunteer. The manager of the station seemed very happy about this. He had a huge grin on his face when I walked by with the 10ft post with the sign nailed to it over my shoulder to put it in the ground on the side of the road. A car drove by later and he asked me if I heard that, 'what?'...'they slowed down!' he said. I really wasn’t sure if anyone would pay attention to the signs, but I was pleased to see that most people did take notice! I also climbed the observation tower which is about 100ft tall. I had a harness..but you ... read more

I´ve now completed my four weeks in the Amazon Rainforest. It is a tragic story here in one of the most biodiverse places in the world. Continuing deforestation and segmentation of the rainforest in these areas make a bleak future for the rainforest. There has been an airport built near the Jatun Sacha Amazon station. This is between this reserve and another one. Air and noise pollution, road expansion and increase in tourism will deteriorate this unique environment. Simulation studies have shown that this will decrease the population of sensitive bird, vegetation and other species. Unfortunately, the support of the local community was bought out by developers. The money was not wisely invested as education is lacking in these areas. Many of the property owners bought out spent the money on fancy vehicles or celebrated until ... read more

We arrived at the station after a 5hour bus ride and a taxi ride in the bed of a truck with the luggage. We met some of the volunteers as they came back from their day in town and at work. We made plans with the rest of the group for the weekend to see some areas around the station. On Saturday we had a surprise visit from some local students around 14 and 15 years of age. The teacher requested that some of us volunteer to practice English with the students. They were very enthusiastic once they broke through their shyness. It was amazing to see their eagerness to learn and they were very glad to have us there to help them. Then they tested us in our Spanish...ahh! Afterward we joined them at the ... read more

Do not ever use Taxi Express to get from Quito to anywhere - they arrived early, wandered aimlessly around Quito for almost 2 hours cramming people in and taking ages to place and cover luggage that they had put on top of the van. We missed our transfer to the hacienda and when we finally got dropped off there every item in each of our packs was soaking wet. grrr. The Hakuna Matata hacienda was beautiful - the people, the rooms, the horses, the surrounding river and jungle, the hummingbirds and other wildlife, the views - we loved it and wished we had more than our 3 days. Our first activity after late lunch was horse riding. Through the river and jungle and past a small village. Next day we visited a local school (wish I'd ... read more

So after a great time in Banos we made our way to Tena. Going to Tena really shows off the great diversity of the country of Ecuador. Up to this point we had been in the Andes mountain region but as we descended (seriously .. an ear popping 2000 m drop in altitude) from Banos to Tena in a rather quick 3 hour bus ride we felt like we were seriously in a different country. Instead of being surrounded in a valley of mountains we were surrounded by jungle. Tena is located at the end of civilization and at the beginning of the Amazon jungle. As we got into town we wanted to talk with some locals and other travelers about how to best explore the Amazon. For this we figured that we would have to ... read more