Ecuador's Amazon Rain Forest - Our 5 Day Tour

Our goal living in Cuenca is to visit the places in South America that we are interested in seeing, but especially Ecuador, our adoptive home.  We signed up for a five day tour with Terra Diversa Travel Company to visit the Ecuadoran Amazon Rain Forest.  The Amazon Rain Forest is considered the 'Lungs of the World'.  The mini-van picked us up early on Monday, June 3rd, for our small escorted tour.  Juan Munoz was our guide for this trip. We had traveled with him before, and just love his wealth of knowledge about Ecuador, its history, flowers, birds, plants & their healing properties, as well as the geology of the country.

There were only ten of us on the trip besides Juan.  Our first destination was the Paulte Dam, also known as the Daniel Palacios Dam, located northeast of Cuenca.  It is the largest hydroelectric dam in Ecuador and the country is very proud of it.  It was a long 4 hour drive to reach the dam, and we mainly traveled on a winding two lane road.  At one point the road had been washed away and there was construction so we waited in line to pass through the construction.

The dam is protected by the Ecuadoran Army and visitors are not just allowed in there.  We were provided a guide from the entrance until we departed the property.  We arrived at noon and we started with lunch in their cafeteria.  It was a buffet line and you just walked down and they started filling up your tray with dishes.

Now, the bowl of soup (top left) was excellent, there was also a bowl of fish soup (bottom left), called encebollo, that was interesting, but I didn't care for it.  Ed enjoyed it with hot sauce in it.  The most unusual thing for me was the popcorn and fried plantains on the plate; along with enough white rice to feed three men.  I used their hot sauce on my rice, it's the red sauce to the right of the rice on my plate.

After lunch, it was time for our guided tour of the hydro plant.  We had their top engineer as our guide.  The plant is built into the mountain and has six floors, which we got to tour ...no elevator!  The tour was very technical but I found it very interesting, but mostly I felt very lucky to have been given this opportunity.

The entrance into the hydro plant is on the far side of the river in the white & blue door on the right side of the picture.

Our engineer guide in the white hat and Juan, our tour guide in the green hat.

What we learned was that there are very nice facilities for the workers and Army personal stationed there.  They have barracks, cafeteria, casino, gym, movie & card rooms and just about everything to make the men comfortable.  Their shift is 9 days on and 4 days off.  There seems to be a few houses for families to live there but I don't know who would qualify for those.  There was also a school that even the local village children could attend.

It was now time to say good bye to our new engineer friend and hop back on the bus to our next destination, the town of Macas. 

We were now on the eastern side of the Andes Mountains.  The roads did not improved but the drive provided us with great views of waterfalls as we entered the area of the Amazon Rain Forest.  I saw many wild orchids just growing along the roads.  The picture below was taken from my van window as we were riding along at 40 mph. 

 

We arrived at 5:30 at our hotel located about 4 miles outside the town of Macas.  It had been a long day in the van so Ed and I were interested in dinner and hitting the bed.  We opted to dine at the hotel and not go into town at 7:30 with some of the group.  The hotel provided wi-fi in the restaurant.  Little did we know that it was going to be our last connection to the world for three days.

Breakfast was in the hotel restaurant before our 9:00AM departure.  It was back on the road and deeper inside the Amazon Rain Forest.  The views out the window were marvelous and very different from the Andes Mountain views we are use to seeing.  Juan stopped the van several times to show us interesting plants and flowers along side of the road.

The white flower below, Juan said it only bloomed once a year and called the Yearly Flower.

We stopped to watch this young man harvest Yuca, a root vegetable that has a rough hard thick brown covering, like bark.  It is native to South America and the 3rd largest source of food carbohydrates in the world, but a poor source of protein.  It is very popular in Ecuador and used in many dishes and as made into chips (like potato chips - only better).



 

We stopped in the small town for lunch and tried a local restaurant.  They offered a daily lunch of soup, main dish of grilled chicken and fresh fruit juice for $2.50.  The chicken was very good but I especially liked their chilled pickled broccoli, carrot & onion salad.

 

The town offered a river walk that we enjoyed before lunch.  Here again Juan pointed out plants & flowers to us. I liked the fern tree - picture below.

We had to continue northeast to Tena located on the Napo River (that feeds into the Amazon River about 800 miles down stream).  We stayed at the Cotococha Amazon Lodge for two nights.  The main part of the Lodge is located on the upper part of the hill (small mountain) and the wood and thatched bungalows are located down on the river level with steep stairs to climb to reach them. 

The cabins were rustic (I would say primitive: no phone, or internet) with NO electricity and with windows that made up 3/4 of the walls on all sides that only had screens (no shutters on the outside either).  Our cabin was just 30 feet in front of the Napo River, not a gently flowing river but a rushing river with small rapids.   I found that the sounds of the river at night did not lull me to sleep, but reminded me of a washing machine with a heavy load of clothes being agitated around with the lid of the washer open....

The cabins allowed you to fully enjoy nature = means that being such a nature girl, I did not do well.  Just minutes of getting into our cabin, we were greeted by a couple of the locals...picture below is one gentleman that welcomed us!  They are called cuchucho...it was a little to much nature for me!

The interior of our cabin was large and had one double bed (Ed claimed) and two single beds guarding either side of the door.  I claimed the softest (meaning not brick hard) bed to the right of the door...I would protect Ed from what ever came into our room - that is just after you peeled me for the ceiling (no ceiling just thatched roof)...

As you can see from the pictures of our room, there were heavy sail-cloth type of curtains on all the windows & front door.  We found out when the curtains were closed to offer us some privacy it also blocked all the moving air from outside.  It was the high humidity that gave everything that "damp" feelings.  We were "issued" one oil lamp and one battery operated light.  I didn't care for the smell of the oil lamp so it didn't come into the cabin to be used.  I did keep it running on the front porch to keep away the monsters!  I just prayed the Amazon monsters would stay away from the light and not be attracted to it!!!!  Now, I understood why the tour company suggest we bring a couple of small flashlights (to see where you're going to get back to your cabin).

Our first afternoon when arrived, it was raining and we given some down time.  Now the best part was the Lodge did have a bar (under a thatched roof) so that's where we headed, along with most of the other people on our tour.  Dinner that night was served as a group in their restaurant.  It started with a rich red broth full of deep flavors.  It was followed by a turkey dinner but not the typical way Americans do turkey.  The dessert was poached star fruit in a simple syrup sauce.

The following day was a full day of planned activities and tours for our group, so it was early to bed - besides what else was there to do? 

I was the only person in the group that did not go on the next day's tour.   I opted to stay at the Lodge and read and write, besides I had only 3 hours of sleep and the hopes of grabbing a nap was too appealing to me. . I also skipped breakfast, because I knew they would be serving brownies and diet Pepsi.  So, I wished Ed a good journey as he spayed himself with a half bottle of bug spray and joined the group.

The group started off with a 40 minute ride down the Napo River in a long narrow boat with wood seats. 

They arrived at a small shore where they took a one hour nature walk (hike).  They were loaned tall rubber boots for this walk and Ed explained that the boots didn't really have any sole or lining to protect your feet from the rocks.  They had lunch back at the shore where the boat was parked.

They continued upstream to a village and had a local guide for their 3 hour tour.  The guide prepared Ed for the tour with a traditional hat (placed on top of his jungle hat).

 

The guide taught them how a Blow Gun was used and they each had the opportunity to try it.  Ed said he did pretty well and hit the target.  I'll need to remember this as we live in Ecuador.

They were taken to where the local women hand-made pottery and were given a demonstration.  Ed bought two lovely bowls for me.

Their tour ended and it was time for their boat trip back to the Lodge.  We arrived wet, dirty and very tired and had an hour before dinner.

After Ed departed, I returned to bed and slept for 2.5 hours.  I was awaken by an employee telling me my lunch would be ready at the restaurant in 30 minutes.  It take didn't me long to get ready...no curling my hair!  I was the only one in the restaurant and had a great veggie soup and then a pasta, ham and a white cream sauce dish.

After lunch, I headed to the bar area to sit and write in my journal.  These are some of my thoughts.....

The Amazon Rain Forest receives over 14 FEET of rain annually!  That day the temperature wasn't so hot to be really uncomfortable and a slight breeze came through the tops of the trees, but it was the high humidity that wasn't enjoyable (one of the main reasons our escape from southern Florida).  There were thick stands of beautiful yellow stripped bamboo with all sorts of wild flowers - just from the my view on the balcony at the bar.

I wrote about the shower water coming from the river but the resort told us it had been "filtered".  Did that mean there wouldn't be any fish coming from the faucet head?  It reminded me of our less-than-four star Russian River cruise and our conditions on that boat.  On the boat the water coming out of the hand-held shower nozzle was a lovely shade of brown while you stood in the tiny closet size bathroom between the sink and toilet.  The water at the resort seemed not to be brown but the light was so poor that I couldn't tell for sure.  I found that you had to lather yourself with bug spray then you showered after you worked up a pit while sitting in the humidity, just to put on more bug spray before you went to bed (on damp sheets).

But, to be fair, I have to admit that the rain forest (jungle) did cast a spell over me; albeit a damp one.  I just had to let go and be in the moment and find that peace.  I thought about living in this tough environment and how people have been doing over the hundreds of years. You have to admire them.

This is what the resort looks like from the river...it did give me a feeling of being alone in the world while the rest of the group was gone that day.

That night we had a candle light dinner hosted in the resorts restaurant.  We had fish wrapped in a leaf (they plucked for a nearby tree) and rice.  I found that any meal can be greatly improved by adding their typical hot sauce to it.

The next morning we continued our journey ..... but you will have to read part two of this story.....

Continued.....................