It´s pouring this morning and the group headed out for a 3 hour trek and I stayed behind to relax & do some laundry (also to sulk over the life of my camera). Laundry was anything but relaxing and nothing really dries here in the tropics so I spent most of the morning blow drying my clothes. In the afternoon, we watched Matildo (our chef) and Sergio craft baskets fans and fish traps using leves from various plants. Sergio also cracked open this green gou...

This morning we headed to the wildlife rescue center (aka amaZoonico) by canoe. The ride over was pretty chill until we hit rapids that kept teetering our narrow 10 person canoe from left to right. We arrived fairly dry and were greeted by a wooly monkey named Ester. The amaZoonico reminded me of the San Diego Wild Animal Park. A lot of the exhibits were fairly big, capturing a good chunk of natural habitat and allowed for the animals´ comfort during their rehab...

At the crack of dawn, we left Quito and took a 6 hour bus ride to Misahualli. We met up with our jungle guide, Sergio, and had a hearty meal of beef stew with potatos and salad in preparation for our first trek into the Amazon. I got fitted with some shiney yellow gum boots which did not adequately provide the traction needed to prevent my epic slip (which will be detailed later. We followed Bear Grills(Sergio) into the flourishing Amazon highlands. We spotted...