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We joined up with our Dragoman trip in Quito, there are a good mix of ages and nationalities and we have Darren and Sean as our trip leaders/drivers/mechanics for the next seven and a half weeks as we travel overland by truck.
First we headed north to Otavalo, this is a town famous for it's market which sells all sorts of crafts, weaving and embroidery. Many of the people there wear traditional dress. Men have their hair long and plaited down their backs, they wear white trousers often calf length, ponchos, dark felt hats and rope sandals. The women wear long black skirts, embroidered blouses, shawls or ponchos and sometimes some sort of folded cloths on their heads. Often they carry bundles or children strapped on their backs. We had time to wander the streets and visit the markets before moving on the next day to the Amazon Jungle.
We drove for much of the day due to the condition of the roads which are often unsurfaced and very bumpy, there was some beautiful scenery along the way though. We had to get to our lodge by boat down the river and as we arrived it started to pour down monsoon style, hence we were soaked in seconds! Our lodge was on an island in the middle of the Napo river which is a tributory to the Amazon river. Our room was like a wooden shed which was very basic, no electricity, just a candle and a cold shower.
The first day there we went out into the jungle following a short boat ride up the river. It was a baking hot day and also humid which didn´t make the climbs up and down steep ground very easy. We saw many different flowers, plants trees and insects, including a beautifuly coulorful poisonous frog, termites, champagne mushrooms and numerous spiders. We had a swing Tarzan style on a massive creeper which was good fun.
We visited a local school the next day and took pencils and excercise books for the children which are usually in short supply. They were so pleased with what we had taken and sang a local song for us before quickly getting to work with the coloured pencils. Our guide and four others then built a balsa wood raft in 20 munutes for 18 of us and we floated back down the river to our lodge. It was mostly relaxing as there were only small rapids but we did get stuck on a rock at one point and the raft started to break! The rest of the time we visited some local villiages, went into a house and different carving and pottery places. We also saw the local Shaman (Witch Doctor) perform a ritual of some kind. Before we left we stopped at an animal rescue centre where they try to prepare animal to live in the wild after being illegally kept as pets.
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