Our Jungle Adventure

We have been in the jungle - the Amazon basin - for a couple of weeks. We spent 4 days in a lodge set on a lake in the Cuyabeno Reserve, 2 hours by motorised canoe from the end of the road, which was great. We also explored an area south of here from a village called Misahualli, also at the end of the road!

We saw loads of animals, insects and amazing birds in the wild and also some more that we hadn't seen in an animal rescue centre. Dee's favourites were the Tapir, Toucans and the Orupendula (bird) who's call sounds like a drop of water. Phil liked the spiders!

See the list after the photos of what we have seen.....

Swimming in the warm Laguna Grande, near our lodge.

We visited the native Siona tribe where we were shown how to make bread from Yucca and met their Shaman, who explained about his work - and let Phil have a go with a blow pipe.

From Misahualli we rode to Puerto Barantilla, (just one house beside the river), where we took a canoe to an animal rescue centre.

A mostly very wet ride out of the jungle, more landslides, raging rivers and waterfalls to ride under!

AR: seen in the animal rescue centre, the rest we saw in the wild

Three and Two toed Sloth
Monkeys including Capuchin, Squirrel, Monk Saki, Spider, Wooly
Tayra (dog sized mammal from weazel family)
Puma AR
Ocelot AR
Tapir AR
Caiman
Pink River Dolphin
Snakes including Anaconda, Boa & Viper
Bats
Spiders including Banana, Wolf, Tarantula
Butterflies including the beautiful Blue Morpho
Birds, loads of amazing colourful birds including Amazon Parrot, Macaws, Toucans, Vultures, Kingfishers, Flycatchers, Weaverbirds, Hummingbirds, Greater Ani, Parakeets, Howatzin, Herons plus lots of other brightly coloured birds that we don't know the names of!

From the Basilica to the Devil!

The roads are better in Ecuador, however, the drivers are just as crazy. So with faster cars, buses and lorries we feel less safe than we did in Peru and Bolivia!

Here are some pics from our travels around Ecuador so far...

A vertiginous climb up the Basilica in Quito; we went to the top of the pointy tower that Dee is pointing at....

Cake delivery in Latacunga.

Another haircut...

We hiked a very hard route up to the famous Casa del Arbol (tree house) on the slopes of a volcano in Banos. There is a swing that goes out over a steep drop with Volcan Tungurahua in the background - somewhere in the clouds!

The volcano with a clear sky from the other side of the valley. It's an active volcano but sadly not smoking while we were there!

We had fun exploring the Cascada El Pailon del Diablo (the devil's cauldron waterfall). On one side we crawled along a narrow cave to get close.

There were sloping suspension bridges to cross to get to the other side.

We are off to the jungle now...

The one we wanted to take home!

After a very wet and cold ride up to Lake Quilotoa, we came across this lovely but timid boy. He is too thin and obviously not owned. We got out our doggy treats that we keep a supply of and he nervously approached. We hand fed him some, he was very gentle in taking them but was hungry - he ended up finishing the packet off! He enjoyed us giving him some attention too.....if we had a sidecar he would be in it...probably not the only one!!

This lake is an old volcaic crater at 3900m and is an amazing green colour (better in good weather!). We may revisit as there is a lovely day hike round the crater rim, with other snow tipped volcanoes in view (weather permitting).

Maps

We have now travelled about 24,000 kms and are in Ecuador.

Below are the routes through Bolivia and Peru....it looks like we only covered a tiny bit of each country! This was due to road conditions and big expanses of jungle.

Doorstep dogs of Ecuador

In Ecuador we have seen a lot more dogs on leads with their owners, which is a bit strange after all the free ranging dogs elsewhere!

There are still dogs roaming the streets, both owned and stray. Unfortunately, the stray ones seem to be in a worse condition than even Bolivia and they are a lot more nervous of people :(

A lot of dogs seem to be sitting at doorsteps.....!