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Published: August 28th 2011
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Up early today. Time for our trip to the Amazon, or at least the basin. Previously we had intended to catch a bus to Lago Agrio, an oil mining town in the east of Ecuador. It's also the jumping off point for the Cuyabeno tours –
Cuyabeno being the reserve forming part of Ecuador's Amazon basin area. Again, we caught a plane instead. We were getting soft, it's true, but the thought of overnight buses on mountain roads was beginning to give me the night sweats, so, for my health, we wussed out. It had the side benefit of enabling us to do the 5 day, 4 night jungle tour rather than the shorter tour.
The plane flight was uneventful, and short – less than half an hour. We got picked up at the airport by Dracaena – the company we did the tour with. The pick up was all right – obviously most people on the Dracaena tours (which are a bit more basic than the others) take the bus, so we waited at the little airport while other people on flasher tours got picked up, feeling like the fat kid that gets picked last for footy. Soon enough,
though, they rocked up.
Then followed a 3 hour bus ride to a tiny settlement on Rio Aguarico, a 390km river which flows eventually into the Amazon. From there, a 2 and a half hour canoe trip up Rio Aguarico, then Rio Cuyabeno. A canoe with an outboard, that is. Yeah, I know – when I first read that in the brochure I was expecting to have to spend the afternoon dipping an ornate wooden paddle into a muddy brown river full of pirañas. Instead we sat back while the 75 horse Yamaha pushed us swiftly up the creek.
The Aguarico was a pretty decent sized river, made more so by some recent rain. It's called Aguarico (rich water) due to the large amount of minerals and silt it carries, reflected in its muddy brown colour. The river was wide, and brown, and lined by what used to be some pretty decent jungle. You could tell that by the stumps still lining the newly planted fields of bananas and cassava and corn. We were not yet in the reserve, and the locals were making the most of the resources, for at least the next 20 years until “slash
and burn” became “sit and watch and wonder why nothing will grow anymore.”
After a fair distance we turned up the Rio Cuyabeno, and the change was obvious an immediate. The water colour went from Brisbane River/Yarra muddy brown (this is an actual Wattyl colour) to a rich, dark green.
The Cuyabeno is part of the Cuyabeno reserve, however, and development there is restricted – we started to see some proper Amazon rainforest - the jungle really began. Slashed fields gave way to an a beautiful wall of growth – foliage as green as Bob Brown, vines as thick as Tony Abbott, and trees as tangled and confused as the NSW Labor Right.
Up the Cuyabeno we went, at some speed, swinging left and right through the bends of the river. Lulled by the sight of massive trees, weird birdcalls and the thrumming of the Yamaha outboard, we were surprised by a sudden turn to the left, straight at what looked like the bank. As we came closer a tiny gap in the vegetation became apparent, and the boat glided through, mere inches to spare on either side.
We emerged into a large inlet, almost a
lake. Weird looking birds made weirder sounds and showed us their arses as we disturbed their territory, a row of at least 7 turtles sunbaking on a log tumbled into the the water one by one like freaky dominoes.
The canoe pulled up to a part of a bank, directly under a small cleared area, where the lodge was built. It consisted of a number of small buildings, all linked with raised walkways. The main building was the common area – 8 hammocks, a couple of large tables, a small bar and the kitchen. Connected to this were the cabins, two rooms in each one, and each with its own bathroom.
There was electricity, but only during the day when the solar panels were working, and only enough o power a couple of small lights and maybe charge up a camera battery. And to keep the beer cold.
They did, in fact, run out of beer. No one had told them that four Australians were coming, I guess.
Really an excellent set up.
Dinner was always excellent, and the beer was cold at the end of the day. Bug spray was something of a
necessity, particularly on the night walks through the jungle – bats, tarantulas and snakes weren't the issue – the mozzies were ridiculous.
In between laying around in the hammocks, we found enough time for quite a lot of wandering through bits of the jungle, looking at stuff and things – the perfect reflection on the water of the canopy, slight trails through the jungle, twisted roots, patterns in the trees.
Birdwatching was done by climbing a massively tall structure, looked a touch dodgy if I'm honest. It was a good 25 metres high, and built of wood, twisting as you looked up at it to follow the curve of the massive tree. Climbing it was the only way to get above the canopy and have a look, so we did, carefully. The view was, well, a lot of trees, for a long way. Maybe some monkeys, and plenty of birds.
Piraña fishing was also on the agenda. For this we used small bits of bloody steak on little hooks, and Klaire was the only person that managed to catch one – it wasn't the right time of year for them. Nasty little buggers though.
An early
morning wake up, and coffee in the boat as we slowly wound our way through the atmospheric mist in the canoe on the hunt for things to see, like strange insects, such as the wasps that make a sound like a marching army when they're disturbed.
And giant yellow caterpillars.
And great looking red roots that cut brightly across the jungle floor like veins.
A number of crossings were made with fallen trees, one did have a sizable population of ants living on it. The guide said only the big ones bit. He was mistaken, they all did. Hard. The guide was a funny bloke, and really loosened up after a bit. At one point he told us some legend about getting the power of the forest by putting your hand in a fire ants. I was respectful, but all I saw was a lot of ant bites and some swelling.
I ate a grub, and it actually tasted good, it tasted like coconut. It lives in these particular nut and eats the inside flesh, which is basically a tiny coconut. I'm still not sure why they don't simply eat the nut before the grub does.
Visited some communities. One of them had a project in which they harvest turtle eggs and raise them. Once they're a certain age they get money from the government for them.
Then we went to visit the driver's house, and watched cassava harvested and made into tortillas.
She also had some pet monkeys, ridiculously cute. Especially when the pocket monkey played with the pet parrot. When the parrot started attacking the random Ronald McDonald toy the lefties among us (which were in the majority) began cheering at the symbolism.
At first, the five day stay had seemed excessive, but the time absolutely flew.
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