In the Jungle

We decided to pay a visit to the Amazon rain forest here in Ecuador but you can visit the Amazon from either Bolivia, Peru, Colombia or Brazil. 

We spent 4 days and 3 nights amongst the cockroaches, bats, wolf spiders, tarantulas and muchos other creatures in the Cuyabeno National Park. Our trip out to the jungle involved an overnight bus ride from Quito and both of us vomiting before we even made it onto the canoe for the trip to the lodge! Yay. Here's a photo to capture the moment.

So we actually saw heaps of animals.... but they are basically impossible to take photos of. It's bird and bug heaven for those kinda enthusiasts. I really only care about cute furry creatures or weird cool stuff. We saw about 5 of the 10 species of monkeys there, caymans, a sloth, pink river dolphins, arapaima (I've been informed these feature heavily on the TV show River Monsters), a pygmy ant eater and some snakes. 

Oh and lots of frogs...

We spent a lot of time cruising around on the river. The water was really low and we kept having fish jump into our boat or just launch themselves at people's heads. Kinda scary when they look like this...

We also went to visit one of the local communities and got to experience making a type of flat bread from yuka which we freshly ripped from the ground.

The whole process was pretty cool. It involved grating the yuka (also called cassava https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava) and then using a device made from some plant material like reeds wringing out all the moisture and cyanide (true story!) and then making it into flour. 

And then obviously cooking it :)

Our guide also showed us a cool plant where they get the colour for painting their faces. Here's me fitting in with the locals as per usual.

And Spaghetti O tried out shooting a blow gun. She actually hit the target! But I'm not sure either of us are ready to relocate to Cuyabeno as pretty as it is.

 

On the way home we acquired a cheeky Ecuadorian child. My first sighting of him was when he came up to where we were making bread and poked a stick at the Dutch guy on our tour. Haha. He sat between us on the way back to the lodge and after about ten minutes of trouble making he thankfully passed out. His grandparents gifted him to me but I forgot to collect him on my way out.

Anyway that was our adventure to the rain forest. We also saw some terrifying looking scorpion spider which I'm pretty sure featured in the Alien movies. And for me, this was the highlight..... And yes, there is an animal in this photo. It's a Great Potoo bird and it's pretty good at camouflaging  itself in case you can't tell. MIND BLOWN.