( DH writes). What a day. We flew out from Quito airport, banked round a snow capped volcano then flew over the Andes. The mountains gave way to the start of the amazon basin and it seemed to stretch forever. We landed at Coca after an hour - a rapidly growing oil town with a hint of the Wild West about it. Taxi to the river, then we got into a motorised canoe for an 80 km, 2 hour ride down the Napo river. (The Napo is the largest tributary of the amazon river - it was already so wide it looked like a lake).
We then had to walk for half an hour through the rainforest, before we got into another canoe, this time powered by two strong locals with paddles. We followed a narrow channel through the trees before it opened up into a lagoon...gorgeous. Our luggage was in another canoe - you can just make out the toilet seat in the middle.
We paddled round the corner and then we saw the lodge we are staying in , it was stunning.
After a few hours relaxing in our cabin, the 4 of us went out in the canoe with our guide Rodriguez for a night trip. Nothing had prepared us for the noise - it is not quiet here at all - there is a constant background buzz like a noisy cafe that gets louder as it gets darker. It was amazing. We saw an amazon boa constrictor, a whole troop of squirrel monkeys, bespectacled cayman alligator, catfish, a nocturnal arboreal raccoon, jumping water spider (quite concerning) large biting spiders, herons and lots of bats including a fish eating bat about the size of a crow! We went to sleep in our cabin listening to a cacophony of insects and frogs, occasionally interrupted by a monkey or a trashing sound in the water (which apparently is large catfish in the shallows disturbing the mud to find small prey). BRILLIANT.
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