Blogs from East, Ecuador, South America - page 7

Day 21 : The jungles of Tena Day 3: Today started pretty much the same as yesterday, except Manoli get up before me, so I was the second one up and about. After a cup of coffee and checkiing out the sunrise and local flora, the rest of the group roused themselves out of bed and we all ate another hearty breakfast. Breakfast this morning was scrambled eggs, french toast with syrup, and a plantain mixture, all of which was quite tasty and filling. Again, we went down and boarded our boats, carrying the water purification kits, medical supplies, and our lunches for the day. Today, instead of going downriver, we went upriver to the other side of Anaconda Island. Unfortunately, there were a couple places going upriver that the water was too shallow for our ... read more

Day 19: Quito to the jungles of Tena: We all left on the bus at 8am. Although it was a 28 passenger bus with only 22 passengers, because we had so much luggage, we filled the rear storage compartment, the back one and half rows of seats, and still had to put some on the roof. The trip was supposed to take 4 to 5 hours, but with all the bathroom stops, congestion, and road work, we didn't even get into Tena until after 3pm. The missionary leaders needed to do some last minute shopping, so we all got off in Tena to use the bathroom again and do a little browsing/shopping. The leader said it would take another hour from Tena to our "lodge", but again it took a bit longer. I couldn't believe how ... read more

To the east of the spine of mountains and snowcapped volcanos which bisects Ecuador from north to south lies this country's tiny share of the vast Amazon Basin. There are many countries in South America from which a visit to the tropical rainforests of the basin can be made: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and, somewhat obviously, Brazil. We've heard, though, that Ecuador is a particularly good place to organise a visit to the rainforest: Ecuador's diminutive size - some 30 times smaller than Brazil - means that the forest and its famously immense biodiversity is never very far away. Ecuador it is, then. Two large reserves, the rather oddly-named Reserva de Producción Faunística Cuyabeno (making the Amazon sound like some sort of biological production-line) and the Parque Nacional Yasuní make up a large part of Amazonian ... read more

Manta is the primary a sea port and the depature point for the Galapos by sea. We were informed while touring the city that Ecuador is actually the orginal home for the Pananma Hat. It takes about 6 months for a person to make one. They received the Panama Hat name when the Gringos arrived to build the Panama Canal. Our tour also included a stop at a Tagua factory. The Tagua nut is from a palm tree found in the rain forests. It was orginally used to make buttons since the nut looks like ivory plus it can be dyed. Now they are used to make small sculptures. We aalso stopped at a factory that made bags that were used to ship coffee beans for export. Guayaquil, is larger than Manta, with obvious evidence of ... read more

I'm pretty sure that if you come to South America there are few places that you can't miss. One of those places is of course the Amazon jungle. So of course Chev and I went into that jungle. We booked a trek through a company in Quito and set off from there to a town called Lago Agrio. This was the jumping off point for us to go into the Reserva Cuyobeno, the national park located in the northeast of Ecuador where there is still primary rainforest. We were picked up in Lago Agrio by our guide and driven to the entrance of the reserve where we were feed a very lovely lunch of fried rice. After eating we loaded into a motorized canoe and headed down the waterway into the jungle, our guide at the ... read more