Amazon Jungle Tour Day 1

So after 24 hours of bus time, I arrive from Medellín, Colombia to Quito, Ecuador. While walking around the neighborhood where my hostel was, I stumbled across an Amazon jungle tour, which I had already wanted to do. The tour involved getting on another 8 hour bus ride that night to arrive the next morning in a town called Lago Agrio, where we would get on another 2 hour bus to a reserve called Cuyabeno where we would start our tour.

It started with a 2 hour motorized canoe ride to our lodge where we stopped along the way spotting wildlife such as various monkeys, birds, a sloth and different insects.

Lazy sloth

There are actually thousands of little tropical social spiders that build these webs.

White-fronted capuchin, considered critically endangered due to hunting

We arrive at the Guacamayo lodge that consisted of a series of elevated huts with palm leaf roofs and hammocks everywhere! After a delicious lunch, we get organized in our rooms which each had bathrooms with "hot" water (although we never seemed to get hot water, I wouldn't have used it anyways since it was so hot and humid the whole time).

We then go back out for some more animal watching (where I spotted a scarlet macaw, a very rare bird!) and finish it off at sunset swimming in the lagoon nearby. Even though there are anaconda and caiman (alligators) in the water, apparently they stay away from the deeper water in the middle so it was perfectly safe to swim.

Elvis, our incredible guide

This seems to capture the feeling on the trip. We spent probably most of the time on the canoe animal watching, traveling, and jumping out of it in this lagoon. Elvis sits up front and shares his wisdom.

After sunset we did some more exploring and actually found a caiman (near the shore) where Elvis, the guide, was able to coax it right next to the boat and out of the water! I have done crocodile tours where the guide feeds it and gets right up close, but those animals are more or less conditioned and not as hungry since they are fed. This was pure wild caiman about 7 feet in length right next to us..dunno how but it was all good!

My favorite photo of the trip! Set up my hammock on the bird watching/star gazing tower. Shined my headlamp on myself at lowest power and self timer for 25 seconds using my fisheye