Swimming with the fishes (piranhas and caymen that is)

3-6 May 2013

For the Amazon and Galapagos, I was going to simply post some amazing (even if I say so myself) photos I took of the animals and landscapes there, but Chris pooh-poohed the idea, so I'll add some words (and hopefully work out how to post photos, too).

Our Amazon tour, booked through the Happy Gringo tour company (lame name, I know), was very well organised. The Sacha Lodge rep met us at Quito airport, gave us personalised luggage tags and our boarding passes, and checked our luggage in before seeing us through customs. The reps in Coca met us at the airport, fed and watered us, then ushered us onto a motorised canoe, which took about 1.5 hours to deliver us to the lodge.

The canoe ride there and back was a mini-adventure in itself. We criss-crossed the Napo River, a tributary of the Amazon River that is wide but not too deep in the dry season (which we are in), avoiding the shallows. Along the way it was mostly jungle landscape - trees and bushes and vines. There was also the occasional oil refinery, noticeable because of the tall chimneys shooting flames, and the ugly rusty machinery and work trucks littering the shore. A sad sight on an otherwise picturesque landscape.

The guides gave us ponchos to wear to protect us from the boat spray and intermittent showers. But sitting towards the middle, where the spray was worst, we managed to get fairly soaked on the way there (and back). This was only made better when on the way back, despite our getting fairly wet again, a rather rude, snobby couple who had annoyed us were sitting at the front and copped the worst of the drenching. Chris called it the highlight of his trip. I called it Karma...

We spent almost four days exploring this stunning part of the Ecuadorean Amazon, based at a rather idealistic lodge. We lived in a plush private wooden hut, surrounded by tropical plants and flowers, with butterflies, monkeys and all kinds of unusual wildlife playing outside. I would go back in a heartbeat, and stay longer next time without question.

Our guide was Mike, a 50-something Bavarian German who had met and fallen in love with an Ecuadorean woman with a young daughter on his travels in the region 20 years earlier. She was recently divorced at the time and within a couple of years, they married and had two more children. She lives in Quito with the girls (and a grand daughter), while he takes various tours to pay the bills. Mike was an environmental engineer long before it was the cool thing to study, and ended up as a guide in this environmentally precious area, because there wasn't much call for his profession back then. He was sometimes brash and serious (usually when it came to preserving the environment, our safety and our enjoyment of the tour); mostly good humoured; and always very knowledgeable and happy to answer any questions we had (even though he'd probably answered them for hundreds of tourists before us). We both liked him immediately, but I think the others in our group - two older Australian couples - didn't warm to him so much, based on some of their tears.

When we arrived, we were told an outline of what to expect and how things work at lodge - including, vitally, to listen out for the rather loud native-sounding horn that signals meal times. The food in the lodge was spectacular and plentiful. Breakfasts - though always early at about 6am - included different cereals, yoghurts, tropical fruits, eggs any way you liked, meats (bacon, sausages etc), pancakes, pikelets, waffles, breads, cakes, tea, coffee, juices, water, and different jams, honey and other condiments. Lunches and dinners included soups (I'll be making veggie quinoa soup when I get home!), different salads, veggies, meats, rice, and at least three different huge cakes/desserts and fruit. We (I) always over indulged, but it's hard not to when the food is so good! There will be plenty more of me to love when I get home!

Early each morning, late each afternoon and each evening after tea we had an activity, where the aim was to spot various wildlife and plants, and experience the jungle. It was steamy and hot from around 11am until about 3pm, so this was generally to be our rest and relaxation time at the lodge, with lunch in between. At this time, Chris and I read and swam (and sometimes napped). We swam in the lake at the entrance to the lodge, with a huge variety of fish who we could only feel nibbling at the skin on our feet, but not see. These fish included piranhas, who we were assured only eat rotting flesh on dead animals and are nothing like the blood-thirsty beasts featured in Hollywood blockbusters! Lucky for us, the guides seemed to be right. The caymens live in the same lake too, but only venture out from dusk til dawn, when swimming isn't allowed, so they didn't bother us either. We were also warned not to wee in the lake, for fear of being attacked by a bug that is attracted to urine and enters your open urethra and eventually finds its way to your kidneys, where it causes all kinds of strife. I don't know if this threat was real or just a way of preserving the environment, but it worked!

During the days, we went on canoe rides down nearby streams, thick with jungle buzzing with various birds and insects, including beautiful bright red dragonflies that moved so quickly I couldn't get a photo of them and hundreds of multicolored butterflies lazily floating on the breeze. We also saw big awkward turkey-like birds that move so slowly they are easy targets for hunters, but are known to taste so disgusting they are generally left safely alone.

We climbed up a 30-metre-plus-high kapok treehouse, spying on sloths, toucans (my favourites!), vultures and hundreds of birds I couldn't even begin to name, but which the avid bird watchers among us religiously ticked off in their bird bibles. On another, rather scary (for Chris), excursion, we crossed the tree top walk maybe 30 metres high above the jungle between rickety metal stands. Keeping your eye on the horizon and not looking down was key to making it across. We saw more birds and happily, some howler monkeys in the distance, snoozing and cuddling in the bare tree.

On the jungle floor, we watched cutter ants gather leaves to take into their nests, up to nine meters underground, where they'd mix the leaves with saliva to make food. If these ants deviate from the set path, they are immediately killed by the soldier cutter ants. Harsh punishment. We also saw surgeon ants with big pincers that can be used to clasp cuts in human flesh together so effectively it helps to stop them bleeding and you can't remove them. We kept well away from the big ant with a bite so fierce it can kill a baby and leave adults in excrutiating pain (as another guide discovered the day we arrived).

Our native guide, Bolivar, with eyes like a hawk, spotted the tiny poison dart frog, the poison from which is used by local tribes to kill monkeys for food and enemies for protection. He picked it up and held it on display for us to photograph before releasing it. He also spotted four of the most adorable monkeys I have ever seen, sheltering high up in a hole in a palm, watching us pass below; baby turtles crossing through undergrowth next to the path we followed; and lizards the size of my little finger perching on leaves the same colour as their skin. And everywhere we went, there were masses of spider webs, great funnels of silk, spun so they connected, housing what Mike told us were 'social spiders' - spiders who purposely build their homes next to one another, reliant on one another for survival. At a guess, there were maybe 20 or more spiders living closely, symbiotically, in one complex.

Bolivar also told us about native medicines, such as the turtle plant that relieves diarrhoea. A tall plant with broad green leaves, it's called a turtle plant because as far as the natives know, turtles don't get diarrhoea! We saw native ginger and garlic plants, which the Amazonians apparently use for the same medicinal and culinary purposes as we use our ginger and garlic.

Mike and Bolivar pointed out the rather mysterious, fairytale-like 'walking palms', which fascinate me. These incredible palm trees have roots that stretch down in a cone shape from midway up their trunk. These roots enable the trees to 'walk' up to 10 metres across the jungle floor, chasing the sun to aid growth. They are straight out of the 'Lord of the rings'! There were also stunning varieties of brightly coloured, flowering bromiliads, baby kapok trees, and lush, leafy ferns growing everywhere, on the jungle floor on fallen trees and rocks, and nesting in tree trunks and the uppermost branches of the tallest kapok trees.

The lodge keeps a butterfly house, where they breed butterflies to sell to people all around the world, selling tens of thousands of dollars worth of pupae a month. We visited the tourist section, where you can see the pupae in various stages of development and grown butterflies feasting on flowers and fruit in the vast enclosure (each butterfly generally only eats one plant or fruit so they cater to all the types they breed). They had maybe 10 butterfly varieties on show, with the most incredible being a butterfly with the spitting image of an owl's face and snake's head on its folded wings. One of each on each wing! How on Earth the butterfly evolved over time to replicate these to a photographic quality image is amazing and beyond my comprehension!

Each night, we followed the precedent we set on the first night - sitting in the bar drinking delicious cocktails. Generally, everyone else seemed to go to bed early and sober, so we were usually the only ones there. In addition to this, our second night featured a jungle walk, using torches to spot miniature frogs, cicadas, baby birds and big, hairy tarantulas in the jungle right near our rooms. The tarantulas were especially amazing, because you hear so much about them, so to see them in nature - up close and personal - is pretty special. Mike told us they aren't that harmful - their bite feels just like a bee or wasp sting. Based on that, I can't help feeling they get a bad rap (although they do look rather intimidating).

On the third evening, our (my) usual cocktails preceded a big group BBQ, at which some of the guides made speeches and we met some more of the staff. We then went on a short canoe ride, on which we were swooped by and saw loads of bats, circling and darting through the jungle. We also saw a few caymans out swimming.

The next morning, before we left the lodge, we visited the parrot wall. The parrots go here to sober up and detox from eating too much fruit. Simply, it's an orange-coloured wall down the river Napo, where the birds eat chunks of dirt that is full of minerals and other goodness to counteract their being drunk on fruit. If only a human hangover was that simple to fix!

Our airport trials continued when on the way back to Quito, we ran into a minor hiccup at security. Chris' ginormous spray can of hairspray had concerned the guards so much they flagged his already checked-in bag and we, with help from a Sacha Lodge guide, had to explain what it was (e.g. not a bomb). They then let us board and we quietly went on our way, to prepare for the next leg of our trip - the Galapagos islands.