Samona Jungle Lodge, Cuyabeno Ecuador

May 24th - 29th 2008

The eight hour bus ride was over but we still had 5 hours of travel left. Other than a few shanti villages, pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, and dogs, the only other thing interesting about the gravel road leading to the gates of the jungle reserve was the oil pipeline alongside the road connecting the Euadorian jungles oil supply to the capital city Quito.

I was immediately sceptical about this jungle tour but was surprised when the motorized canoe took us 2 hours further into the lush jungle after our bumpy bus ride.

We immediately spotted 2 different species of monkey and some Macaws (colorful parrots).

When we arrived to the huts we were greeted by a baby Woolly monkey that we soon found out was adopted by our guide for a few months because the parents were killed.

Pancha immediately jumped onto Leslie's shoulder and wrapped her tail tightly around her neck. As you can imagine, the new jungle recruits were all oooing and awwing over this monkey taking pictures.

There was no electricity except for 1 solar panel that allowed the charging of camera batteries for a few hours per day. The open air huts were over top a lagoon with baby caiman's (jungle crocodiles). Our bed had a large mosquito net for the night and the bathroom had a few friendly cockroaches.

The showers only had cold water and when you looked up, Maria, the Tarantula was about 15 feet above your head. Maria lives in the roof of the hut and we were lucky to find out after 2 nights when we were just getting use to the jungle.

The activities were quite repetitive and you had to slow your mental pace down to that of the jungle. Coming from the Galapagos where there are no predators and the animals are 2 inches away from you meant that it took a day or two to get use to the enjoyment of spotting animals from afar (most are scared of humans, a potential predator).

The wildlife and vegetation were quite rich. We saw the following during our canoe trips and day walks: 5 species of monkeys (Whooly, Capacino, Squirrel?, Sake, and the fit-in-your-palm worlds smallest), 5 different kinds of snakes (including a 10ft teenage ANACONDA (constrictor) and a deadly poisonous mud snake (venomous fangs)), a 3 toed sloth (rare spotting), Macaws, Parrots, Hawks, a jungle bird we named the "Phoenix Chicken", other jungle birds, large Caimans (in the dark), Pink Dolphins (from afar), glimpse of a Sting Ray (the kind that killed the crocodile hunter), butterflies, flowers, fungi, ayahuasca vines, and other medicinal plants.

We went Piranha fishing twice with little chunks of beef hooked on a small line on the end of a stick. Les and I cleaned up. She managed to catch the first fish both days and I managed to catch the most dangerous species with the biggest teeth. Our guide showed us one of his Piranha bites on his wrist from this species and it looked painful. The fish can live outside water for 30 minutes and our guide demonstrated how lethal this fish was by putting a stick into its mouth. Like a machine, the Piranha would chomp down each time chopping the 1 inch stick clean. Quite impressive for just a little carniverous guy.

One day we went to a jungle village of the Siona people's and learned their way of life. The do a little bit of Coco bean production and sell local crafts to visiting tourists. The Siona Shaman performed an interesting cleansing ritual on one of the girls in the group while the rest sat and watched the chanting and shaking of roach infested banana leafs. Afterwards, we were challenged to a football match against the local jungle team.

Team "rest of the world" equipped with gum boots ended up beating the barefoot jungle folk for the first time in the history of the challenge (5-4). It helped that my team had a youthful 3rd division Swede to feed balls to (keep in mind the difficulty of playing in gum boots!?(note: there was one very tough and skillful jungle woman on the other team as well as a few extra 10 year olds kicking about)).

Overall, the jungle trip was a relaxing time once we were able to ignore the bug bites and less than comfortable sleeping situation. I now have to decide if i want to go further into the jungle by myself in river boats that take multiple days and bring you to more bugs.......but more virgin forest.

Tomorrow Les and I go to a Cloud forest town called Mindo for her last day before she heads back to Vancouver.