January 18th, Amazonia

Grassland ecosystem at 13,000 feet

We boarded the bus early in the morning and headed out on a seven hour bus ride to the Amazon. The trip was an amazing lesson on the variety of ecosystems in Ecuador. As we drove from Quito up and across the mountains, we found ourselves in a high elevation grassland plateau at 13000 feet, and then descended down into amazing high elevation jungle, cloud forest, and finally, low land Amazonian rainforest.

Cloud forest pit stop to stretch the legs

We also really felt a sense of adventure and remoteness, when the last three hours of the journey was on a single lane dirt road deeper and deeper into the jungle. Once the road ended at Comuna Los Rios, we boarded a large canoe for the final 20 minute trip down the Rio Napo (one of the 10 largest tributaries to the Amazon River) to the Yachana lodge, which perched above the river with an incredible view of a sandbar and the river below.

Before boarding, we met our guide for the trip, a young local guy named Robert, who had earned a scholarship to study in Pennsylvania for a year. As such, his English was quite good and he introduced us to the lodge, settled us into our rooms, and handed out our mud boots.

Before dinner, he also took us on a short hike to a lookout over the river to watch the sunset and show us some of the native wildlife. At the lookout, students were amazed by the bullet ant, which can induce a three-day fever, a spiny caterpillar, with hairs that can cause a serious rash if brushed against, and felt the sting of a native bee. Three people, overall, ended up getting stung, including Keith, who, it turns out, is deathly allergic to bees. Luckily, Robert demonstrated the healing properties of an elephant ear leaf, which quickly neutralized the pain of the sting, and which may have prevented Keith from needing his epi pen and a trip to the hospital.

Longhorn's mandibles

Back at the lodge, we shared a wonderful three-course meal of carrot soup, potatoes and veggies, and a passion fruit cobbler. Overall, the Yachana lodge feels like a 5 star resort, and we all feel incredibly pampered and spoiled. We even found a tree frog, a boa, and a caiman on the property on our way back to our rooms. What a cool place! And I didn't even mention my first Trogon (White-tailed Trogon), which we saw on the way up to the lookout!