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Published: November 4th 2007
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Showering after stealing our water bottle!
Check out the angry little monkey teeth... We left Quito, destination; La Silva (the jungle) in the Upper Amazon Basin of the Oriente Region. To make the travel time easier we took a bus to Tena first for night before heading into the Jungle Lodge. The bus to Tena was over some of the worst mountain roads we've travelled so far and through some of the thickest cloud cover; think the driver was going from memory for a lot of the mountain passes.
On the way from Tena to the Lodge, we stopped in Misahualli which is a little town on the Rio Napo. The guy who booked our lodge for us recommended a stop here for lunch saying it was a pretty little town and had some interesting locals... i.e. the gang of Capuchin monkeys that have taken over Parque Central and terrorise the locals and tourists. They steal anything they can get their little hands on; we were warned. We found a cool little restaurant on the park and hadn’t yet spotted the little terrors when a couple of them appeared from the roof, climbing down onto the rails. After a quick “Omigod, look at the cute monkeys!” from Marika, one of them jumped onto
the table, grabbed our bottle of water, snarled at me, and took off into the park. We followed and found the little shite on top of a pagoda having a shower and drinking from the bottle. When it was all gone, we got the bottle back... Apparently these guys watch and mimic humans so they will grab glasses off your head and wear them, snatch cell phones (and whatever else they find) from pockets and cameras from hands if you don’t hold on. They usually play with these things for a while, out of reach of course, and when they’re finished/bored, they proceed to smash them over nearby rocks or drop them from great heights. We watched them chase screaming locals around the park, most amusing.
After staying in backpacker hostels for so long Cotococha Lodge was a bit of luxury! Crisp clean white linen over a large and very comfortable bed, white tiled bathroom with a proper hot shower, all in a large thatched hut right beside the Rio Napo river; very nice (the manager did make the point of telling us we had the best room in the lodge). Throw in all our meals (of which lunch
and dinner were three course, and fantastically good!) and several excursions with a guide, all for the bargain price of $70US/day! Sweet. Besides the touch of luxury, for the first night and day we had the place pretty much to ourselves with only one other couple staying there, again something we've not managed on this trip so far.
First jungle excursion; a boat ride up the Rio Napo and a walk out to a Cascada (waterfall) on one of the tributaries for a swim and intro to medicinal plants. Pretty cool with just us and the guide, even with him only speaking Spanish we got by surprisingly well. Funny how when something is poisonous you get the picture eh? The temperature of the water was surprisingly good and most welcome after the humidity of the walk out there. When we got back to the Rio Napo, we jumped into large inner tubes to ride some small rapids and float back to the lodge (not a cool as Laos though, no stops for 50c beers on the trip downstream). That afternoon we went out for a stroll in the jungle. Cotococha has its own large private reserve. It’s all secondary
jungle, meaning it’s been cleared in the past and is still in regeneration, and also means there are very few large animals to be stopped. Still, it had everything else, huge trees and vines, and a lot of insects. This is where we learned that almost everything, flora and fauna, either has a use, or will make you sick, cause pain, put you to sleep, give you hallucinations or kill you... intense. Saw poisonous caterpillars, the vines and plants the local Indians use for hunting (one of them is a paralytic, it freezes the muscles of prey) learned about the poisonous tree frogs the locals extract the venom from for hunting (yes it will kill a man, I had to ask), and the plant the local Shaman boils down; a shot of the finished product putting him into a "trance" to help heal the sick person in question. Our guide tells us this stuff will give you hallucinations for 24 hours and you have to be mentally prepared before partaking in the ritual... sounds like fun times. He told us heaps of other interesting stuff like termites are the best insect repellent (our guide demonstrated this by sticking his hand
into a nest, letting the termites coat his forearm, and then crushing them all over his arm... nice; no wonder the insects stay away). Oh yeah, I ate ants; they tasted like lemon! These ones live inside a tree which excretes a lemon flavoured acid, the ants take this acid and spread it over the ground around the tree when they go out for food etc, and the acid stops other trees/plants from growing around this tree allowing it the best opportunity to grow and the ants have somewhere to live. Just one of the interesting symbiotic (think that’s the right big word to use) relationships we learnt about in La Silva. We saw Congo ants, the biggest ant in the jungle that have a poisonous bite (yep, another one) and will cause huge amounts pain within minutes, and lots of spiders with horns. Anyway, enough of the biology lesson.
The next day we were joined by a group of American and Argentinean travel agents on a "business" trip... most unfortunate as the bulk of the Americans fit the loud and obnoxious mold exactly, and the Argentines did nothing for their country either (i.e. throwing cigarette butts into the
river, and these guys represent the travel industry). To be fair though some of the American ladies were good value, I think they realised how the rest of the group appeared. O.K over the rant now. The excursion was down river to Amazoonica, which despite it's zoo like name is actually an animal rescue centre run by a core group of Ecuadoreans and whatever volunteers turn up. This place was very cool. Monkeys all over the place, birds following us around, huge parrots and toucans, Capibarra and Agoutis, Puma and Ocelots and a really interesting tour. Most of these animals have been rescued from either hunting injury (often when hunting, the locals aim for the body of the female monkeys and put eyes out of the babies clinging to their front), illegal trafficking or are dumped/unwanted pets. Like the male Ocelots; when they are small they are good pets, but when they mature and start to mark their territory, they become really aggressive. One owner went on holiday and when he came back, his Ocelot attacked him. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending how you look at it) the unwanted Ocelot ends up either on the street or if he's lucky, in
AmaZoonica
These guys were LOOOUUD!! the animal refuge where they try and get him back into the wild. Very cool place with dedicated volunteers. After this we headed back up river for the obligatory "Indian Village" visit. These guys had it set up for the tourists. They had a couple of thatched huts right by the river for the demonstrations of village life, well away from the village itself, so the whole thing was really obviously fabricated. It was fine, we never expect too much from these kinds of things. Had a go on one of the blow-guns they still use for hunting (the ones with the frog and vine poisoned darts we learned about in the jungle) and I have to say I managed to hit the little parrot target they set up! Sweet (Jase, Jase, Jase of the jungle! Watch out for that tree...). I tried the Chicha which is a local alcoholic brew made from Yuca (a root vege very much like a small Taro). Luckily it was the tourist version where they use sweet potato to start the fermentation process; with the proper stuff, the locals sit around chewing the yuca into pulp and then spit it into the pot, the
Monkey at AmaZoonica
And these guys were furry and cute enzymes in their saliva acting as the fermenting agent... nice one; wonder if the guy who invented this process had a hard time convincing the rest of the tribe to try it? A quick swim with one of the local lads who took me out into the middle of the rapids (yeah O.K, I didn't need much convincing) and back to the lodge for the last night.
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