In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle

  THE AMAZON - ooh!, Ecuador
Sunday, November 25, 2007

www.volunteersecuador.com

A Ho and a La

Well I'm back. Don't panic people in the UK, just mean back from the jungle, I'm still in Ecuador. I spent last week in the rain forest, the Amazon Rain Forest no less. It rained. Lots. But to be fair, I can't say I wasn't warned. Its right there in the title. Cloud forest - kinda cloudy lots. Dry forest - really not much in the way of moisture there. So rain forest, probably should have worked it out before hand.

Anyway, I stayed at a nice lodge in the Cuyabeno reserve which is a protected area of forest, which is just as well as looking at all the logging that has happened all along the road leading to the area along with the big oil pipeline that runs along it was kinda depressing. To be honest, the reserve was probably only protected when the logging companies came along and said, ¨you know, its a bit wet in that area, maybe we'll go cut down some other trees¨. Luckily for me they did.
This is how we got there, took about 2 hours by motorised canoe,

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

and this is where we stayed,

Home wet home

We saw loads of animals, like this Saki? Monkey that you can clearly see very well in this excellently taken photo with high quality photographic equipment. (I think this trip clearly illustrated my cameras limits).

Saki Monkey

Monkey!

Some monkeys were a bit too slow..

Dead Monkey

We went out for some walks in the jungle, which looked like this,

Jungley

Few twists and turns, voila rucksack

and then it rained and it looked like this,

This is why they call it the rain forest

Which led to my camera getting a bit wet, which led to photos like this,

doh. boo.

We went swimming in the lagoon at sunset, see that, thats me jumping into the Amazon! How cool is that!

Thats me that is, and thats the amazon! Kinda

just perty

and again

Moon. River.

and went fishing for piranhas (for me, slightly too close to where we had been swimming, I don't care what assurances thie guide gives - I remember those tarzan films). One of the guides caught a piranha, but that was a bit small but then one of the guys on the trip caught one big enough to have for tea, but I think he was cheating and using the force... (cultural ref for 80% I reckon)

run away

run away quickly

There is another

We went out on night hikes to see the bugs and the Caiman's (or to be precise Caiman, plus lots of eyes that disappeared when we came along)

Big bug

We went to see the Shaman, but I was a bit disappointed that he didn't do Ebeneezer Goode or any of the classics in fact (cultural reference that maybe 20% of you will get...). Although he did tell us that he had cured someone with paralysis, cancer and had sent the cure for AIDS to the US, busy guy though no matter how much he shook his leaves at me and chanted, my dodgy elbow didnt seem to improve.

We saw huge spiders webs, luckily it was the webs that were huge rather than the spiders, its kinda a spider city where everybody pitches in to spin a bit here and there and voila, Web City.

lorra lorra spiders

We saw some cool nests and colonies of stuff like Marching Wasps that warn you very loudly and in no uncertain terms to ¨BACK AWAY FROM THE NEST NOW!¨ and a load of leaf cutter ants, heading to make their burrow. Though was slightly surprised to note that the ants were not in fact marching two by two or three by three or in any discernible order in fact...(cultural ref, 10%).

the ants went marching...

Anacondas.

Big Snake!

May have been here at some point.

I think the coolest thing we saw was a little bird asleep in a tree with a small young Boa Constrictor right behind it. We hung around for about 10 mins wondering if the snake was going to strike, wondering if he could fit the bird down its pretty narrow gob. Clearly the snake was wondering the same, as we went off to see some other sruff and an hour or so later when we came back he still seemed to be deciding. Next morning the bird was gone but the snake was still there, we're guessing a happy ending for the bird as there was no discernible massive bulge in the snake. Go birdy. Anyway, managed to get a pretty good shot of it I think you'll agree...

award winning photography

So after a journey of three hours canoe, three hours mini bus and 7 hours big bus I got back to Quito about 1 this morning. The big bus ride unfortunately ruined by the absolutely freezing weather on the way back and the fact that they decided to entertain us by showing the classic film ¨Little Man¨! (film ref - maybe three of you, anybody else who has seen it, but does not have the excuse of being stuck on a bus at the time, hang your head in shame). Thats now three times I've nearly had to sit through it. Mercifully I slept through most of it.

So what else. I´m in Quito til tomorrow to do some research online, if anyone happens to know what percentage of Cloud Forest in Ecuador has been lost in the last 50 years, could you let me know. Would be dead handy. And any info on Pachaco, Tangare, Cedro trees would be great aswell.

Watched the footie from London this morning, ooh it looks a tad chilly back there.

If anyone wants the random references explained. Go to Wikipedia - your already on the internet.

Think I'm gonna have a cup of tea now. Feel like I've earned it.