Amazon Jungle

Once we got back to Quito from the Galapagos Islands we had a couple of nights in Quito with day trips. On the first day our tour guide, Alberto, took us around Quito. We saw a few Catholic churches. One was amazing - beautiful paintings everywhere, and almost entirely covered in gold. He told us that this one was established by a group of powerful Catholics. The next church he showed us was dark and dusty, with a creaky dirty wooden floor, and few decorations. He said that this church was made by a group of Catholics who are more humble and don't think that power and riches are important.

The next day we went on a day trip to Otavallo, an Indian market town. We bought a few things there. It was a massive market - apparently the biggest one in South America. Everything was really dirty, and we were definitely too scared to eat anything! The toilets were really gross - you pay 10 cents, then get a given a few sheets of toilet paper. The floor was all wet and gross, and the smell was soooo bad. Then we went to a small town famous for selling leather products. A big long street was basically all leather shops. We didn't buy much there, although it was all really cheap.

The next morning we headed to the jungle. First we had to drive for about 2 hours up into the Andes mountains. It was freezing cold and cloud-covered at the highest point. We crossed the equator on our way up...

(if you look closely our tour group is lined up along the equator line)

Then we began our descent, and the lower we got the more pretty flowers, waterfalls and nice green rainforrest trees there were. All was going well until we saw some traffic stopped ahead of us. Alberto said "this doesn't look good" and got out to investigate. About half an hour earlier there had been a massive landslide, so the road was blocked with mounds of mud and trees. A lot of cars were just turning around and going back. But luckily there was another Gecko tour bus on the other side of the landslide trying to get out of the jungle, and we managed to negotiate a bus-swap. So we loaded all our luggage onto our backs and tried not to slip over as we made our way about 60 metres over mud and branches.

(the landslide is the bare muddy cliff behind the bus, and down the bottom left you can see people carrying their luggage across the fallen mud and trees)

We were significantly more dirty by the time we got to the other side, but had a big luxury bus waiting for us. There were only 8 of us, so it was nice to be able to spread out.

About another half an hour down the road there was another landslide that had just occurred. Luckily this one wasn't as big, and there was just enough room for the bus to squeeze past the pile of mud, except for a tree trunk blocking the way. So our bus driver magically pulled a machette out from under his seat and hacked away at the tree. And then we were on our way again. This bus driver could only take us as far as a town still and hour away from our lodge. So after some lunch in that town we hired a ute to take us the rest of the way. I sat in the front, but Jason and some of the others had to sit in the tray of the ute - they had a great time, but I think they were all rather bruised by the end of it!

We arrived at a river and piled into a long canoe and motored down stream to our lodge - there are no roads in that part of the jungle, and all transport is via the river. The lodge had no electricity, so we had to use candles and torches which was fun. There were mosquitoes and sandflies everywhere so we took heaps of vitamin B and smothered ourselves in insect repellant. I think Jason got a bit sick of me pointing out all the bugs, and all the places in our cabin where bugs could potentially get in.

The next day we put on some gumboots and went for a walk through the jungle. It was really hot and humid, and we all had sweat pouring off us.

(our guide explaining something to us - he had to hit everything he was talking about with his machette)

(This is a bad photo of a really tiny cute stick insect)

We finally arrived at Amazoonica - a centre for injured animals. We saw tucans, ocelots, monkeys, pig-like animals, and funny-looking huge rodents. The most bizzarre animals were some big guinea pig-like creatures that were at least knee-height. My favourite was the tiny monkeys - they were so cute!!

To cool off at the end of the day we put our bathers on and floated down the river on inner tubes - we'd highly recommend it next time you're in the jungle! Although I hate to think what nasties were hiding in the murky water.