Our trip into the jungle in Ecuador involved a short flight from Quito to a town called Coca in a propeller plane which was bigger than we expected and after an hour’s delay we arrived to temperatures in the 40s and around 80% humidity.. Coca is a very busy town on the Napo River and our lodge was quite a journey from there, 2 ½ hours in a motorised canoe and then another 1 ½ hours being paddled up a beautiful creek where there were many birds and animals to admire on the way including an anaconda asleep in a tree.
We were on the same flight as a large party of American “birders” all staying at our lodge so we felt slightly in awe of these serious ornithologists but our guide Juan Carlos who introduced himself at dinner soon put us at ease, each group is assigned a bilingual guide and a local guide too – in our case Hugo who is a member of the local Anangu community who are now the sole owners of Napo. His eyes out in the jungle were amazing, he spotted night monkeys asleep in the bark of a tree which to all intents and purposes looked like wood carvings amongst many other interesting things.
In spite of the heat and humidity of the jungle we had a wonderful 3 days there, the mornings would start with a wake-up call at 5.30am and after breakfast we would head off in the canoe up the creek always seeing wonderful birds en route to our destination.
One day we were taken to two parrot clay licks – places where hundreds of parrots assemble each day to lick the clay or water which contain essential minerals to help their digestion and neutralise the toxins that they ingest from the seeds that they eat. One clay lick was on a bank on the main river and the other was a short walk inland. The noise from the hundreds of gathering birds was unbelievable. We had to make a return trip to the second clay lick as the parakeets were reluctant to work to our schedule, despite our waiting over an hour for them to appear. The second also involved a long wait (alleviated in R’s case by reading his Spanish copy of the first Harry Potter book) but was much more interesting and we saw hundreds of birds gradually descending down the cliff to approach the cave containing the elixir of parakeet life, but at the last moment they all took flight when a lizard appeared in the cave entrance so we didn’t actually see them licking the clay.
We were also taken on a walk through the forest to the observation tower where we were 100 feet up looking down on the canopy of trees. We saw many birds, caiman, lizards and monkeys during our time in the jungle and S was also treated to the interesting experience of having the bad spirits cast out of her by the local shaman (aka witch doctor) Domingo – a process involving chanting, blowing into her hair and stroking her head with leaves and what sounded like vomiting into her head (deep guttural noises from his throat) so that only good spirits remained! The guiding here was excellent and well worth the long transfer up river, the lodge is beside a lake and there were many trees in the grounds where there were plenty of very noisy birds to observe and a night we were serenaded by thousands of frogs – the only downside were the millions of mosquitoes who still managed to bite through clothing in spite of the repellent we used at every opportunity.
We were also entertained by one of the American group who is a talented amateur harmonica player, who has made recordings and plays in a group. He said he brought 10 harmonicas with him on this trip (which sounds incredible) but we heard him play a couple of pieces for his group while waiting for lunch after the visit to the clay lick and he was most impressive. Shades of the Deep South in the South American Rain Forest.
The American “Birders” were a pleasant group of people, and apart from the harmonicist (?) the most notable was a man who carried everywhere (even on the boat up the river) a tripod and camera with a zoom lens measuring at least 2 feet, the longest that either of us had seen away from a sporting event.
We had an early start again for the 6.30 departure back up river to Coca and the flight back to Quito where William was waiting for us to take us on to our next short visit to the cloud forest in Mindo.
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