Arajuno Jungle Lodge Quito

so i boarded the bus and headed towards tena...like usual, the road was down for 3 or 4 hours while we waited for them to make it, due to it washing out during a rain...all the bus drivers, trying to make up for last time i suppose, then decide that steep drop off, slippery, muddy, narrow mountain side roads would be the ideal place to try out a not-new-to-ecuador sport called "the rally bus" race...im not sure if u are all familiar with the rally car races or not, but if u r, try and visuali...

so there i was, dreaming peacefully about some thing of no consequence, but warmly sleeping in the ¨relative¨comfort that is my room in the jungle lodge...nothing more than a piece of foam on the floor of a wooden hut...then the knock on the door comes at 2:30 am... ¨what?" "it's time to bring in the fish net, do u wanna come?" my kiwi amigo replies "is no an option" i groggily reply "yah i spose if u r a pussy, and besides its been raining all night so the river will be up and i dont know if...

November 7th we left our hostel in Tena and headed a short distance to a Jungle lodge. We had been equiped with a pair of black welly boots instead of walking boots. When we arrived and dumped our stuff we were straight back up the many steps to the entrance to the lodge where our guide Victor (with the help of Alex) tied together the 9 rubber rings we had carried up to create rafts, put them on top of a 4wd vehicle and headed along first a main road, then dirt tracks until we reached the wat...

There now followed a hairraising drive over the Andes for a two night saty in the Amazon rain forest. - or so we thought. It seems that big brother Peru had stolen all the amazon territory from Ecuador in a war in 1995. Again, we were ignorant of this and of the fact that Peru and Ecuador are the best of enemies. Ecuador does however have the river Nappo territory and, thankfully, that is where the oil is. It was a toss up between arriving at our jungle lodge in the dark or encouraging our dr...

Well, the final part to our south american overland tour has been another fantastic 2 weeks. Leaving half the group behind in Lima and continuing on with only 18 people, it was so quiet and empty on Frank (our bus/truck), didnt like it at all. I guess most would have loved to see the back of people (out of the 36) that you spend 24/7 with for 3 months but personally i couldnt think of anything worse! We all become so close, its like a big family. But everyone has to move on, most on there way...

We were going to spend 4 days in the Amazon Jungle. Unfortunately we were several hundred miles from the actual river, but the Amazon Basin starts here and we were based near and on the major tributaries for the Amazon. These rivers were huge so we can only imagine the size of the Amazon itself. We were expecting mosquitoes, rough conditions, hot and humid conditions and plenty of creepy crawlies. What we had first was 2 luxury nights at Arajuno Lodge, staying either in huge tents or cabins w...

Getting out of Otavalo was a bit of a problem due to the locals protesting about a lack of water. They decided to blockade the main roads which meant a long journey over rough single track roads high up in the mountains. We ended up camping overnight by some hot springs which were really nice for relaxing in. It gets quite cold at 3000m so I was pleased I had brought a decent sleeping bag. We finally got to Tena and then after a boat trip along the river Arajuno we arrived at the isolated Ara...

What a place to spend my birthday, the Amazon Jungle. We arrived at the Arajuno Lodge the day before, after the sweaty hot Pantanal I was a little dubious about this, but what a place. Its owned by an American guy Tom, who is so enthuasiastic about what he does, amongst other things he does his bit to protect the Amazon by educating people on what harm is being done and giving locals less disastrious alternative. Out largest source of oxygen is being distroyed and definately needs people to t...