Into the Jungle

On our return to Quito we set about booking a trip to the jungle.  Like most of the tourist trips on offer in Ecuador, there are plethora of operators all claiming to offer the "definative unique" experience.  We decided to go with the most honest: "The tours are all the same you just stay in different hut complex".

So armed with our tickets we left Quito on another bus trip. This time though I had the misfortune to be seated in the aisle under the sky light - this was fine until to started raining and the window started leaking. I spent the next couple of hours sat inside the bus in my waterproofs getting drenched.  However this wasn't the worst of it - further down the road the rain had caused a landslide that had swept several tonnes of mud onto the road. Our coach trip ground to a halt.  This was evidently no big deal for the locals though, and within a couple of hours a JCB had cleared the road and we were on our way again.


Our destination was Lago Agrio and we met the first of our group at a local hotel before getting into an even more decrepit bus to head to the river  and start of the trip proper. The group consisted of a German couple about our age -she did drama therapy for prisoners and he organised some big music festival. They were both very nice and to our shame spoke excellent English. Next was a German high school philosophy teacher taking a sabbatical; a Canadian girl travelling alone; and Aussie/Danish couple, and finally an older Aussie /Japanese couple.  All in all, a pretty decent bunch.


At the river-port after the usual South American permit bureaucracy (I've got no idea why so may people need to know your age and occupation?) We boarded our canoe, donned some vintage life jackets,and with Juan (our guide) standing in the bows like some-kind of ancient figurehead, we sped off down the river.

Safely out of sight of the Ranger station, the life jackets came off as our driver opened up the outboard and took the racing line through the muddy brown river bends. Submerged logs and overhanging foliage were expertly dodged at high-speed as we wove our way through the greenery. Given the screaming outboard I wasn't quite sure how we were going to see any wildlife. However this was where Juan came into his own. Balanced on the nose of the canoe he began to make a high pitched whistling noise Like somekind of crazy human echo location. Within minutes he was pointing out birds and monkeys hidden within the dense green foliage.

Our base for the tour was a collection of stilted huts arranged around a raised circular walkway connected with a large covered eating area and a ramp leading down to the jetty. In the centre of was a large thatched roundhouse equipped with a pictorial guide to Stockholm and half a dozen hammocks.

 

This was a fully loaded tour.  We were up early paddling around the lagoon looking for monkeys  and sunrise, then back out after dinner chasing cayman and sunsets. In  between we donned wellies and ponchos to go stomping around in the mud looking for anacondas, which considering they can grow to upwards of 9 metres might not have been the most sensible idea. Safe to say that aside from an obscenely large anaconda skin, the only thing that we managed to find in the mud was Marrisa, who managed to execute a spectacular medal winning slow motion, arse first dive into the mud.

On the way back we saw a troop of tiny monkeys moving through the high canopy who were drawn toward the waters edge by Juan's piercing whistle. We stopped here for a swim. Well, Kirsty, Berne and I swam - everybody else stayed on the canoe - which didn't seem like such a bad idea when we went back to the same spot that evening for piranha fishing!

 

This was frighteningly easy: attach bloody chunk of meat to hook; splash water with end of rod and wait. Within a minute you have one of these vicious little buggers impaled on the hook. The problem with catching the first one was that I was the first to unhook the thing without losing a finger. That was it - proven ability, I then had to repeatedly risk my digits to take everybody elses off.


Having seen the requisite quota of monkeys and birds, we taken up river for the cultural segment of the tour. This involved visiting a local village where we were accosted by "nacho" the monkey who proceed to climb over everybody in a very endearing monkey like way, performing all kinds of tricks for food and treats which culminated with him sitting on Marisa's lap during lunch masturbating ferociously.

The most incredible aspect of the visit was watching one of the villagers preparing a local dish. She dug some kind of potato/tuber out of the ground and then cut a branch off of it and pushed it back into the ground. The soil is so amazingly fecund that this will apparently just grow into a new plant!

An evening in the jungle wasn't complete without a spot of Cayman hunting.  Essentially you go out in a very small fragile canoe and then try and get as close as possible to a 9 metre crocodile and hope it will let you take pictures of it rather than drag you underwater for the death roll. Despite their enormous size, Caymans are quite shy creatures who lie just beneath the surface of the water with only their eyes protruding above the waterline.  That said it was still quite alarming when we got too close to one which bolted with a ferocious flick of it tail nearly up ending the canoe!

On our last full day we took a walk through the jungle which is essentially a vast steaming green maze. The canopy towers overhead, branches and leaves interlocking to form a giant green ceiling, that blocks out the sky and retains the dense humid air, like a giant greenhouse.  Underfoot are a thousand years of leaf litter and foliage in a perpetual state of decay that forms a treacherous carpet around the roots and trunks. All around you it drips and hums, pulsing with an abundance of insect and animal life: living, breathing, eating and being eaten.

We left the jungle as we had entered it: at speed as our canoe navigated the twisting brown ribbon of water.