Red Breasted Nun Bird

THE AMAZON RAINFOREST

So we got the night bus to Lago Agrio (y´know, the guerilla-hiding, drug smuggling border town that the Foreign Office strongly recommend against going to...they´re right, it´s a bit of a dump), waited there in the rain outside the uber-classy (not) Hotel D´Mario, making friends with Hungarians, Australians and Danish alike. A 2 and a half hour bus ride later and we arrive at the dock, get into our motor powered canoes and travel upriver 40 clicks (about 2 and a half hours again) to the lodge, deep in the Amazon Rainforest. What awaited us was a week of river swimming (for some of us anyway...not steve) canoe trips (sore arms), visits to the Shaman, night walks in the jungle, 3 hour treks wading through jungle swamps, fishing for pirahnas, sunset watching, bird watching, monkey frolicking, night caiman hunting, anaconda hunting, ant eating FUN.

Anacondas seen: 3
Pirahnas caught: Steve - 1 (red pirahna the most feared and critically respected of all the fish)
Monkeys seen; lots
caiman wrestled: more than you could shake a stick at
mosquito bites: gareth - 26 everyone else - slightly less
steve´s nosquitos trousers dont work

we saw other snakes too like the amazon tree boa, the snail eater and two types of sloth and macaws and toucans and PINK RIVER DOLPHINS UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL and an ELECTRIC EEL and a caiman RIGHT UNDER OUR SLEEPING HUT, several tarantulas above beds (christened Billy Bob), rice and soup EVERY FUCKING DAY GLORIOUS I SAY GLORIOUS, awesome guides, Luis: the Latino Dom Joly and Juan: eyes like a demon.

Friends made: lots
Rainstorms: one, got soaked
hammocks relaxed in: numerous
percentage of sadness upon leaving: 100

so we´re back in Quito. Heading to a place called Mindo tomorrow for rafting, biking and most important of all cloud forest canopying. Then the great journey south begins as we wave goodbye to master kitchener the first and make the jump from Ecuador to Peru.

"City hands mister Hooper. City hands. You´ve been counting money all your life."

CHAU!