Thurs and Friday 8 and 9 March 2012

I got to Quito in good time, despite having accidentally gotten onto one of the few buses not going to Quito but Latacunga. The conductor insisted that I could go to Quito (via Aloag) whilst I insisted that I wanted to go directo and that I wanted letting down at the next bus stop.

I just acted innocently naive and made the most out of having made both the conductor and this vendor boy laugh, by saying tengo caliente (I was very hot having walked downhill in the humidity with two backpacks and stopping the boy from shutting the nearby coach window). I temporarily forgot that to use caliente with regards to yourself means that you are hot, sexually: I had been warned at Spanish school not to say that but to use tengo calor but realised as soon as they started laughing and immediately corrected myself (modesty won´t say more than that...!) I explained that all the buses usually go to Quito and I just assumed (believed) that this one did , too, and they thankfully let me get off at Tandapi and didn´t charge me and I just waited for the next Quito bus, which wasn´t long in arriving, thank goodness.

Anyway, on arrival at Quito, I booked into a hostel for Wednesday night and prepared to have to hang around all day Thursday until the evening for the long-haul bus ride to Lago Agrio (a lovely 8 hours ride).

Thursday morning, I checked my email regarding the jungle trip and I was glad that I had asked for confirmation details for the trip as it turned out that I needed to get a specific (or was booked onto) a specific bus for Lago Agrio, and that I needed the name of the Ecolodge that I would be staying in when I got to Lago Agrio. I was given my bus ticket reservation and told that I would need to pay $8, which in the end I didn´t: the bus conductor just took the ticket and didn´t ask for any cash (of course, it was dark then and he was having to squint, so I don´t get it? However, I didn´t question my good fortune and waited for him to realise his mistake, if it was).

Of course, when anyone would have told me that I needed the bus ticket plus the Ecolodge sticker if I hadn´t enquired from about at least a week before and then two days earlier, I don´t know. I had to go in and collect the "sticker" of the ecolodge I was to show them, and this I could not have done if I had followed my original plan of leaving Thursday afternoon/evening.

(I am finding that this is the case in Ecuador, you have to do a lot of chasing up yourself for various things, and even then, you don´t get the information you need or the truth told to you. I remember an Argentinian girl complaining about this to me before: she and her mother had been told that their flight was detailed, three times upon query, and then suddenly their names were being called out to board - about 45 minutes from first being told that it was delayed - and that they were to board immediately and they were the last people to board. They were not impressed).

Anyway, I passed the time with sorting out my last two weeks´ blog, had lunch and went to the Fundacion Guayasamin, to view his artworks and the collection of pre-Columbian art that the Ecuadorian artist had amassed. He did a fair few series of various themes, a lot of it in greys and blacks. There also seemed to be limited collections of his works/prints of his works, some of which from a brief look were up to about $2300.

Afterwards, it really was a case of wander the streets and monopolise cafe seats until I eventually gave up and collected my backpack from the luggage storage in the hostel and made my way to the Trans Esmeraldas terminal in Mariscal (not Quitumbe), three to four hours early, to wait form my 11pm bus.

(Another example of not being given the information you want: I thought I had to pay for the bus ticket there, but the woman at the bus terminal told me I couldn´t pay in advance. When I then asked if I paid at the ticket office or on the bus, she said here. However, when the bus arrived 10/15 minutes before departure, and I wanted to pay at the ticket office, she told me to go to the bus and pay there).

Anyway, I queued with the others to get my luggage onto the bus: my luggage was checked on as if for the airport (numbered sticker and accompanying receipt) and then my hand luggage was then scanned by a security guard with a handheld metal scanner. We all had to open our hand luggage and have that searched, with some people also body scanned, which I escaped.

Having found my allocated seat, I got comfortable (as much as possible for the longhaul). I was lucky enough to not have a fellow passenger and was able to spread out. There was an onboard toilet (which was central and down a few steps and which I was almost opposite to), but I was thankful that not many people used it (although I did once). I was also thankful that the driver elected not to play any movies for our edification and delight, although there was music on board, but as I used my own mp3 player, that wasn´t too great a hardship.

I thought the bus struggled a bit and during some of the periods I looked out and was able to see anything when I wasn´t trying to get some shut-eye, I noticed that there was a pipe (oil pipe, I think) that snaked alongide the road. Also, the bus had to slow down for the single lane bridges and that it had to climb the verge at least once (earthmoving equipment and earth: landslides?).

We arrived at Lago Agrio at 6:46 am and I got a taxi to the Hotel D Mario, where the meetpoint was at 9:00 am (changed from 9:30 am, previous to Thursday meeting). I ordered an Americano desayuno (American breakfast: hot beverage, bread, eggs, juice, bread) and afterwards took the opportunity to use the baños to clean my teeth.

It was obvious that this was meetpoint for more than one tour, as various representatives then started looking for their guests. I was staying at the Guacamayo Ecolodge and was one of the three (a Chilean couple) to be picked up first.

We then had a two hour minibus trip to El Puente and I noticed that that the pipe continued to snake alongside the road with us and that the soil embankments were coloured pink to (mainly) a rust colour.

At El Puente, we had a cold lunch here (in partitioned tupperware boxes: tuna carrot pasta bake with a banana, water or soft drink) before we boarded one of the many motorised kayaks steadily disgorging their returning guests to make our way to the lodge.

It would normally have taken 90 minutes to make it to the Ecolodge but we were told that we would take it more leisurely, so as to be able to spot some wildlife. We saw various aquatic birds (of which I got maybe one or two pictures), quite a few different monkeys (capuchin, amongst others) and lots of beautiful bright large blue morpho butterflies. I loved the way we would see palm trees interspersed with more "normal" looking trees. We occasionally had to duck under overhanging leaves and vines and I would hear the metallic thwang at the back as the driver swung his machete the odd time or two to cut down overhanging vines and branches, as we swished by.

As the canoe sat quite low in the water (or perhaps, the sides were not that high), the jungle and river felt really intimate and close: it was really enjoyable that way, I thought.

The Ecolodge itself consisted of wood/banana leaf huts on stilts with connecting wooden walkways, a wooden observatory tower, and a rack for drying wellies. It promises hot water, which is taken from the river. However, we were advised that we needed to get our drinking water and water for washing our teeth from a container in the common/dining rom/library/bar hut, where there was also another container for hot water, any time we wanted a hot drink.

We were all provided with a very large and substantial poncho (on boarding the canoe at El Puente) so no need for me to have bought a poncho in Quito (realised on the bus that I had forgotten my raincoat: not ideal when you´re about to stay in the rainforest...)

On arrival at the lodge, we were told that we needed to be careful of the candles in our rooms at night (no electricity in the rooms, although the common room has a few sockets for charging up camera batteries, etc).

In the afternoon, we had a canoe trip down the river and to some lagoons where people could swim if they wanted to (I was a bit cool at that point and decided against it). I loved that on some stretches of water, there would be this wonderful sweet scent of flowers.

We saw some long nosed bats hanging from the bottom of the trees (as protection and camouflaged: I couldn´t see them the first time we spotted them on a mottled trunk), as well as a bird so well camouflaged that even from about 6 feet or less away, in the early dusk, I wasn´t able to identify it as a bird until it was on camera. It felt so safe, that even when we had been there for about 5 to 10 minutes softly paddling, it just didn´t move.

We also saw some oropendolo birds (yellow and black), as well as pink nosed dolphins (but no photos). These are one of two freshwater dolphins in the area: pink and grey. They can grown up to 2.5 metres long and have a flexible neck which allows them to manoeuvre in flooded waters amongst trees and roots. Their colour depends on how active they are: when they are active, they go pink, much as we would do with exercise. They don´t really have much of a dorsal fin, more of a hump: not that we were able to see a hump as we really only spotted the one dolphin, which can be solitary or in groups, if I remember correctly. They prefer the smaller rivers whereas the grey dolphins (which grow to a metre long) prefer the larger rivers.

In the evening, on the way back (in full darkness! I am so glad that they are very familiar with the river: can you just imagine being lost in a canoe in the dark!), we tried to find caimans by shining lights onto the banks and looking out for eyes reflecting the light back. We never really got to see any caimans, possibly one through roots at a distance of about 10 metres away, but that was probably only the guide who could say that that was a caiman.

Back at the lodge, we had a three course dinner (good thing I am only here three nights), where I also learnt from an American couple that there is a resident boa in the roof.

Afterwards, I had a (cold) shower: not of choice, guess the hot water, Lauren (one half of the American couple) had run out or it´s only available midday, when there´s a chance of heating it up.

Then it was into my bunk bed (dorm room of 4 with shared toilet and shower), which I ended up having on my own, just as well as it would have been tight for luggage storage if there had been more than myself.