I took the opportunity to visit another region in Ecuador, "el oriente", the east. The "east" is basically the Amazon Jungle region of Ecuador on the eastern side of the andes, bordered by Colombia and Peru.
I took a trip with a group of 7 to visit the "Limoncocha National Biological Reserve." Below is a photo of the group along with our guide, the nephew of the other guide, and a man who lives on the shore of the lake in the reserve.
Our group consisted of three Ecuadorians (one of which is also Colombian), one English, and three Americans (US). The English guy is my yoga instructor, and he planned the trip. He wants to start taking groups of yoga students out to the jungle for retreats.
Above left are Robert (our guide), Ruth, Paula, and Katherina. Below are Robert, James and Kristen.
The trip to "the orient" was a long one: first a 9 hour bus ride from Quito to the city of "Coca", also called "Puerto Francisco de Orellana". 5 of us took the early bus (a la 6:30am) to get to Coca between 3 and 4 in the afternoon.
Coca is a town that has grown considerably in the last 20 years due to the oil boom in Ecuador. It is known as one of cities that the oil workers come into after working out in "the field".
We spent the evening there, staying at a hotel owned by our weekend's guide, Robert, and prepared for our morning departure to Limoncocha.
On day two we traveled farther east from Coca to the Limoncocha reserve. This is a pic of me at the bus station in Coca. I have two eggs on toothpics, a local girl had created a hard-boiled egg stand and would sprinkle salt and pepper on them.. yum!
Limoncocha is a town proximate to the Biological reserve with the same name. It was a 2 hour bus ride to get to Limoncocha and a an hour stop in another oil town. 
After a lunch at a research station we took a boat around the Limoncocha lake to view birds of the area.
On the other side of a lake we arrived at a dwelling where a family lives that allows people to use their "cabanas" as shelter. We stayed in the Cabanas the first night and hiked further into the Jungle to camp on the second night.
A man who lives by the Limoncocha lake showed us his catch for the evening when we arrived at his dock. The fish on the top is a pirahna, and had begun to eat one of the other fish (see the fish below the pirahna, the tail is half gone!).
Our first night in the reserve we went out into the lake to find the black caiman that live there. The one we were able to approach most closely, below, did not hide because she was guarding a nest of eggs. She was about 4 meters long!
The second day at limoncocha we hiked further into the jungle to make camp. Before we hiked too far in, we had the opportunity to try out a vine swing, made by the family that lives on the shore of the Limoncocha lake. Many of the junge trees were HUGE, and pics don´t do them justice... The pic above of the entire group was taken in front of a tree the size of building!
We recieved a fair amount of rain which made out hike through a bog pretty exciting! there was alot of difficult footing to manuver in order to not sink in the muck!
That day and the next we saw many amazing insects and fungi. Our night-hike uncovered many insects we had not found during the day!
We also found many reptiles and frogs such as these.....
And lot´s of fungi such as these!
Below, Richard holds a "tagua" nut, also called "vegetable ivory". This nut is used to carve into all sorts of figurines, jewlary and other objects and below its brown outer shell, it has an ivory-white color.
Here is a tree which has developed a creative defense mechanism against intrudors... we were careful around all the vegatation with spines, needles, and other pleasentries!
Although we saw three types of monkeys, including a "leonito", little lion, I didn´t get any good pictures of them! They were either too fast, or too far away! The leonito was the size of a squirrel and has the face of a lion. The other two types we saw were much larger and had prehensile tails with which they were able to swing from tree to tree!
1 comment:
Erin,
You really are brave!! I would love to see the Amazon but can't say I would like all the bugs and other things.......... Thanks again for all your help! It was great to meet you in Tosagua. My team had a great time even with the hard work! paz y abrazos, Karen
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