Cantón Sucumbíos

Oooof. I'm not even sure how to describe our time in the Amazon--it’s otherworldly.

When we landed in the tiny airport in Coca, we were greeted by our guide and took a quick bus trip to their local office on the Napo River. From there, we boarded a motorized canoe for a ride into the jungle. After 2 hours, we hopped off the motorized canoe and boarded a small paddled canoe for the final hour trip down the river to our lodge.

We had two amazing guides for our 4 days: our naturalist guide, Anna, who seemed to know everything about every bug, bird and creature in the Amazon and Dario, a local who was able to spot monkeys at the tips of trees and tiny frogs on the ground with ease.

Day 1: After our trek from Coca, we relaxed for the afternoon and then went on an evening canoe ride with Anna and Dario. We saw (and heard) crazy howler monkeys and a ton of birds. The sunset was so magical that I didn't even get freaked out when bats swarmed all around our boat at dusk. We canoed around until 7, and then headed to dinner at 7:30. Of course, everything operated on Ecuadorian time, so we didn't wrap up dinner until after 9, which didn't seem like a problem until they told us that our wake-up would be at 5:30 the next morning. Talia fell asleep by 10 and wasn't psyched to hear the knock on our door at 5:30 the next day.

Day 2 (Kyla’s birthday): After our early breakfast, we walked to an observation tower not far from our lodge. The number of birds we saw was astounding--toucans, macaws and 947297474 other species. We spent a few hours high up in the trees looking at birds through a telescope. If someone had told me at 20 that I would care even a tiny bit about species of birds, I would not have believed them, but middle age combined with the Amazon and - BAM - I care about birds. Talia loved spotting birds too, so aparently middle age is not a critical ingredient. With the exception of Kyla dropping her binoculars into the tree canopy (and then having them rescued by Dario + a long stick), it was a peaceful, sweet morning in the trees.

After climbing down from the observation tower, we had a short hike through the forest to the canoe and then did some more bird and monkey spying from the water. We headed back to the lodge for lunch and relaxation (including an amazing yoga class, that kicked off Kyla’s next spin around the sun in a peaceful, reflective way).

Our evening activity on the second day was a night hike. There's not enough Xanax in the world to make me feel relaxed walking through a pitch black forest filled with 92746373 creatures, but Talia enjoyed spotting frogs (including poisonous ones) and I tried not to think about snakes. It was spooky and interesting, but I cannot call it fun, no matter how much Talia tries to change my mind.

We had another late dinner followed by another early wake up. Talia seemed to cope with the the lack of sleep relatively well, but she fell asleep on Kyla on the walk home from dinner each night.

Day 3 involved a boat ride to a local village that owns the land on which the lodge sits. We learned a lot about the relationship between to locals and the tourist industry (for good and bad), and it was interesting to hear about various indigenous traditions. We tried some local delicacies, including tea, fish, plantains, etc., but none of us (not even food-adventurous Talia) tried the larvae. After the snack, we had a chance to try shooting darts out of a long bamboo pipe. No one was surprised when Gena hit the bullseye, but, for reasons I can’t quite understand, everyone seemed shocked at my precision and grace.

The afternoon was a bit rainy, so we stayed at the lodge and fished off the dock (for piranha!). Our night involved a bat flying around our room, but we were all so exhausted that we decided to coexist with it after it kindly agreed to stay out of sight until the morning.

It was great to spend time with Gena and Nancy, and it was also fun to see how much Talia loved being Dora the Explorer for a few days. She spent hours peering through binoculars, chatting with our guides about tarantulas (yep—we saw huge ones) and scanning the tree tops for monkeys. Her only disappointment is that we didn’t see the elusive pink river dolphin that is native to the area.

Overall, the trip was amazing, and also emotional—it was crazy to see this amazing part of earth and to also understand, even fleetingly, that we are quickly destroying it.

(Once I download pics from Kyla’s camera, I’ll post another entry with all of the wildlife—I didn’t catch much on my iPhone).Read more