Ecuadorian Rainforest

This post has come unforgivably late.  Over a year ago Geordie and I took a plane to Coca, a motorboat down the Napo River, a half hour hike through the jungle and then a dug out canoe through waterways unknown to our wood and thatch hut at La Selva in the Amazon Rainforest. 

Beyond the BC interior it is one of the most exotic and remote places we have ever been.  There was no electricity at night. Everything was built from native materials.  And the wildlife..... nighthawks, hoatzin, frogs and Orapendula birds nesting all around us along with anacondas and howler monkeys, bats, capucins, while owls, tarantulas, agoutis and whip scorpions came out in some of the blackest nights that we have ever experienced. 

Jungle Fever

The Amazon Canopy stretches in parts over 200 feet in the air. You can see over it for miles. The photo below was taken at 135 feet. It seems truly endless. In the canopy we saw birds that never go down to the forest floor, insects and monkeys. The light hits it directly and so all sorts of plants grow that cannot survive in the shadows of the forest floor below.

The Amazon Jungle is so dense that while hiking we lost someone. He was found 15 minutes later and he was smart and just stayed where he was. What light there is is dappled except in places where a tree fell down clearing out a space where light can hit the forest floor promoting new growth.

Vines, palms and huge old mahoganies all like different levels of light, soil and water. Despite the 30 degree heat it was cool in the undergrowth that we hiked through. Humid though as it is very moist. We hiked through swamps and lagoons and up some mountains over a few days and got a nice cross section of all the different sub-systems that make up the ecosystem that is the Amazon Rainforest.

Not Just a Stinky Turkey

Among the most primitive birds ever, hoatzins were a joy to see everyday in the Amazon Rainforest. They are fairly approachable and there was often a group chilling out on some logs in the lagoon near where we stayed. Hoatzins are called 'stinky turkeys or stink birds' by the natives. Not the most flattering name, but they apparently have a prolonged digestion which causes them to stink a bit like cattle and they apparently taste bad. I think they are really pretty with their faux punk hairstyle

They are not great flyers rating only slightly better then chickens. They are weird because their chicks have claws on their wing digits. This is to help them scramble through the trees before they get their flight feathers and helps tie modern bird evolution to earlier forebears like the Archaeopteryx.

This bird causes arguments among birders and zoologists. It has very strange phylogenetic relationships and doesn't really fit in well in any taxon. Perhaps due to the oddness of its chicks and its other very primitive features no conclusive evolutionary hypothesis has been proposed. With its DNA sequence the situation only gets more confusing. Most zoologists palce it into an order all its own the Opisthocomiformes.

Clay Licks Along the Napo

Along the Napo River there are occasional high cliffs. One of these has the minerals and clays necessary to healthy parrots.  Many of the fruits in their diet are poisonous and the clay helps neutralize the toxins harmlessly in their stomachs. Hundreds of parrots descent on these licks to nibble and scrape up the clay. In the photo below are hundreds of parrots of about 4-5 species wheeling about and jockeying for space.

If it rains the parrots do not show up. They licks has to dry up a bit before it is attractive to them. There are dozens of such sites both along the Napo and within the jungle itself.  They are quite noisy. We watched them from the boat on the Napo.  All at once a group would burst and fly off and then re-settle. This happened a couple of times. The last time they did not calm and settle back down. This was because a boa constrictor was in the trees above.

In the photo below you can see the fresh scrapings from all the birds. They cling to the sides with their feet, They almost look like magnets.  My advice for people visiting would be to just visit the licks along the Napo River. There are some that can be visited within the jungle and is a short hike. We could hear and see them way above in the trees but they did not come down.

Another reason is that in order to lure parrots to the licks accessible to tourists the native Yasuni poured petrol on clay licks further out forcing the parrots to go to the interior ones they control.  They charge $20 for people to hike in and see these licks and fail to mention that little fact about pouring gas on clay licks in a park. It's up to you but I don't want to encourage that kind of thing. So I suggest not to go and to let people there the reason why. I would not have gone to the inland licks if I had known that.

If Completed The World Will End: Basílica del Voto Nacional

The best thing about visiting countries with a strong or large Catholic community is the churches. It's incredible! I love Neo-gothic Ecuadorian architecture! Below are some of our photos from the Basílica del Voto Nacional (Basical of the National Vow). The Basílica was proposed in 1883 but is technically unfinished because if were ever to be finish that would spell the end of the world. Really! It is the largest neo-Gothic basilica in the Americas.

Typcal of Neogothic architecture are gargoyles and grotesques peering below at the huddled masses. The carvings were representatibe of all the different biomes of Ecuador. Below are alpacas from the Andes.

Our favorites of all the exquistely done sculpture are the ones below. These are gargoyles representing various unique wildlife from the Galapagos. The birds below are a Blue-footed Booby and an Albatross. There are also iguanas and tortoises as well.

Big Honking Snake

I never ever thought that Geordie and I would run into this huge Anaconda while we were in the Amazon Rainforest.  I figured we had more chance of seeing the Windigo or the Loch Ness monster. Nevertheless we did. This one was mostly coiled up on a hummock jutting into the lagoon within view of our lodge.

We were in a canoe which enabled us to sneak up quite close. Closer than I ever thought we could get to a huge snake as we were about 2.5- 2 metres away. We were all whispering which was kind of silly as they are deaf....but you know..... big snake.  Like all snakes they sense vibrations but as we were in the water we produced none.

This one is a baby, which is the first time I heard something 5 metres long called a 'baby'. It's colouring is that of a juvenile. The fetching yellow spots about the size of dollar coin on the underside fade into adulthood. This one didn't even blink even as flies crawled over its face. Its eyes were a beautiful rich leafy colour but primeval in their expression. The entire time we watched him he didn't move. The next day we went back, he was gone.

Kathryn Taylor: Master Angler

Unsupervised activities at La Selva lodge were few since nearly everything in the surrounding area was poisonous and you could easily get lost in the jungle alone, but one easily available activity between hikes was fishing in the lagoon. The setups are as simple and barebones as you could ask for, just a hook on a bit of line wrapped around a stick. You can actually see Kathryn's line in the photo below if you look carefully in the bottom left corner.

 Despite numerous tugs on my line and an ever-diminishing bit of bait I hadn't had any luck when Kathryn squeaked and proudly pulled this little catfish out of the water. For the purposes of internet fish legends, it was at least THIIIIIIS big. We were both shocked when it began mewing plaintively... you typically think of fish as quiet while they flop around, but this little fellow was particularly vocal about its capture.

 Although the lodge staff were quite happy to clean and cook it for her, between its small size and eerie cries for freedom, Kathryn was inclined to let her fish go back to make more generations of fish after a few quick photos.

There were also piranhas in the water there and while we saw one or two that other people caught, we didn't have any luck with our lines beyond this excellent encounter.

Getting Around on the Napo River

Transport in the Amazon. In a word... varied.  For the most part we were in lovely dugout canoes. The anthropologists will know how these are made. Burned out, hacked out and shaped. We took took these anywhere we went off the Napo River itself.  We found several that were no longer water worthy and were beginning to rot. All natural materials meant all natural disposal. These were my favorite. Quiet and real.

 This is very similar to what we took from Coca to miscellaneous shore line 3 hrs East.  Basically its a high speed canoe.  Most have canopies. Their narrow shape means that they can navigate between sandbars more easily than wider vessels.

 Speaking of wider vessels, while we did not journey on one of these we saw plenty. The back is basically the wheel house with perhaps some beds, definately a kitchen and a salon/social area where people can eat and chat. The front had everything like trucks as you see below or huge bulldozers. The Napo has extremely variable water heights. It was low while we were there so even the small speedy engine dugouts had to drop knots to navigate the sand bars and dead heads.

Rainforest Mammals

The below image is a New World monkey called a Squirrel Monkey. Unlike the other New World monkeys, their tail is not used for climbing, but as a kind of "balancing pole" and also as a tool. Their movements in the branches can be very rapid as we can attest to! They are really acrobatic and can leap very far and catch on to what looks like the most delicate of branches. They live together in multi-male/multi-female groups with up to 500 members. These large groups occasionally break into smaller troops.We saw a troop that could have been over 40. They eat primarily fruits and insects. Occasionally they eat seeds, leaves, flowers, buds, nuts, eggs and small vertebrates.

We saw several species of bats but mostly at night when they are virtually impossible to photograph despite some of the very large sizes they come in.. We were canoing along the edge of a lagoon in the day when our guide spotted these wee fellows. It took Geordie and I forever to see them. Can you see how many there are? You have to be pretty sharp eyed. These bats stay still up close but when you move away they take off. These are insectivorous bats and small and cute.  Also the EXACT colour of the branches they are on. And there are three of them.

Black Mantled Tamarin are cute little primates that love the upper canopy. The Ecuadorian Black Mantled Tamarin are often considered a subspecies called Graell's Tamarin. They eat insects, leaves and fruits. We saw groups of two to twelve on several occasions. They were hard to spot as they were quite high up but we had occasion to get some good sightings.

Amazon Amphibians

 Frogs were incredibly hard to spot in the dense shadow of the jungle canopy. I did our guides Marco and Omar proud when I spotted this Ecuadorian Ruby Poison Dart Frog resting on a leaf. Regular Ruby Poison Dart Frogs from Peru do not have those yellow limb spots. Poson-dart frogs have varying levels of toxicity. This one is low.  It is also threatened by habitat loss from deforestation. We were lucky to spot it.

 This one's eyes showed up lovely in the flash photo. This one I think is  a Peruvian Poison Frog (also threatened) but I am happy to be corrected. If the one I think it is, it is VERY toxic.This poison destroys nerve cells and sends powerful impulses, resulting in extreme pain. A Peruvian poison frog will contain around one milligram of poison, enough to cause severe pain in humans, but not enough to kill. We looked but didn't touch.

 Allow me to intruduce Señor Frog. Señor Frog is a frog of excellent size as you can tell by the hand gently holding his back legs. These fellows have the extremely disconcerting habit of crying like a baby when they get caught. This one was content to be gently handled and didn't make a sound even when Geordie and I petted him. Quite gentlemanly of him really. The size of frogs we saw ranged from about this big, O  (a baby tree frog), to the monstrous fellow below.

Big Bugs of the Rainforest

I am not a bug person. I am not a bug fan. I consider it a brave achievement when I handled a stick insect at the Vancouver Aquarium.  But the ones in the Amazon jungle didn't bother me so much simply because they were so FRIGGIN HUGE that I always knew where they were.  The lady tarantula below lived just down the path from us and we saw her every night.  We saw her in her hidey hole too. She is roughly as big as my hand.

We heard Cicadas often. They were hard to spot as they often rest high up in trees. This one was obliging and was at eye level just ouside the social area of La Selva.  They have beautiful wings. His body is slightly less large than a thumb but his wings add to that.

We saw several of these centipedes. I believe the scientific name is Scolopendra gigantea.  You can see how big they are. I poked it gently! I didn't have the courage to actually handle it. They curl into a ball when overly harrased.  This one didn't seem to mind and crawled over hand over hand over hand until it was let on its merry way.

The Most Remote Place We Have Ever Slept

 While we were in Ecuador we did go other places besides the Galapagos.  Besides Quito we flew across the Andes into Coca.  From the airport we took a bus to the dock where we boarded a highspeed outboard canoe.  We sped east down the Napo River into the Amazon jungle.  Right out of Coca it got extremely dense. It wasn't long before we were seeing egrets on the sand bars and parrots flying overhead.  Every so often we would see a Yasuni house or village or a family paddling along. Below is a typical view of the jungle shoreline while we were there.  The water was very low but only 3 weeks past the water was well over the banks.

 After 3 hours on the outboard we came to a dock.  From here we took the boardwalk you see below and hiked along it a little less then half an hour. From the boardwalk we could see all sorts of creepy crawlies and amazing jungle plants and life. 

 At the end of the boardwalk was a small dock with dugout canoes.  We took these canoes through a stream with mangroves dipping into the water. After about half an hour of paddling the stream eventually opened up into a lagoon.  At the far side of the Lagoon was La Selva Jungle Lodge.  Seen below is our first glimpse of it.  The dock is on the mid right and the lounge area are the 2 twin roofs (and floors and walls and stairs and bar)  made out of native materials in the Yasuni fashion.  We had arrived after a 35 minute flight from Quito to Coca, 3 hr canoe ride, half hour hike and half hour dugout canoe.

This is the most remote place that Geordie has ever been and possibly the most remote that I have ever been (except for maybe parts of the BC backcountry which is an entirely different class of far away from civilization).

Ecuador and the Galapagos

 We recently took a trip down to Ecuador, a spanish-speaking and largely catholic country in equatorial south america. We landed in the city of Quito, the political but not economic capital of the country, located in the centre of the country. We spent slightly over a week in the galapagos and then 5 days in the amazon rainforest in the eastern end of the country.

 While they are 972km from the coast of Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands are still part of the country and consist of dozens of islands and smaller rocks created by a volcanic hotspot. Though they look small on most maps, there were too many to visit in a single trip, so our cruise held predominantly to the east end of the archipelago, following a path similar to the one below.

The people of Ecuador were incredibly helpful and friendly throughout and we both encourage anyone considering a visit down there to prioritize it on their list. From mountain cities to volcanic islands to rainforest we saw a lot of variation, and Ecuador actually boasts the highest level of biodiversity per square kilometer of the country. The environment is a priority to the people as well and is legally protected by their constituion, though I'm sure that the reality on the ground is often different as they are also one of the largest oil exporters in south america.