Provincia de Napo

After breakfast, some of the tour group went white water rafting whilst a group of us went on a walk to the blue lagoon. It was a sort of water park where we could swim in natural creeks and jump off rocks into the water - lots of fun! It was a "short" walk of about 1.5 hours there (we are learning that the local people's definition of short may be different to our definition sometimes!! But we love it!)

On the way back, we caught a ride in the back of a ute back to camp where we said goodbye to our hosts and made our way on bike to the next village for the evening. The bike ride was quite enjoyable and it was mostly flat with some gravel roads.

On the way, we played a game of soccer at a local school which got quite competitive (imagine a lot of English guys in particular who love their football!). Gab made friends with some local kids and started playing tag with one boy which ended in a lot of running around the school grounds! That was all very exhausting and it was quite humid and hot.

We finished our bike ride at our new accommodation for the night which is another lodge and we had a much needed shower!

We then had an awesome chocolate making demonstration where we experienced all the steps of chocolate making starting from picking the cocoa beans which are ready after around 2 years being on the tree. We then worked together to roast the beans over the fire, peel the beans, process the seeds, add sugar and then add powdered milk to make melted chocolate that was around 70%. We then enjoyed our amazing chocolate dipped in strawberries, biscuits and bananas - yum!!

We then had a fantastic dinner which started with a soup made from unripe papaya, very interesting and yummy! We were very full from all of the food and stayed up for a few hours drinking local beer (Pilsener) and playing drinking games with some of our group!Read more