El Oriente





Well. What a busy week. Mum arrived last Wednesday and it has been full-on even since. I took an overnight bus up to Quito on Wednesday night and met her at her hostal in the morning. I had heard about a festival in Otavalo so we decided to head there for the day. Unfortunately the festival activities were over for the day by the time we got there, but Otavalo is definitely worth a visit anyway. The craft market was great and it was nice to be able to leave our purchases in Quito and not have to lug them around Ecuador with us.

The next morning we left for the Amazon – taking the easy option and flying rather than the 8 hour bus trip. The heat in Lago Agrio was absolutely awful, but thankfully was the worst we had to deal with for our time in the jungle. After a couple of hours on the bus we started the canoe trip down the river and 4 hours and one very sore bum later we arrived at the camp. The camp was really awesome! The whole place was candlelit when we arrived and it reminded me of something out of Survivor. The building was huge a huge platform with a thatch roof and no walls and each mattress was in a zippable mosquito net. The place had a great atmosphere.

We basically didn´t stop from the time we got there to the time we left as they had morning, afternoon and evening activities each day as well as the occasional pre-breakfast activity. One of the highlights was definitely Caiman hunting. I didn´t take my camera as I thought the most we would see would be a pair of eyes – how wrong was I! Once someone thought they saw one in the reeds at the side of the bank a couple of the guides jumped out the boat (no shoes) and started poking around at the edge of the river. I got the biggest shock when the boatman made a dive into the reeds and came up with a 1m caiman in his hands. They brought it back to the boat and we all got to inspect it – I think there was a fair amount of adrenaline all around and it turns out that that was the first time they´ve done that.

Other highlights were seeing the scarlet macaws, catching piranas, playing soccer on the beach, holding a turtle (also an impressive effort to catch) and seeing the other impressive animals.


keep smiling
Hazel