Ecuadorian adventure: days 1 & 2

So, we got off the plane in 🇪🇨 and rented a 🚙 to drive from the ⛰ down to the 🏞. Google said it was going to be a 4:45 drive. I had calls at 11am, 11:30, and noon that I was supposed to take, and so we figured we'd stop in the last town along the way where we would be sure to have reception before we got to the national park (Cuyabeno) that we were going to. We left at 5:15, so we were expecting to get in by 10am and have some time to sit and do some other things. I had worked on the plane ride from Miami to Quito, but hadn't finished everything, and when I landed I saw that my PL had more things he wanted me to do, so I ended up working in the car while Ephraim drove (he's a real pal. I drove for ~an hour while he napped, but he insisted that he'd rather drive), and at 10:45 I realized that Google said we were still 1:45 out, so I emailed my PL to tell him that I was going to take our calls from my phone on the road, and I'm sorry if I got cut off. He emailed back and agreed to double for me if I would take good notes on what I could hear. So far so good, but then at the end of the second call I lost reception for 20 minutes, so I missed the third call entirely. When we got to the town, I sent in my work and asked for feedback, and then we plunged into the jungle. We arrived at the gate to the park at 1:30—roughly 3:30 longer than we had anticipated.

What took us so long, you ask? The roads we bonkers. It was narrow canyon roads with huge pieces of the road missing in places, a speed limit of 100 kmph but neither of us ever really felt comfortable going more than ~60-80. We did get passed a few times, but generally we'd run into these big trucks that were lumbering along at 30-40 and we'd have to wait till there was a long enough stretch that we could see to pass (and did I mention it was pouring rain most of the way?). At one point, I got a view from above of over a mile of the winding road in the other direction and watched it for a few minutes, and I had Ephraim verify, then as we went into a turn I passed a huge 🚚 going around a bend I made the most hair-raising passing attempts of my life (since once I got down the entire thing was bends and I couldn't see a thing). I knew there were no cars coming, but something about it still scared the living daylights out of me. It was an adventure. We may or may not have had a run in with the 👮, too but I charmed them 😇.

If the peppermint oil burns the 🐜 out here half as badly as it burns me, there's a reason they haven't braved a bite yet, even though at one point I passed a swarm so loud I wondered if I was really in the Village and with a road nearby.

There are, however, no roads nearby. When we left the car 30 minutes out of Tarapoa we got in a small motorboat, and we rode on the river for over two hours to get to our campsite. It's so crazy—this has to be the most remote place I've ever been. There are no towns anywhere nearby, but our guide tells me there are ~10,000 locals who still live somewhere in the rainforest and throughout the national park. He pointed out all the different plants they would use to make poisons to kill one another with, but he says they don't do that anymore.

The rainforest lives up to its name 🌧—despite being the "dry season" it rains for a couple of hours a day. We've still seen some really cool things. My niece, Kate, is obsessed with sloths. They're her favorite thing in the world. She's going to love the pictures of the 3 toed sloth I got. Apparently they move ~200 meters a week. In Spanish they're called the "lazy bear". All the rain has been building up, though, and there's a lake nearby that dries out and fills in based on the rain patterns. Apparently it was empty 7 days ago, and now there's been so much rain that it's 2 meters deep. They offered to let us go swimming on our afternoon jaunt. I was sort of tempted, but I figured it wasn't the best idea with my fear of parasites and all (I mean, the Amazon is probably only second to Africa for best place to pick them up, right?). A few minutes later I pointed out a fish jumping 🐟 where we had been and asked what kind it was. "Oh, that was a piranha! They're jumping after the sardines". Turns out the piranhas here can get to be over a foot and a half long, some of the largest in the world. They have razor sharp teeth, and "usually" don't bother the swimming tourists. 😳

At night, we went on an evening boat ride to try to find caimans. They can get up to 6 meters long, but our guide has never seen one larger than 4.5 meters. That's still a whopping 15 feet. We went for a while and I thought the trip was a bust—we kept going into little bays and inlets, and didn't see anything, until boom! 🐊 Our guide pulled a baby caiman out of the water with his bare hands. He let us all touch it before he put it back. Apparently the caimans and the anacondas (which can get up to 7 meters long) are in a death match to take over the river basin, which is scary in its own way. We haven't seen any of the anacondas yet, just some smaller boa constrictors.

This morning I woke up to 🐒s howling and 🕊s chirping. It was fairly charming. After breakfast, Ephraim and I took a canoe and set out on our own and found "stinky turkeys" 🦃, which apparently have talons in where their elbows would be, and a pre-historic digestive system that lets them eat only toxic plants, so they smell really bad.