Cuyabeno River. Guacamayo Ecolodge (photos)

March 20, 2012.  6:38pm.  Cuyabeno River. Guacamayo Ecolodge.

Last night I posted while we waited for our laundry.  No problems there, it was ready on time and fresh and clean.  It was so nice to take a proper shower and put on clean dry clothes (even if the shower smelled like sewer).  Then we packed up what we hadn’t left with Sonia at the travel agency and headed to Esmeralda bus station.  Our overnight bus to Agro Lagrio was pretty swank.  Plush seats that reclined right back.     And I had even prepared a makeshift pillow but putting my shawl, my pyjama bottoms and my towel in a pillow case.  I was set.   As soon as the lights were out, so was I.  But the road was very windy and I swear it was gravel & dirt for much of the way.  Certainly, if it was paved, it wasn’t paved well.  So, it was much like being on the boat.  It was rocky and rolly.  Then to add insult to injury, it started to pour rain.  Not an issue, you assume since we were inside a bus.  But you are wrong, so wrong.  My window leaked and every time we took a left curve (often) an arch of water would spray off the window and into my face.  Refreshing. 

But we made it to the ugly oil town of Agro Lagrio at around 6am.  Our pick up for the camp was at 9:30 am at a hotel in the centre of town.  So we and all of the other tourists from the bus invaded the hotel’s restaurant and planted ourselves there for three and a half hours.  It’s ok, I spent $2.60. 

We got picked up with 6 other people who completely ignored us on the bus.  They all spoke French and never even threw us a glance.  I was thrilled to be a part of such an awesome group.   One woman seemed particularly off putting as she didn’t even speak to her own group.  But then, after more than an hour, her boyfriend turned to her and said (in English) “I just told them your name is Krista.”  So she was a lone English speaker in her group and they weren’t even speaking to her.  We cornered her by the bathrooms when the bus finally stopped.  I said that I noticed she spoke English and that I was glad we would have someone to speak to in our group.  She told us that the rest of them speak English too but that ‘they just don’t’.  This poor woman has been travelling with her boyfriend and his sister and brother in law and none of them speak to her in English.  She said this trip has been a nice way to learn to live internally.  So sad.  I can’t believe she hasn’t ditched the lot of them.  The other two Frenchies are not travelling with her crowd but the boys all got on like a house on fire and talked non-stop for the entire trip.  Anyway, we promised her we would speak to her in English that she can understand (she is American).

The bus ride took two hours before we reached the river.  Then we had a bit of lunch and got into a very long motorized canoe.  That was super cool. It was almost two hours to camp on the canoe.  Lots of birds.  We saw two new toucans today.  But the best one was later in the day, a Hoatzin.  Picture to follow but it is like a crazy forest tree chicken. 

This isn't our boat but it is basically the same.

Jungle



Anahinga

William, our guide on the first day.

More Jungle

Anyway.  As we were heading toward camp, the guide, William, handed out our rain ponchos and said it might rain.  Of course, two seconds later, it starts to pour.  We all whipped on our ponchos but it was raining so hard that the rain was coming in the neck and down the sides, soaking my shirt and pants.  It was pelting so hard, I had to put my face downward.  Fortunately, the ponchos were big enough to cover our small bags we were all carrying.  And they had tarped our big bags.  During the pelting rain, Val turns to me and said I had a cricket on my head.  When she tried to brush it off when the rain died down a bit.  But it just jumped to her head.  And then into her hood and onto her face.  I had to grab it off her eye at that point and flick it off the boat.  No stowaways allowed, at least not face crawling ones. 

The bug is in there somewhere, obscured by raindrops. 

There he is

It's raining. Or as William says "Welcome to the jungle".

Some Sights from our Canoe Trip to Camp

Anaconda

Monkeys jumping across the river

Aren't they cute?

Soon it stopped raining and we continued onto the camp (not that we stopped when it was raining, we actually sped up, but we were able to look at stuff again). We had our little debrief, water here, breakfast at 8, blah blah. Then we got our cabin. Toucan Hut. Two bunk beds (we both took the bottom) but they assure us that we get it to ourselves. And a private bathroom. But no roof. Just a steep thatched cover about 5 feet above the walls and 25 feet above the centre of the room. The cabin is perched on stilts over the river and the floor has spaces between the boards. So, as you can imagine, there are mosquitos. I am fully slathered in DEET again. But it is so much cooler here than Puerto Lopez so our nets will be fully used as well. The cabins are all connected by raised walkways. There is a communal dining area. There is a tarantula living in the thatch over our table. Really, it is as big as a robin. Fortunately, it didn’t move much.

Walkway from the dock to the cabins and dining room.  Our first view of Guacamayo Ecolodge.

view from the bird tower, our cabin is the one top centre.

View from our deck (notice the rain).

Our deck and hammock

Val enjoying the dining room hammock.

 We had a 90 minute break before our next outing so I had a little lie down.  I cannot tell you how excited I am to have a bed.  A real, full sized, not moving, no damp clothes in the corner, I can sit up in it, bed.  Hallelujah. (I am in it as I write this, can you tell?).

Our afternoon outing was to go to the fresh water lagoon for a swim.  Val is so pus ridden on her leg that she doesn’t dare swim in this brown water.  And I never want to wear wet clothes again unless there is a chance of a shark encounter, so I also declined.  But we both went along for the ride.  More birds. And an anaconda.  And four species of monkeys (in the morning and afternoon).  At one point, there were squirrel monkeys crossing the river by flinging themselves from one tree to the next on the other side right over our heads.  It was fun, there must have been 25 or more of them.  We all held our breath when the mothers with their tiny clinging babies went flying, but everyone made it, of course.  That particular couple of minutes was crazy.  There was another monkey species in the next tree and a toucan nearby.  I didn’t know where to look. 

When we got to the lagoon, it started to rain.  The lagoon is huge.  William told us during the dry season, it doesn’t even exist.  But when the rains start, it fills up in a matter of hours.  Our boat driver’s name is Jefferson.  He looks like he is 15.  When we got to the middle of the lagoon, there were some other boats.  William whipped off his shirt and jumped in.  I guess no dock.  Then Jefferson jumped in.  Two of the Frenchies took a quick dip.  I am guessing because they felt they should because they got right back in the canoe.  Then the whitey-tourists (us and the other boats) huddled under our ponchos and watched the Ecuadorian guides play in the water.  It was quite funny.   I was sitting there, wondering why I was sitting there, in the pouring rain.  Finally William got back in the canoe and I thought, excellent, let’s go back to camp.  But then we all watched Jefferson swim around and play with an inner tube for another 15 minutes.  I thought we were never going to leave.  There weren’t even any birds to look at.  Just other canoes full of tourists under ponchos watching their guides swim, and I imagine, also wondering why they were there.  Eventually William yelled at Jefferson that it was time to go.  Yay.  He got into the boat and started the engine.  We moved closer to the other canoes.  Then the engine turned off.  Val looked back and said “he’s back in the water” just as I saw him float by on the inner tube.  I laughed so hard I was crying (although hard to tell with all of the rain) it was so ridiculous.  I guess he really is just a 15 year old kid. 

Our first trip to the lagoon

Watching Jefferson play, I think we were wetter than him even though he was in the water.

Please, Dear God, let us go back to camp. 

Finally, finally we left the lagoon.   And happened upon Amazonian pink dolphins, who are currently gray, on our way back to camp.  Very cool.  No pictures.  They aren’t like the Sea World dolphins who jump up on the shore and pose for you.  These ones just skimmed the surface a bit, although Val saw a snout.  We met a guy from Montreal at dinner who said we have seen more in our one afternoon than he has seen in his four days.

The Hoatzin

(AKA Crazy Forest Chicken; AKA Stinky Turkey)

The coolest bird ever

Back to camp (uh oh, I see a recurring theme) where we had dinner.  Which I was able to eat.  Very exciting.  Val and I are going to switch groups.  The Frenchies are going with William and we are going with the English crowd tomorrow with another guide, a woman whose name I can’t remember.  Val and I are bad influences and have convinced Krista to come with us – come to the dark side, the English speaking dark side. 

Now I am in my glorious bed.  So, good night.  I plan to sleep tight.  Or at least sleep. 

March 21.  9:19 pm.  Cuyabena River.   Guacamayo Camp.

Oh, I slept and slept.  10 wonderful hours.  I don’t think I even moved.  (I am back in my bed fort now and still LOVE it).  And then for a while before breakfast I had a bit of a post sleep rest in my porch hammock and watched the monkeys run around in the trees overhead.  Have I mentioned that I like the jungle. 

We met our new group at breakfast.  I call them the super models.  There are two groups of three.  Two women and a man from England and Norway and two men and a woman from Scandinavia and South Africa.  All of the women are so beautiful, they literally could be models.  Two of the men are also very pretty. The third guy, the South African is odd and not beautiful.  We like this group.  They are all very funny although the odd guy (no one introduces themselves here?) took a bit of getting used to but now we see his dry dry humour. 

After breakfast, we went for a hike in the ‘Saladera’, the dry land.  We had to wear rubber boots.  As you can imagine, I was not too excited to go for a hike in rubber boots but I put in my orthotics and away we went.  As it turned out, the shoe wear was the least of my worries.  We took the canoe to the first dry land I have seen since we left the bus yesterday.  Our new guide, Sulema, is very good.  And speaks English, unlike William (although, we suspect William is a better spotter but not a better explainer).  She gave us lots of lessons on trees and bugs etc.  We only saw one new bird, a Screaming Piha.  It isn’t very pretty to look at but as the name implies, it screams so it moves up a notch or two on the interesting list.

Sulema

Val liked the bugs

We walked for an hour or so and the trail was a bit muddy but I was wondering why we were wearing the huge rubber boots.  But then we came to the low part of the ‘drylands’, a misnomer if ever there was one.  How do I describe the ‘swamp’ area.  Well, it was a swamp so I guess ‘swampy’ will do.  Lots of deep, standing, very muddy water.  With small tree trunks laid out in the water, usually fully or partially submerged, that you are supposed to use for walking.  Or in my case, for getting to the middle of the deepest bit and then falling in.  Yup.  Up to my waist in muddy water.  Val has a picture which I am sure will be as hilarious as it is unflattering.  We all had a good laugh.  I managed to keep my camera above water so no harm done.  Although my new pants were saturated.  And there were big mud clumps all over me.  A pair of undies and a tank top died for that little adventure.  But I saved the pants.  (The socks are on life support but I think I may just declare them dead and pull the plug in the morning). We had another half hour to walk back to the canoe.  That was squishy.  My backpack got a bit doused on the bottom too but nothing inside was affected so all is well.  And I pretty much destroyed the bench on the canoe as we travelled back to camp, and strangely, no one would sit with me. 

Here's me crossing a not-too-deep bit, just before I went in to the deep bit.

It is hard to see how filthy I am in this picture, but trust me, my pants were soaked through with mud.

Here are the super models swimming later that day (so you can see how beautiful they are)

Well, not everyone swam

Jefferson is his innertube again.



We stayed for the sunset

Back to camp where I took a shower and scrubbed my clothes.  Lunch and then a snooze in my hammock, followed by a nap in my bed.  It’s a hard life.  I actually got a bit of reading in too.  I think I only read two pages of my book on the Sulidae.  We also met a another resident of the dining hut, a boa constrictor.  Just a little one, but still.  Plus, the tarantula was on the move, running (slowly) along the rafters about 3 feet over our heads.  (At dinner, there was a frog too but we assume he will just be eaten by one of the resident predators so I didn’t get attached, but he was cute).

These are both TERRBLE pictures but it was dark

the Tarantula

The Boa Constrictor.

During this break, Val tended her legs.  I get to assist on all medical procedures performed on the porch.  Her right leg blistered up pretty good.  So, there has been some lancing with safety pins and then wrapping in gauze.  It is finally starting to look better.  The swelling has gone down and we can see that Val has an ankle again, so that must be good.  She is out of gauze now but the seeping has stopped, I think.  One of the flipper-ripped blisters on her foot is starting to look a bit infected but that will have to wait for Quito.  Plus, Val’s tummy is also not happy with her recent activities.  It started on the boat but hasn’t cleared up so Val is going to break down and take the Cypril tonight (Sp?  Antibiotics). 

At 4 in the afternoon, we went out on the canoe to look for wildlife and for another lagoon swim.  This time we saw lots of birds.  Of note:  Blue and Yellow Macaw (no picture) and a Tiger Heron (posing nicely so picture to follow).  And we saw another dolphin.  Then a bit of time at the lagoon.  This time it wasn’t raining (we were lucky today, it only rained while we were in camp for lunch) so it was more enjoyable to sit in the boat while Jefferson swam.  And some of the supermodels swam too.  We were there for the sunset which was unimpressive but nice.  After the sun set, we went Cayman hunting.  Caymans are crocodile things.  They hunt at night so it has to be dark-ish to find them. (But first we found a new Poutoo (long tailed).  I got a picture but it just looks like a stick.)  To find Caymans, you have to shine your light along the tree line to try to see them by their glowing eyes.  Unfortunately, no Caymans for us tonight. 

Some Birds

Other Critters

A squirrel monkey



A bad picture of a capuchin monkey

I can't remember what this one is, but it is black and very fluffy

The sloth, take my word since you can't actually see it.

tiny little bats

Sulema with her Piranha catch.

Dinner and bed.  Amen.

March 22.  10:36 pm.  Same place.

I am a bit drunk.  The Swedish/South African half of the super model troop brought their own rum to the camp so I had a few drinks after dinner.  Plus, I only have about 15 minutes left on my battery so I shall make this short and edit tomorrow. 

This morning, we went piranha fishing.  We didn’t catch anything but Sulema caught a lovely red piranha.  We were supposed to start our day at 6:30 am at the birding tower but it was raining.  we didn’t get going until after 10am.  We will try again tomorrow. 

In the afternoon we had our cultural portion of the Amazon.  We went to a local village and a woman made up Yucca bread which was very tasty with jam.  The kids were cute and I fed one of them bread (cassava) through the slats of our ‘meeting’ area.  We were basically penned in, not sure if to protect us from them or them from us.

The Village

The village dock with kids

All of the houses looked like this. 

Harvesting Yucca.

Cutting back the brush to find the tree with roots (those frond-y leaves are the yucca tree)

  

One of the strong young men pulling the roots out of the soft earth

The root, extracted.

then our lady used that huge knife to deftly remove the skin to get to the meaty interior

Peel off the skin

found, dug, peeled, ready for use (I am not going there).

 Then a Shaman dropped by to tell us his experiences.  Remind me to tell you about the British half of the super model troop going to the village tonight to take some sort of hallucinogenic drug with the Shaman.  It is supposed to induce visions and vomiting, not necessarily in that order.

Making Yucca Bread

First she cleans off the dirt (using dirty river water)

The fire heating up

Then she grates the roots (that big white thing to the right is a grater)

Then she smoothes the grated yucca into a woven wrap

then she twists it until every drop of liquid is extracted. 

then she breaks up the now powdery yucca into a flour like tecture.

Testingt the pan on the fire to make sure it is hot enough

Cooking the bread, it is like a big unrisen pancake

The finished product, ready for jam and eatin'

And sharing

waiting patiently for the rich tourists to leave a bite of leftovers

The Shaman

First he told us his story in the 'hut'

then a demo of healing outside.  It was getting dark so it is a bit blurry.

Back to the camp for dinner where we watched an epic showdown between the boa constrictor and the tarantula.  Well, it wasn’t that epic, they met at the corner over our table and then the spider sauntered away casually, as if he had already been thinking about going to the other side of the tent.  Then we all drank rum with two new people.  A New Zealander man and a South African woman (a couple) who work on yachts.  Also fun folks.  We are so glad not to be stuck with the Frenchies.  Poor Krista who ended up never coming with us on the English excursions.

Today we saw a sloth.  That was cool.  And more monkeys.  I tried to make a list of the monkey species we have seen but I can’t remember them all.  My computer is yelling at me.  No way to charge here.  Must go to sleep.  Rum is tiring.  

March 24.  7:08 pm.  Quito.

Yesterday was spent on the bus so I am posting a day late.  But first I should go back a bit and finish up the jungle adventure since I wasn’t too descriptive on Thursday. 

We finally found a cayman.  Quite the let down.  Just glowing eyes at the edge of the river.  Yawn.  It was quite far back to camp from the village and poor Jefferson had to bring us back in the pitch black of night.  He borrowed Val’s headlamp.  Which was fine, except then we could see all of the bugs that were whipping into our faces.  Now I know what it feels like to be the grill of a moving car on a Saskatchewan road at night.  Everyone kept blowing their noses to get the bugs out.  I must have gotten a dozen in my eyes and I was wearing my glasses. 

A quick recap of the English/Norwegians who went back to the village to experience taking the hallucinogenic drug with the Shaman.  They came back the next morning looking pretty rough.  Apparently the guy, Steve, had a very frightening experience and was convulsing for the first hour.  He could see demons pulling him toward hell.  The Shaman had to step in and wave leaves over him.  Which, Steve claims, worked.  The Norwegian girl, Carolina, saw a woman spirit over him protecting him.  They all say they had an amazing experience.  You couldn’t pay me to try that. 

The next morning, some of us met at 6:30 am on the bird tower.  No rain so it was great.  Lots of birds.  I was the only birder so the rest of them just wanted to see the same species of toucan over and over.  But I saw a new Trogon.  And the best bird in the world.  The Scarlett Macaw.  (Guacamayo, the name of the lodge is the Scarlett Macaw in Spanish).  We see them in pictures and movies and in pet stores.  But to see that magnificent bird flying over our camp was truly awesome.

Breakfast, a quick pack and then into the canoe to meet the bus back to Agro Lagrio.  Then onto the eight hour bus to Quito.  This time we took it during the daylight (the first four hours).  It was a bit terrifying.  Much of the road was gravel/dirt.  The curves were sharp and the drop offs steep.  At one point, we were on two tires, bounced to the other two before we stabilized.  Even the Ecuadorians looked a bit worried at that point.  Eight hours is too long on a bus.  Once we reached Quito, confusion reigned.  It turned out we were going to the south bus station which is an hour cab ride back to town.  But by the time we figured out what was happening, the area we were in was too sketchy to get off, so we went right to the bitter end.  We figured the cab would be no problem since it was now 11pm and the traffic was light. 

So, once we got off the bus, we found the taxi cue and jumped in the first one.  We were in and our bags in the truck when the driver tells us he will have to charge us $15 because of the heavy traffic.  We said no, but before we could get out, he yelled $12 at us and drove away from the curb.  So we were stuck.  But Val told him we would not pay $12.  The traffic was so light that what had taken over an hour previously took 25 minutes.  But what a long 25 minutes.  The cab driver turned out to be completely crazy.  Val’s professional opinion: drugs.  He ranted at us the whole time about the traffic and how heavy it is.  It was bizarre.  And a bit scary.   We finally reached our new hostel, Queen’s Hostal or Hostal de la Reina, depending of which sign you look at.

This is already too long so I will put today’s excitement on the next post. 

BTW, checked online today and see that the Air Canada strike has been quashed.  So, I guess back to work next week.  I know we are leaving soon because thoughts of work keep creeping into my brain.  For the first three and a half weeks, I forgot I had a job.

A second BTW.  I had hoped to get my pictures posted before I got back but the Wifi at this hotel is pretty weak.  It doesn't work in the room so I am sitting in the hall to post this.  so, pictures when I get back.