Jungle Introduction

This is the first installment of Michael's contribution. He said he would tackle the job of describing our four days in the jungle.

From Michael:

Breakfast in lago agrio outside hotel d'mario

Our bus back from Mindo arrived in Quito around 7:30 PM and we caught another delicious dinner at the Community Hostel while picking up our bags. We then headed to CarpeDM Adventures, where the very friendly Canadian-Ecuadorian owner Paul met us and gave us a lift to the bus station. The overnight bus trip was 8 hours long and took us to Lago Agrio is in the northeast part of Ecuador. Lago Agrio is a bit of a grungy oil town that 48,000 people call home. Interestingly, its official name is Nuevo Loja, though no one calls it that and nearly all maps bear its nickname. The bus ride was long, not particularly comfortable and we found it difficult to sleep. We arrived in Lago Agrio around 6 AM fairly beat.

Michael in the back of the motorcycle truck

Our best experience in Lago Agrio was our first one. We took a “motorcycle truck”  from the bus station to the Hotel D’Mario where our guide was to meet us at 9. It was literally a motorcycle with a mini truck-bed and two wheels welded on to the back end where you would typically expect the back wheels to be. We threw our bags in the back and clambered into the bed ourselves. Sketchy perhaps, but it was pretty enjoyable to see the looks we got. I’m sure two gringos with overstuffed bags weighing down the whimpering little engine of the contraption was fairly comical.

When the guide arrived, we had another couple hours’ bus ride to the entrance of the Cuyabeno Reserve (or more accurately, the Reserva Producción Faunística Cuyabeno). We had a short introduction to the park rules from one of the rangers at the station, which was all in Spanish. This was a harbinger of things to come, as Andrea and I were to spend a good part of the next several days trying to catch as much of Spanish explanations as we could. The guides and workers in our little jungle camp spoke far less English (i.e. virtually none) than advertised. We were fortunate to have a truly wonderful group of fellow travelers. Several of our compatriots spoke both English and Spanish well and were exceedingly kind in helping translate when we needed some help understanding the guide’s explanations. Just as helpful was the fact that a couple of our fellow travelers spoke about the same amount of Spanish as Andrea and I, so we were able to share the load of asking “huh?” We were nine travelers in total: Andrea and myself; Lars, a Swedish-American fisheries professor at Cornell University in New York; his son Pelle, a whitewater rafting guide who worked out of Ecuador or North Carolina, depending on the season; Nassima, a Paris native who was in the middle of a year-long around the world adventure and enjoyed her first trip to the rain forest so much that she turned around and came right back; Juan and Valentina, a Uruguayan physician and architect respectively, with whom we ended up sharing more adventures after leaving the jungle, and Diego and Gabriella. Diego was originally from Argentina and currently lives in Mexico, where Gabriella is from.

From the small ranger station, we loaded our bags and some supplies into a long wooden canoe with a small outboard motor and headed down the Rio Napo into the rainforest. Along the way we saw many interesting species of birds, including herons, kingfishers, parrots, and more. We also stopped in two different spots to observe different species of monkeys and saw many brightly colored butterflies. One brilliant blue species was particularly common. After 3 hours and around 25 or 30 kilometers we arrived at our jungle lodge, had a meal, and went out once again looking for wildlife.