Blogs from Tena, East, Ecuador, South America - page 3

Day 20 : The jungles of Tena Day 2: I think I must have gone to bed a bit earlier than normal, cause by 5:30am I couldn't sleep any more. Apparently I was the first one up and about, so I wandered around and sort of watched the sun come up. By 6am or so, I noticed someone in the kitchen room and went to investigate. It turned out to be the host, Thomas Moore, getting coffee. Of course, I had to have a cup too. By 7am or so, almost everyone was up and about, and around 8am we all sat down to breakfast. Breakfast was scrambled eggs, cocktail sausages, pancakes with syrup, and a plantain mixture. Everything was pretty good, and prepared us for our day. We all put on our jungle clothing with ... read more

August 6th We were introduced this morning to Gus (short for Agustus) who is our truck and will be our home for the next 3 weeks. As a great introduction we were stuck on there for 6 hours as we drove to an incredible eco lodge, Shangrila, just outside of Tena where we will be for the next 3 nights. It is an amazing colection of tree house type structures situated on a cliff above a huge river and overlooking miles of forest. After lunch we headed out for a ¨walk¨through the jungle which actually turned out to be a walk/trek/canyoning adventure. I had tons of fun and it was a great introduction to the Amazon. We began just walking through the jungle, learning about different types of plants, before starting to walk through a stream. ... read more

I´ve now completed my four weeks in the Amazon Rainforest. It is a tragic story here in one of the most biodiverse places in the world. Continuing deforestation and segmentation of the rainforest in these areas make a bleak future for the rainforest. There has been an airport built near the Jatun Sacha Amazon station. This is between this reserve and another one. Air and noise pollution, road expansion and increase in tourism will deteriorate this unique environment. Simulation studies have shown that this will decrease the population of sensitive bird, vegetation and other species. Unfortunately, the support of the local community was bought out by developers. The money was not wisely invested as education is lacking in these areas. Many of the property owners bought out spent the money on fancy vehicles or celebrated until ... read more

Absolutely breathtaking! Words cannot describe the sheer scale and beauty of the Amazon rainforest and I was only scratching the surface! Friday: Arrival in the Amazon gateway town of Tena on Friday and spent the night sampling the local nightlife... bumped into a couple of Italian fellas and their Ecuadorian entourage and had a fantastic night with them. One of the Italians mentioned that he new a Scotsman who was married to a girl from his village outside Rome - it was only a mutual friend who Martin and I had met on our trip to Rome last year...small world case number 2! Saturday: Went on a jungle tour staying in a lovely lodge on a cliff face overlooking the splendour of the rainforest with the the mighty wall of the Andes towering in the background...as ... read more

A large group of us loaded up in a safari like vehicle that one of the brothers owned and and headed out for preaching in the jungle. Upon arriving we had to cross the river on a wooden bridge then walked for a couple miles with the houses scattered. Then we went to an anniversary party in Rio Bamba. Josh gave the talk saturday then we headed home.... read more