Back from the Amazon! It was such an awesome trip overall, even the travel there and back was exciting! We started off by taking a plane from Quito east over the Andes to Coca, a small town with an even smaller airport. From there we got into a long motor boat on the Napo River to reach the Repsol (an oil company) checkpoint. 
This is the view from the boat on the Napo River. What’s kinda crazy is this oil company is really powerful, so much so that it is able to function on its own set of rules, different than the Ecuadorian government. Its also a strange dynamic to have to pass through an oil company, responsible for exploiting the Amazonian area, in order to reach a biodiversity research station on the other side. At the checkpoint we got in a ranchero, kinda like a bus but without any sides. That took us to the Tiputini River, from which we took another boat to reach TBS- Tiputini Biodiversity Station. We got situated in cabins, went swimming in the Tiputini, and had a short lecture in the evening.
This is the view of the station from the river.
The next four days we were split up into groups and rotated where we went each morning…beginning at 5:30am…and which of the native guides would show us around for the day. The first day my group went to Torre 1, basically a huge scaffolding that had a platform on top from which we watched a beautiful sunrise over the canopy of the forest as well as some tons of different birds—toucans, macaws, oro pendulums, parrots just to name a few. Before even getting to the tower we stopped to watch a group of woolly monkeys pass by in the trees above us—so cool. The next morning we went on a hike on one of the many trails around the station and learned about the uses of many plants in the forest. 3rd day we went to El Puente, a huge rope and wood bridge at the canopy level connecting different trees together for some more bird watching. I am coming to realize I definitely underestimated the enjoyment of bird watching…its actually pretty fun.
This is the view down the bridge. You can also see a ladder up to an even higher platform. From there, the view was awesome. The fourth day we did La Flotada, where we took a boat upstream and then jumped into the river and floated alongside back to the station.
After the morning adventure, every day was different. One of the first days we had our “drop-off” which is when the guides lead us out into the forest leaves each of us individually alongside the trail somewhere to have some time to enjoy nature alone. As we were walking along, the guide—Don Meyer (I was a big fan of Don Meyer. He was probably between 60-70 years old and knew the forest so well)—would point things out along the way for us to see. As we were crossing a plank bridge over a creek, he stopped to show us something. While we were trying to figure out what he was pointing at, we all hear this loud CRACK and before there was any time to react the bridge snaps in half and we all fall about 6 or 7 feet to the creek (fortunately dry) below. Luckily, no one was hurt too bad and, looking back, having 6 of us on a wooden bridge probably wasn’t the wisest idea. What was even better was Don Meyer pulled out his camera to take a picture of all us silly gringas and the broken bridge.
The broken bridge, a couple days later after it rained and the creek filled with water.
One of the evenings we went on a night hike, Don Meyer as the guide. He pointed out to us monos nocturnos, small monkeys that are really difficult to spot since their nocturnal, a tree frog that he found from at least 20 meters away, and a humming bird nest on the backside of a leaf. The grand finale (in my opinion) was near the end when we saw what they call a langosta, which means lobster in Spanish. It was actually a huge grasshopper-like insect that was at least 8 inches long and 2 or 3 inches thick. Ridiculous.
The last day we all could chose what we wanted to do. Some people went along with researchers to follow different packs of monkeys, others went fishing with the chef. I ended up going on a long hike with Anna, Grace, Susanna, and Teddy, led by, once again, Don Meyer. Earlier in the week Sylvia had talked about how this one trail was haunted, mostly because the camera trap (motion censored to photograph animals all hours of the day)in the area once caught a glimpse a black leopard, really strange and never seen again. So I asked Don Meyer if the trail was “embrujado” and at first I worried I had kinda offended him with such a dumb question. Instead we went the day with him telling us stories of different people he knows and their experiences with the “forest spirits”. Aside from his cool stories, we also saw some incredible things along the way—sleeping monos nocturnos, spectacled owls, a non-venemous snake.
This is a picture of me, incredible gross after our day hike (and the long sleeves are to avoid getting bit by bugs. it was HOT and humid out there) and Don Meyer. Once we got back to camp and said good-bye to Don Meyer, we decided to quickly hike out to the ox bow lake about 45 minutes away. There we took a canoe and paddled out into the lake where we saw the unique hoatzin bird and long nosed bats. It also started raining while we were out in the middle of the lake which felt so refreshing and it was just so sweet to be in the middle of this tiny lake with such beautiful surroundings.
This is us on the canoe in the ox bow lake. Front to back: Anna, Susanna, Me, Grace, and Teddy. it started raining pretty hard about 10mins after this picture
The amazon was so incredible and we all had such a great time out there. It was pretty exhausting and I arrived back to Quito with some pretty smelly clothes. I think for most of us it’s a bit of a bummer to be back in Quito; I know for me the luxury of warm showers and electricity still doesn’t outweigh getting woken up by an oro pendulum every morning.
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