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Published: September 2nd 2006
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We´ve just got back to Quito from a wonderful few days spent in the jungles of Amazonia. We were having our doubts last Sunday on another marathon 10-hour bus journey to the ultimate backblock jungle town of Coca, where we stayed the night. It was unbelievably seedy!
After being picked up Monday lunchtime by a motorised canoe, we had a 3-hour ride, 110 kms down the Napo river, which is incredibly wide (goodness knows how wide the Amazon is, if this is only a tributary), but we had to zig-zag back and forth to miss all the sandbanks and islands. At a designated spot we were transferred to a smaller dugout canoe and taken through a small stream, with dense jungle closing in on both sides, like a tunnel. It was very exciting!
Turning the corner into the lagoon, we were struck speechless by the beautiful sight of Sani Lodge nestled at one end, all thatched roofs and built up on stilts. Ecuador may be a 3rd world country, but they certainly got it right here. The lodge is owned by the Sani community, which consists of 450 people, who own 37,000 hectares of jungle. All the proceeds go
to the community, and all the staff come from there (with the exception of the bilingual guide), so it seems that they are quite lucky - apparently they are the only community which enjoys such a deal with the government. However, if they allow the oil companies in, then they will lose 15,000 hectares. It sounds as if the government has learned a lesson from the destruction already wreaked on Ecuador by overseas oil companies (Texaco in particular).
Our first activity was to go bird watching on the canoe, followed by a touch of piranha fishing (we caught one! but put it back). They´re actually quite small and innocuous-looking, but one of the kitchen hands was bitten on the hand by one yesterday and he´s in a bit of a mess. However, somebody rushed out to the jungle to get medicinal plants to sort him out, and they refused to take advantage of our offer of antibiotics and plasters! After a delicious dinner we went for a night walk in the jungle with torches, which was a bit scary with all the sound effects of the wild life, and the thought of all those bats, snakes, spiders, etc. around
us. Actually, with the exception of one small but very dangerous snake, and one small tarantula, we didn´t see any nasties at all - excepting for the trillions of mosquitoes and huge ants.
On a normal day we got up at 6 am, breakfast at quarter past, and out on the lagoon by 6.30, and usually a long walk (8 kms yesterday - no mean feat in that heat), or a visit to the Amazonian sky tower (built around a kapok tree, 116 steps high, from where you can peer out over the treetops. From there we saw parrots, toucans, macaws, and heaps of other birds. Afternoons were siesta time, the heat was sometimes almost unbearable then.
At 5pm we usually had another activity (once it entailed swimming in the Napo - honestly!). We thought about all those caimans lurking in the undergrowth, but out in the fast-running river it´s apparently OK. Another night we went caiman hunting, and saw 3 of them, one of them particularly large, just peering up out of the water at you. Just quietly both of us wondered to ourselves whether caimans have ever been known to tip over a boat and eat
up the occupants... We´re happy to report, that they didn´t that night anyway. For those who don´t know what a caiman is, it´s a large crocodile.
Although small, Sani Lodge is well set up for a maximum of 20 tourists; the accommodation was really comfortable, but very eco with solar lighting and a cold shower (in small huts with private bathroom); the food was excellent with heaps of vegetables and not a bean in sight! We loved it. We were also lucky to be on our own there for two of the days (with 10 men at our beck and call), being there at the end of the tourist season. That´s the stuff dreams are made of, but they probably didn´t think much of being stuck with a couple of old ducks!
When we went out we had a bilingual naturalist, and a native tracker, Milton and Bombo by name. Both were excellent in their own way, but Bombo was so entertaining with the animal sounds he made to try and find monkeys, caimans and peccaries in particular. All of a sudden he´d come out with these weird noises, lift his finger to listen, then take off into
the bush wielding his machete in hot pursuit, beckoning us to follow him. And he´d find them every time! We saw so many monkeys yesterday.
You´ll gather from all this that we had a very good trip to Amazonia and feel privileged to have stayed in this wonderful community. All for now. Tomorrow we´ll try and do our photo act again ... In the meantime we´re packing for Santiago tomorrow.
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Detlef Hebbel
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Great report!
Thank you again for the great story. We really enjoy your writings. Cannot wait for the next one. Gila and Detlef