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Published: August 21st 2007
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Our humble lodge!
The Napo Wildlife Centre Well after the high of the enchanted islands it was time to head off to somewhere even more remote, the vast almighty Amazon Jungle. So to the land of giant snakes that eat people, ticks that can kill you, creatures in the water that can ruin men for life and man eating piranhas, well most of this according to the movies anyway, here we come.
The Amazon Rainforest is a moist broadleaf forest in the Amazon Basin of South America. The area, also known as Amazonia or the Amazon Basin encompasses seven million square kilometers (1.2 billion acres) and is located within nine nations: Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.
We opted to see part of this vast empire from Ecuador, as we were there already, and made our way to The Napo Wildlife Centre (NWC).
We flew from Quito to the town of Coca on the Napo River. After a short drive from the airport to the dock, we boarded a large, motorized, covered canoe for a scenic two-hour trip down the Napo River. Upon arriving at the entrance to the NWC Reserve, we switched to smaller, dugout canoes and were paddled
up the black water creek to the lake and lodge (no motorized transport is allowed on the creek or lake so that wildlife isn't disturbed). This paddle took around 2 hours and it was our first introduction to the wildlife of the Amazon.
We arrived at the lodge late afternoon and it felt that we were really in the middle of nowhere. It is the only lodge on the relatively undisturbed south bank of the Rio Napo, in an 82 square mile nature reserve, and is based on a conservation partnership with the local community. The proceeds pay for the conservation of this pristine lowland rainforest.
The Napo Wildlife Centre itself was great and once again we really roughed it! The lodge consists of 10 bungalows, all overlooking the lake. Each bungalow has a king bed and single bed(in case Rob's in the dog basket again), veranda with hammock and private bathroom. Our bungalow was cleaned twice a day and we had five star, three course meals, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. This included the local fruits and dishes. Snacks and drinks every time we arrived back to the lodge from an activity. Really roughing it, Rob’s Boy
Our MAIN mode of transport.
The dugout canoe, yes it is made from one tree trunk! Scout leader would have been proud. Of course we also had a fantastic, very passionate and knowledgeable, guide team. This consisted of main guide, and ours was a biologist, a local guide who headed up the canoe in front and also a young paddler. Our group consisted of us and another couple from Holland, in their fifties and on honeymoon. This made for a good laugh as on the evening of our arrival we were briefed by the manager who had a bottle of champagne in tow for the honeymoon couple and he of coursed looked at us as to hand it over. The other couple sheepishly intervened and said, “It’s for us”. Damn almost got a free bottle of bubbly. Well they did eventually share it with us on their last night so not all bad.
The Amazonian rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. More than 1/3 of all species in the world live in the Amazon Rainforest. However they survive by not been seen so it was now our job to find them.
Every day we would board the canoes and either trek in the jungle, go bird watching or paddle to different creeks and rivers to view and
try and spot the wildlife and study the vegetation. One morning we headed off early as we had a long journey to the parrot clay licks. There are two main clay licks in the region and parrots and macaws will come many miles to eat the clay. Certain minerals in the clay are able to neutralize the toxins in the nuts they eat, and so they seek out deposits of this very special clay.
One of the highlights was the night paddle to view Caiman (crocodile). The main guide used a massive spotlight and scanned the water in front of our lodge (where Rob swam that day) to discover the beaming eyes of these creatures lurking just above the water. We would then paddle right up to them, it was scary to think that these creatures were only feet away and we were only sitting in a hollowed out piece of tree trunk.
Although we are not avid bird watchers, well the pic of Wendy you would not say so, we saw an abundance of different varieties of birds and really did enjoy spotting and identifying the species. However allot of the time when we were on the
It's up there somewhere?
One of the observatory lookouts in the trees, basically a very high tree house. lookout towers, the guides would spot the animals in their telescope and we would view them from there, spoilt or what. We also really enjoyed the monkeys with such a vast array of species.
So in all we saw plenty of birds, but they were often in the distance so did not get many pics (Howard we needed your big one), lots of monkeys, caiman, a variety of frogs, butterfly’s, snakes, spiders and all sorts of funny creatures and plants that we had not even heard of. The vastness of the Amazon and the sounds are what will stay with us for a long time. Having seen the Caiman, heard the giant otters and been told that there are piranhas in the lake it was of course time to swim. Wendy opted out so Robert had to do on his own. In truth the Caiman are hiding and the fish don’t attack people in the water (contrary to the movies) so it was not really a dangerous place to swim. However it still made for only a quick dip. Well thats our Amazon adventure and please note the photos are over 2 pages, we will try to post less
The avid Bird spotter!
Wendy has lots of explaining to do??? next time, damn happy snappers. Also it appears that there may be some gremlins left from the last crash of this site so if some of the photos do not make sense then excuse us(some of the deleted photos seem to appear).
After our Amazon adventure we spent a few days in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. The main highlight was the amazing churches and our trip to the equator line at zero degrees of latitude.
This brings our South American leg of our journey to an end and having spent almost 3 months here it has been an awesome experience and we met some amazing people. It is certainly a place that we will come back to and if you have not been get your arse out here.
From here it’s back to England to equip ourselves with a campervan for the next stage of our journey.
Bring on Europe.
Watch this space!
Rob and Wends
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Nick
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Hey hey!!
Some more nice pics there guys. Good to see that you´re still about two months behind on the old blog!!! Where you at now??