Amazon Jungle day 2

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Day 28. After a delicious breakfast of omelette & a plantain banana starch pancake cooked & wrapped in a palm leaf we took a 45 min motorised canoe ride up the Napo River which is a shallow but fast running river with many large islands of smooth rounded rocks of all sizes & colours. The Napo is fed from Cotopaxi a beautiful cone shaped volcano (nearly 6000 mtrs) the peak of which is snow covered the whole year round. The Napo merges with Araujo river at almost right angles forming an enormous rapid before continuing on its relentless path to join the mighty Amazon.

After turning up the Araujo River we slowly entered a small sand & rock tributary until the canoe was grounded and was the start of our 3-4 hr hike. The stream was running a little deeper than normal as it is still the wet season. Everyone was trying to delicately place their feet over the rocks to keep the water out of their boots but it was a losing quest & we soon bowed to the inevitable and trooped through the water regardless with squelching boots for the rest of the hike. Halfway into the hike we branched away from the creek into an almost invisible track through the jungle to a sandy beach setting further down the Araujo River with our canoe waiting with our lunch. All through the walk a light rain was hitting the dense canopy above & barely reaching us & giving us a real rain forest experience.

As the rain increased lunch was under the canvas roof of the canoe instead of the beach. The retun trip was much longer against the rapids & at the merge of the two rivers we were unable to move forward with the heavy load so we all had to be offloaded to a stone island & walk past the rapids to calmer water to re-join the canoe.

We were planning to do some tubing down rapids in the late afternoon but the weather was not so good & deferred to tomorrow weather permitting. Instead we had a poison arrow demonstrations & we all had to try. The locals can shoot by blowing bamboo darts with tranquilliser tips up to 40 mtrs but now only used for demonstration purposes.

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Photos

Lucky I'm Vegiterin! as that shot is likely to shoot someone in the foot