Blogs from Tena, East, Ecuador, South America - page 13

After a trip into the depth of the Amazon Daylin and I headed to another town in the Amazon called Tena. Tena is known to be the number one spot in Ecuador for white water rafting, because of its proximity to the Napo River. Out hostal duena put us in touch with her nephew who ran a rafting agency and we met up with the rest of the rafters early Friday morning. Luckily, only two other girls were on our trip, making our first experience rafting very intimate. I was raining that morning, and we were riding in the back of a pick-up truck to the river all four of us shivering. When we got to the river, we helped with the set up and got to know our crazy guide Tarquino. We did a few ... read more

After another couple of days in Quito we went to Tena.. back into the Amazon and have had an experience like no other! We went to a jungle lodge in the middle of the Amazon and went canyoning, climbing through small crevices in canyons. It was really fun, even if a bit frightening at some points, especially in the caves with about 100 bats flying at us! We saw lots of exotic plants and medicinal ones, including a plant that has bark which is good for malaria and a seed that is taken as an oral contraceptive, only 3 times a year. The fruit from the tree can be eaten too. It was very interesting, just how many different plants there are.. including girls best friend - cocoa. The cocoa fruit is really Delicious. We went ... read more

After one failed attempt to get to the Amazon, failed because the local agency we booked through decided they couldn´t take us at the eleventh hour, it took a nightmare 13 hour bus journey to even arrive at the edge of Cuyabeno. Cuyabeno is an area of primary rainforest located along the northeast border of Ecuador and Columbia. An area we later found tourist groups had been advised to stay away from! We should probably have realised this when on arrival we sat down to breakfast with the Ecuadorian Army. From the edge of the national park we ventured 3 hours downstream to our lodge. On the journey we saw kingfishers, electric blue giant butterflies and 3 types of monkey. We had been warned that the lodge was basic, but it really was basic! It consisted ... read more

Rich again. The lack of photos doesnt really effect this entry, cos it was just more jungle, and one mostly green picture looks very much like another (we stuck another of the other day in for good measure though), so here goes! In the morning we went on a canyoning treck which, as the name implies, involved trecking and canyons, but in wellies (us, not the canyons, although i´d like that). Molly was fortunately absent and a good time was had by all. Our guide for the day was a guy called Lewis, and he was nails. He spent the first part of the trek showing us all the medicinal 'plants he could find, but when medicine was really needed, because an elderly Australian man called Brian rammed a great big stick in his eye (idiot), ... read more

We checked on to a three day adventure trip to take in Rainforest and rafting. DAY 1 Panning for Gold!!! we spent the morning doing the old school panning for gold thing. You dig up some mud, fish out any major rocks then spin it round to centrifuge stuff out. Its harder than it looks, but even so we managed to find a few actual bits of gold amongst the grit. About the same as in a bottle of Goldschlager. Its pretty amazing though actually getting hold of real gold! In the afternoon our indigenous guides took us on into Primary Rainforest. It is just like in geography lessons (suprisingly enough). you can see the different layers and when one tree falls, you can see where the others race to the light. One of the first ... read more