Ecuador, The highs and the lows - Part 2; Quito, Baños, the Amazon

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Highs: 3 nights in the Amazon rainforest!

Lows: Losing our cash, passports and camera. Rushing round Quito trying to fix this.

Food: Despite generally having a bad time in Quito, we did feast on awesome pizzas, and the best fresh passionfruit juice we've ever tasted at the cafe opposite our hostel.

Blog:

Speeding downhill on the back of a quadbike in Baños, we flew round corners, weaved in between lanes as we overtook everything else on the road, and darted in and out of tunnels and cobbled cycle-roads, with intermittent, but remarkable views over the valley of waterfalls. I should have been enjoying this. But I couldn't. As I gripped tightly so as not to be flung from my seat on each corner, I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. I had a knot in the back of my throat, and my mind was numb. I also should have been impressed at how far Liz and the French-Canadian girl (who we have only ever known as 'French-Canadian girl'; sometime you wait too long and it's less embarrassing not to ask) had progressed on the waterfall route on push bikes since we'd parted 15 minutes earlier. But instead, it just delayed the inevitable, awful moment, when I'd have to break the news to Liz that our bag had gone. Our bag, containing my wallet, our passports, and our camera was gone. I'd left the bag in the bike-rental outfit, and when I'd returned ten minutes later, it was gone.

As soon as I'd noticed that I wasn't wearing it, I'd felt so strange, so light, so aware of the empty feeling on my back, that I couldn't quite comprehend how I'd left the office without it. But still, I began my long, steep ascent back to town feeling sheepish, but optimistic. It had only been ten minutes, and I'd left the bag on a seat, facing the desk, within the tour agency. I was quite looking forward to retrieving it, then having to cycle as fast as possible back down the winding trail.

The uncomfortable, sickly feeling began when I saw the bemused, surprised look on the faces of the agency staff on my return. They should have been expecting me. The numbness in my mind started when I couldn't see the bag where I'd left it, and the staff, looking suitably baffled, explained that nobody else had been in since we'd departed. Between us, we searched every corner, every cupboard in the tiny office and backroom. They offered to take me to the police station, but first, I explained in broken Spanish, I'd need to catch up to Liz and tell her what had happened. The knot in my throat formed as I rode on the back of a quad-bike, with the store security guard, chasing after Liz through the waterfall valley, in anticipation of admitting that because of me, our most valuable possessions, our passports and camera were gone. Never to be retrieved. Fucknuts.

Liz was, of course, mortified. But as the owner of the agency drove us from one police station to the next, helping us to file our report, and I slumped deeper into a silent, sulky depression, she did a remarkable job of not pointing the finger of blame, and did her best to help cheer me up. The next blow was, on reading through all of our terms and conditions, realising that our insurance wan't going to pay out on anything, of course. Not so much insurance, as a £500 list of reasons why we'll never see our money again!

We didn't really enjoy Baños.

Having rescheduled our Amazon trip, we returned to Quito, where we'd previously spent a day strolling round the old town and eating ice cream. This time, we spent our time between the British Embassy, the Fed-Ex office and various shopping malls trying to replace some stuff.

We didn't really enjoy Quito.

Fortunately, after the amazing high of our Galapagos trip, we had an Amazon adventure to look forward to. Despite great offers and deals for jungle trips in Bolivia and Peru, we'd deliberately held out until Ecuador because of recommendations from the Cookester (Jenny Cooke) and the Hackster (Katy Hacking) for the Cuyabeno Amazon reserve. What an amazing place. Only reachable by travelling to a remote armpit of an oil-town, Lago Agrio (literally 'Sour Lake' - nice), taking a bus for 2 hours into the fringe of the rainforest, rather depressingly following an oil pipeline, then taking a 2 hour motor-canoe, deep into the protected jungle, away from the industry, away from pipeline and the roads, and away from embassies and passport application forms.

You can't help but relax and decompress when you're so far removed from civilisation; our flimsy, fake-looking emergency passports were no longer a worry; the fact that we'd had to specify our next 6 border crossings, and could not return to the UK with these documents even in an emergency, was a non-issue. We were enveloped by dense, primary rainforest, the continuous song of the jungle, a verdant and tranquil hideaway from modern life. Okay, the lack of camera was a bit annoying.

The Amazon teems with life - in the boat ride to the lodge alone we encountered 2 species of monkeys, countless exotic birds, and were accompanied by giant, iridescent blue butterflies, of the sort that would be a star attraction at butterfly world - they were everywhere. Kudos to the guides and boat-drivers, who have the remarkable ability to spot incredible creatures in hidden tree-tops from moving vehicles. This sort of trip just would not be the same without their expertise.

We were staying in an area of black-water flooded rainforest, and our first evening we visited a vast lake where 5 rivers converge, and swam in the warm, tranquil waters as the orange rays of the setting sun stretched over the silhouetted canopy. To this day, the most magical swimming spot we have ever visited. Fortunately, we did this before embarking on our cayman hunting expedition in the adjoining tributaries, as I probably would not have left the boat had I already witnessed the 5 metre long, cold blooded carnivore basking in the shallows.

Cruising through the river network at night was a dreamlike experience. In the thick blackness of the jungle walls, the soundscape throngs and howls with the greatest intensity, and when the torch-beam penetrates the darkness, the treeline is reflected in the shimmering black waters so perfectly that it is impossible to discern between the reality of the living, breathing forest, and the illusion of the reflection. It creates the perception of hovering silently, the canopy roof metres above, the floor far below. Returning to the lodge for a group dinner, entirely lit by candles (we only had an hour of electricity each morning) was a perfect finish to our first day in the Amazon.

The following day, we returned to the water, but this time in a paddle canoe, which was even better! Rowing peacefully down stream, without a noisy motor, we were able to encounter much more wildlife, including some sleeping nocturnal monkeys, a sunbathing 4 metre anaconda, 2 types of kingfisher, scarlet makaws, toucans and stinky turkeys - a bizarre ancient bird, which digests its food in its gullet, creating a fowl smell (pun absolutely intended).

We rowed to an indigenous village, where we harvested yucca and helped make fresh yucca bread using traditional techniques, before visiting the village Shaman who taught us about the history of shamanism in his family, and how his father had helped western scientists identify medicinal chemicals in local plants.

As with the other indigenous groups of Ecuador, who live on the coast or in the mountains, most teenagers from the Amazon end up being drawn to one of the big towns/cities seeking to make their fortune. Unlike other indigenous groups, about 90% return to the Amazon, to their families and to start families of their own. So it was sad to hear that some Amazon groups are beginning to be won over by the oil companies, who throw thousands of dollars at them just for attending a meeting in Quito. Of the three communities living in Cuyabeno, only one group remain completely against oil exploration in the area, as the shaman has done all he can to help them understand that allowing the oil companies in would mean an end to their way of life forever.

Our final full day in the Amazon we took a walk into the jungle, as opposed to hugging the river banks. First time during the day, which was more focussed on the fauna, such as a type of fungus that turns a tree trunk entirely white, various vines and their parasitic destruction of their hosts, and the symbiotic relationship between lemon ants, and the lemon ant-tree, which always sits in a clearing of about a metre radius, as the lemon ants destroy anything that grows too close to their home! We also got to swing from a vine like Tarzan which was pretty cool.

Our second foray into the woods was at night, lighting our way with torches. Despite the rain, we witnessed huge trail of leaf-cutter ants in the process of stripping a tree, a beautiful horned spider, and two of the most horrific looking creatures we've ever been in proximity to - a huge scorpion spider (which our guide handled with a little too much glee), and a wolf spider (from which our guide kept a cautious distance). It was with worryingly few steps more that we found ourselves back at the lodge!

Other highlights of our short trip were seeing pink river dolphins swimming at sunset, spotting a pygmy marmoset peeking out of a hole in a tree, and I was bitten by fire-ants, which was excruciatingly painful for a very short time, but somehow added a feeling of authenticity to the experience!!

It was a bummer not to have a camera with us, but we met some lovely people who sent us some photos they took while we were there. Thanks guys 😊

Lessons learnt:


• Don't leave your valuables in an unattended bag on a chair
• Don't leave your valuables in Adam's care
• A British emergency passport will not necessarily get you back to the UK
• Ecuador is not the place to buy a Canon camera
• The Amazon rainforest is a magical and spiritual place that needs protecting
• Those things we get back home are not wolf spiders

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