The northern jungle territories......
Trip Start
Aug 28, 2004
1
54
65
Trip End
Aug 2005
Cuybena,
Ecuador
Monday, May 16, 2005
A little while later he returns with a guy not yet our guide and we are loaded onto a local bus. We have the delight of seeing a guy ride off (as arranged) with our backpacks for storage. Both being about 17 kilos now, he is on a small motorbike and has one on his back and one one his handle bars. One of those where´s the camera? Oh too late moments!!
After following an oil pipe for 5 hours we are off the bus, and onto a large dug out canoe with outboard
1 little guy
. We have it explained that we (the bus ) is late and do a 3 hour trip in two hours. At high speed we see many exotic birds screetching for cover and submerged logs that are narrowly avoided at the last moment. Finally we arrive and are now in Primary Amazonian forest. In a small clearing we find a few lovely cabanas, one will be ours for the next five days.All in all the five days was not exactly what we haD been expecting, yes we did see beautiful birds of many colours, camen crocs,monkeys, some very strange and large rodents and huge spiders, bugs and tarantula's, plus the highlight, Pink freshwater dolphins; but I couldnt help feeling that we saw more
wildlife up close in Central America, especially Costa Rica.
Other high lights including meeting Timor and his family from Finland, beating our guide at the blowing the poision dart competion (althogh he did make it) watching Heike doing a pathetic attempt at swinging "Jane" like on a vine. The hikes through the jungle were as you'd expect, very dense with 300 year old trees interwoven with a massive diversity of plant life. To which our guide gave us the local names and latin ones of which i remember none. He also showed how to make fire from sap and a tree you could smoke which kept away the mossies. Unfortunatly it did not keep away the bloody large ants that fell into my Tee shirt, and bit me to buggery, and I'm sure were responsible for me spending the next 24 hours on or near the toilet which is how I will remember the Amazon.
I almost forgot one day we went Phirana fishing in our paddle, dug out canoes, which Heike as it turned out was a dab hand at. On catching one you flicked it into the boat while it trys to bite everything with its huge teeth. The idea is you grab it behind its head, but not when your intended has just flicked it into your groin area (If she doesn't want kids, there are more subtle ways of expressing yourself!).
For anyone tarvelling up this way, we recommend ExploreSierra Tours, or rainbow tours as we´ve done tours with both and had good times....
