Having had a relaxed afternoon yesterday, we woke bright and early, returning again to Wonderful Ecuador to embark on a tour of the Amazon rainforest. After climbing aboard a tour bus and collecting people from other agencies in Banos, we drove for roughly 2 hours to the nearby town of Puyo, then a little farther to a Zoorefugio shelter nearby. This shelter was home to a large variety of Amazonian animals rescued from illegal traffickers which were unsuitable for release into the wild. As it turns out, this was a wild menangerie of wild pigs, birds, monkeys and big cats rivalling those of a zoo. Here we also got to experience why the Amazon is called a rainforest, with a torrential downpour joining us on our tour of the shelter. The rest of the rain was avoided by hiding under a shelter and playing chinese whispers in Spanish with the Argentinians, which we definitely mangled. Eventually the rain lifted enough for us to hightail it back to the bus and head to the hext stop, a canoe trip along the Amazonian river, getting just as wet from the rain as we would swimming!

Wet and bedraggled, we got off the boats about half and hour downstream at a little village of the Cotococha community of the Kichwa people in the Amazon where we had a lunch of potato soup and steak (omelettes) before donning a pair of gumboots and heading on a hike through the jungle, featuring river crossings at knee height, gumboots full of water, a fantastic rope swing over a 20 metre drop (terrifying but fun!) and finally, a huge waterfall to swim in!
After a lengthy swim and trying to get under the waterfall without being pummeled into the bottom of the pool, we returned via a slightly different route to a village where we tried chicha and using blowdarts before returning to Banos. By this stage, it was around 8.30pm and definitely dinnertime, so we headed to the Taverno Armenia for a lovely meal and drinks before bed.