,The Amazon Rainforest
Our family spent January 29 – March 2 2002 in the rainforest of Ecuador. The scariest part of the trip was getting on the bus here at the Quito bus station where there are 400 buses that pull through this station every hour. We arrived about 5:30 a.m. so not that many people were there. We bought toilet paper for $.10 to use on the bathrooms before we left, knowing we would not be stopping for 3 hours, which was halfway to a town called Tena, the beginning of the jungle trip. The bus picked people up and let people off all the way. It was a very long ride between bathroom breaks! It was a beautiful, lush, windy downhill mountain dirt road most of the time. It was surprisingly cool until 30 minutes away from Tena, an El Oriente tourist town, the gateway to the deeper forest.
We were met by “taxi” drivers in white double cabbed, short bed trucks, and tour guides wanting our business. I felt kind of insecure.
We actually didn’t know where we were going to stay, so we had one take us around, and for a whole $4 each, we found somewhere we could sleep for the night. I wasn’t really comfortable there, but it was a bed—with a very cold shower.
Before going to bed, we went to a park across a suspended bridge to an island between two rivers. It was a kind of zoo that had lost its funding so it wasn’t kept up and some of the unguarded animals had been stolen. We saw some monkey swinging in the trees, some strange birds in cages, with toucans and different species of parrots, and other jungle animals. The part I liked best was the climb into the canopy up a big jungle tower where we could see, through our binoculars, several species of multicolored tanagers and other exotic birds.
The next morning, we hopped in the back of one of the taxis and drove the 30-45 minutes to Misahuai, the rendezvous point, where we had breakfast then met our host. We also encountered more mischievous monkeys in the trees on the beach, which would have taken anything from us that was loose. They tried to nab Nik’s hat and would have; had it not been tied on. It was pretty funny watching them swing from the branches and scramble down the branches chattering. Actually, monkeys can be dangerous with their sharp teeth and fingernails. Those would be the last monkeys we saw.
One of my most favorite parts of the trip was the motorized canoe trip down the Napo River. There is nothing like it that I can compare it to. On this beautiful sunny day, we were each given a poncho as we boarded a 20-25 passenger canoe with a thatched roof. I thought, “Why, it’s not even raining.” Soon, we hit a wall of water falling from the sky. Then I knew why. We quickly learned why it is called a rainforest, especially Allen and Nathan who were in the front of the boat. We saw a lot of black vulture-like birds, which I have forgotten the name, beautiful white egrets, Kingfishers, and other birds. You have to spend a lot of time in a forest if you want to see animals, most are nocturnal, so we saw mostly birds.
The 2 1/2-hour trip took only 1 hr. 45 minutes when we pulled up to the Yachana Lodge, which would be our home for the next 3 days. It was built by a foundation to help the indigenous make a living off the land so they would not move into the cities and to keep them from clearing more of the primary forest. Yachana means, “a place of learning,” in Quechua. It had several rows of guest rooms, other rooms, and a common dining room and kitchen. We had two suites one with 4 beds, 1 double, and one with 3. The windows were only screens. Each suite had a hammock, of course.
We ate meals in the dining room at 7:00, 1:00, and 7:00. We always had our choice of eggs for breakfast with fruit, homemade rolls with real butter and homemade jams made with fruits from the jungle, juice made with fruits from the jungle, and hot milk we could mix with chocolate sauce to make hot chocolate. The sauce was made with cocoa beans grown on Yachana land. Lunch and dinner always began with soup, no meat, followed by rice and vegetables to put on the rice or as a side dish, we had fried chicken once, rolls with butter and jam, juice, and some kind of dessert. My favorite dessert was a banana drizzled with the same chocolate sauce. We always looked forward to meals because they were so good, and we didn’t have to cook them or clean up.
Some of the 3-day activities were a visit to the shaman, who cleansed us all because we all bring bad air along with us, by putting several significant things of which I can’t remember, in a small fire to make smoke and while blowing tobacco smoke and waving the other smoke all around each of us we were “cleansed.” Although it was interesting, and I usually like unusual things, I felt like taking a shower when we were done. At least he didn’t spit alcohol all over us like some of them do. The coolest part of that visit was seeing one of those huge Kapok buttress trees, being ferried across a rushing stream in a dugout canoe and seeing several authentic artifacts the natives use.
We visited the chocolate factory where they make sweetened shredded cocoa bean chunks they are trying to market for an income. It was interesting, but the cocoa pod to me was the most interesting. We sucked on the fresh cocoa pods. On the outside of each cocoa bean was a white sweet sticky yummy pulp. Look it up in an encyclopedia.
We were going to go pan for gold on a night hike, but because of the rain, we couldn’t. The river must have risen 3 feet while we were there. At night the rain just poured on the roof. During the rainy season the river rises about 10 ft. February is the beginning of the rainy season.
We walked through several forests, a secondary forest that had been cut and grown back with secondary growth where they had planted banana trees, papaya, coffee beans, cocoa trees, and other things to sell and eat. We walked through a very impressive primary forest never cut down, but my favorite place was the second time we went into the primary forest on the other side of the river a ways upstream. We were walking through a plantation Yachana owned, we ate bananas, swung on vines. But when we entered the primary forest everything changed. Maybe it was when Nik started running off into the forest, the guide, Jorge, called him back and said we have now entered the primary forest and not to go off the path, that our mood changed. He said there are poisonous snakes only in the primary forests that will wrap around trees, possibly next to the trail, and strike out and bite you. So, Jorge had to go first to look for them. When we entered, I looked around in awe. I felt a wonder, a deep respect and reverence for that forest. In real life, it was awesome in every sense of the word. You could feel that everything was old, very old. We saw the giant emergent tree, the Kapoks, with those huge buttress roots. They were at least 200 years old. They were covered with vines bigger around than Allen’s thigh, hanging vines called lianas. There were giant philodendrons, which we grow as houseplants in Idaho, climbing everywhere with huge woody stocks way up into the canopy. There were bromeliads of all kinds, breadfruit trees, and a tree with the largest seedpod in the world, the phytelephas palm tree, which produces a tagua seed pod as big as an oversized basketball, so heavy you would die if it fell on your head. Natives carve dried seeds into effigies and sell them as souvenirs.
By this time my senses were overloaded. I must return to a primary forest and experience more.
Some animals we saw were: 4 toucans flying, lion ants, a poison tree frog, the only thing Nate said he wanted so badly to see. He got to hold it in his hand! There were leaf cutter ants, termites, a caecilian, which is a beautiful bluish-gray and white banded snake-like amphibian about 14 inches long, a nightcrawler about 16 inches long, butterflies and pokey caterpillars, huge armadillo holes, a small tarantula, other birds, mostly birds, fireflies. A boa supposedly lived in the eaves of the lodge. Rats and marmosets were said to live in nearby trees, but I never had a chance to see them. And we got to see a huge palm grub that the indigenous eat raw. Animals are very hard to spot in the rainforests. I knew I wouldn’t see many animals but those I saw were pretty neat. Carl discovered most of the things we saw. (When he was a little boy we would take walks around the block looking for and examining things. We never got very far.)
Carl was the discoverer, Alyson was sick with a weak stomach but recovered and didn’t miss much and enjoyed the trip, Nik was crazy, and Nate cried when we had to leave, but vowed to return. From 30 feet away, Nate hit the target, grapefruit on a stick, with dart he blew from a dart blowgun. The first two glanced off but the third shot stuck smack in the middle. Heidi and Ben were glad to eat and see the fireflies and other animals. We all loved the boat ride.
The fourth day we ate at 6 a.m. then hopped into the river taxi for the river people, all the way back to the canoe dock. It was a wonderful ride, though it was much longer upriver than down. We rode the one-hour bus ride back to Tena, then the 6 hours back to Quito.
Poor Nate was so in his element in the forest that he cried when we returned to OSSO House.
We did it!!! We built a walk-in diorama rainforest vision board in our house 2 ½ years ago. It worked! We made it to a real tropical rainforest!!! A dream come true!!!!! Halelujah!
