Bungle in the Jungle – Our Visit to the Amazon Rainforest

Greetings everyone!

It’s been a while since our last post. Sorry about that! We just needed some time to recharge and get the creative juices flowing again.

But we’ve been keeping busy! Manageable local hikes and easy public transportation day trips have occupied most of our time. Nothing really noteworthy though. We’ve just been enjoying the flow of day-to-day life here in Baños de Agua Santa.

But we did check off one bucket list item for us – we just returned from an overnight visit to the Amazon rainforest! It was a great experience, even though the weather threw us a pretty big curveball. It turns out that rainforests have rain. Sometimes, a lot of rain.

Who knew?

So with apologies to Jethro Tull, let us tell you all about our bungle in the jungle Amazon rainforest-style!

Arranging Our Visit to the Amazon Rainforest

This was actually really easy.

All we did was book a trip through our Airbnb hostel. We could have also booked through any one of the dozens of travel companies here in Baños de Agua Santa, but we’ve found that our hostel generally offers the best deals.

Although there were several excursion options to choose from, we went with a 2-day/1-night option.

Day 1 would be spent primarily with a bus tour group and guide, exploring a number of the more accessible sites in Amazonia around the town of Puyo in Ecuador. This would end with us being dropped off with a local “indigenous” family to have dinner, go on a night jungle hike, and stay overnight.

Day 2 would be spent with an indigenous guide (of the same family) exploring Rio Puyo by boat and visiting less accessible sites deeper in the Amazon rainforest.

And meals were included for both days.

By our reckoning, this was a pretty great deal for $70 per person!

Day 1 – Into the Amazon

Our tour bus picked us up at our hostel at 9 am on a Monday, along with about 12 other tourists.

And we immediately headed east on Highway E30 towards the Amazonia region.

Stop 1 – Mirador Miarmera

Baños de Agua Santa is not in the Amazonia region of Ecuador, but it is very, very close. All you need to do to get to the Amazon jungle is drive east on Highway E30 for about 30 minutes, descending from the Andes mountains, until you end up in the fringes of the Amazon river watershed.

After going through several sets of tunnels, and avoiding landslides along the way, we arrived in the Amazonia region of Ecuador. Our first stop was Mirador Miamera, the first tourist location you encounter when you get into Amazonia.

From Mirador Miramera you can get a really clear view of Amazonia, as well as Rio Pastaza.

In case you were wondering, we will actually never be seeing the Amazon river on this excursion. The Amazon river isn’t in Ecuador! But the major feeder rivers into the Amazon river are found here, and Rio Pastaza is one of the major ones. Eventually, Rio Pastaza becomes the Amazon river, but not until after it reaches Brazil.

We spent about 30 minutes here enjoying the view until it was time to go to our next location about an hour away, Cascada Hola Vida.

Stop 2 – Cascada Hola Vida

The route to Cascada Hola Vida took us through the city of Puyo, Ecuador, and deeper into the Amazon rainforest proper.

We eventually arrived at the trailhead to Cascada Hola Vida and headed out, our guide leading the way.

The trail to the waterfall went deep into the jungle but mainly followed a local stream.

The guide stopped to administer a local medicine for nasal congestion, made from bark from a local tree and water. We then snorted the mixture, which was extremely potent!

Further along the trail, he stopped again to administer clay from a local deposit to be used as a free cosmetic facial mask. Those that applied it could rinse it off at the waterfall.

But as we walked, there were lots of picturesque areas along the stream to admire.

But eventually, we reached Cascasa Hola Vida!

We were encouraged to take a few minutes to swim in the waterfall pool.

So I did!

Refreshed, we headed back to our bus.

Once we all returned and cleaned up, we headed off to our next stop.

Lunch!

Stop 3 – Lunch

As we drove to a local restaurant close to the trailhead the heavens opened up. So lunch couldn’t have been better timed!

Our lunch consisted of local Ecuadorian dishes. This was no big deal to us, but many of our fellow travelers had never had local Ecuadorian food.

What was nice is that I was able to eat a unique fish dish that you can only find in the Amazonia region of Ecuador: “Maito“.

It was delicious!

And thankfully the rain abated during lunch. After we were done we moved on to our next stop, the indigenous community, Comunidad Ukuy Wasi.

Stop 4 – Comunidad Ukuy Wasi

Comunidad Ukuy Wasi is a local indigenous community (an extended family of ~80 people) that educates tourists about tribal kichwa Amazon life in the absence of modern technology. It was very interesting and started with a greeting where everyone was given a ceremonial drink.

Then there was an introduction to local animals that coexist with their community…

Blowdart demonstrations…

Face decorating to ward off evil spirits (and bad luck) when entering the jungle…

And social dance ceremonies.

During the activities, the local community cat took an immediate interest in Rhonda (who is allergic) and made her into a pillow…

Until she foisted the cat off onto me.

Really the cat was shameless!

The indigenous community show-and-tell session completed, we drove off to our next group activity for the day – canoeing down Rio Puyo!

Stop 5 – Boat Trip down Rio Puyo

Our bus took us a short distance away from Comunidad Ukuy Wasi to a canoe boat launch area along Rio Puyo.

We were going to explore some of the light rapids of Rio Puyo in indigenous-style wooden canoes!

Now Rhonda and I are fairly experienced with canoes, so we know the drill with boats of this type. But what we didn’t appreciate was how much more unstable (and leaky) these boats were compared to canoes seen in the USA!

No wonder everyone was strongly encouraged to leave their belongings back on the bus. Once we got going it felt like the canoes could capsize at any moment!

It was a good thing that each canoe (containing between 4 – 6 tourists) had its own local pilot to guide the canoe down the river and through the rapids! Thankfully, none of the canoes capsized. But after our 20-minute journey, we were all a little more wet than before.

Our bus picked everyone up where we put in downstream, and then we were off to our final bus tour destination of the day – the Indichuris Mirador!

Stop 6 – Indichuris Mirador

The final stop, Indichuris Mirador, was pretty cool.

We had to climb an extended set of stairs up the hill to get to the actual mirador…

And the view was absolutely spectacular!

It was great that the rain clouds cleared out, providing an epic view of the Andes mountains back west.

There was even a giant swing next to the mirador, where several of our group braved swinging out into the abyss.

There were even a series of (man-made) caves to explore around the base.

We were given an hour to explore the compound, take a swing, or relax on the hammocks.

It was another very enjoyable stop in a very enjoyable day.

But it was getting late and it was time for our tour bus to drop Rhonda and me off with our host family!

Stop 7 – Back to Comunidad Ukuy Wasi

It was a bit of a surprise to us, but Rhonda and I were the only ones in our group doing an overnight stay with our host family. The rest of the bus was going back to Baños de Agua Santa, so we’d be on our own for the next 24 hours!

When we were dropped off at Comunidad Ukuy Wasi, we met with our guide during our stay. It was his extended family that ran Comunidad Ukuy Wasi, but it appeared that he was the main liaison between his community and the world outside the jungle.

Now is a good time to make something very clear. This community is not untouched by the modern world. Although they live in a very rural environment and get much of their food from the surrounding area, they are not completely isolated.

They wear normal clothes, have cell phones, have electricity, the kids go to schools, everyone spoke Spanish (as a second language), and the people here live their lives as you might expect. The community as a whole reminded us of some of the more isolated USA camping compounds we have seen in the past, just with more basic amenities. Imagine each family unit staying in its own basic cabin, and coming together in common areas for meals and things like that.

And we had our own cabin to stay in!

In actuality, it was a kind of dormitory-style 2-story cabin, with each floor having a bedroom for a couple and multiple single beds in a common room for individual backpacker travelers.

We were the only travelers staying, so we had the entire cabin all to ourselves! And we chose the second-story room to have a great view of Rio Puyo.

After we got settled in, we were provided a traditional Ecuadorian dinner (steamed tilapia from the river, rice, and tea) and met some of the family units that live here.

Everyone was very nice, but they were a little shy around us! Most of our conversations (in Spanish) were with our guide. And it was a good thing our Spanish skills have improved since no one knew English here!

After dinner, our guide took us out for a night hike in the local jungle. We followed a local game trail and encountered a number of interesting things, including the largest leaf cutter colony we have ever seen, big termite colonies, and bioluminescent plants. And when we shut off our headlamps, we could see the eyes of nocturnal primates reflecting light high in the trees in the rainforest.

It was pretty cool!

But by the time we were done, we were exhausted! We had been on the go for over 12 hours, and we knew we’d sleep well surrounded by the sounds of the nearby river and the jungle at night.

And we had a big day ahead of us!

Day 2 – It Rains in the Rainforest

We woke up the next morning to the sound of thunder and rain hitting our roof.

Our bus tour guide during our tour the previous day said we would do activities rain or shine, so we were mentally prepared to get wet. We brought our wet weather gear, so the rain was no big thing for us.

It is a rainforest, after all.

So at 8 am, we went to breakfast with our host family thinking that the weather wouldn’t be a big deal.

We were wrong.

During breakfast, the heavens completely opened up.

We were told to head back to our cabin to wait things out, as the torrential rain would make boating down the river, even in a motorized metal canoe, completely suicidal.

But it didn’t stop.

The water level of Rio Puyo rose dramatically, and the river turned into a series of treacherous rapids. It was pretty clear after 4 hours of waiting, that our river tour and jungle hikes were not going to happen.

Ah, well. The travel gods giveth and taketh away.

Our host family provided lunch for us (they weren’t obliged to), and after lunch when the rains died down, we wandered around the community campus for an hour or so to stretch our legs.

Unfortunately, we were stuck in the compound with no ground transportation. So we went back to our cabin to wait until 4 pm when our scheduled pickup would arrive.

It was a good thing I had a bunch of podcasts downloaded on my phone! We had no cell coverage the entire time we were there, so naps, podcasts, and staring out our balcony window were the entertainment of the day.

Finally, at 4 pm, our bus driver from the previous day picked us up. His current tour group was occupied at another attraction with the bus tour guide. So while they were busy he did his best to make up for our lost day by showing us another couple of sites in the area that were not on the original itinerary.

Granted, these activities weren’t even close in scale to what we were supposed to do this day. But better than nothing.

Stop 1 – Visiting Peces Gigantes

Fish farms are not uncommon in Amazonia. And one apparently raises huge endangered Amazonian fish!

The fish are Paiche (Arapaima gigas), endangered fish in the Amazon basin that can reach 4 meters in length and 250 kg in weight!

So we stopped by to check them out.

Watch your fingers when feeding them!

Stop 2 – Of Crocodiles and River Mergers

Our second stop was to a nearby river overlook, where the Rio Puyo merges with Rio Pastaza. More and more rivers merge with Rio Pastaza, until it eventually becomes the Amazon river!

The overlook was pretty…

But a side trail that took us to a stream where Caiman and White crocodiles lived was much more our style.

We were told not to fall in as crocs in the area would eat us!

Once we were done, we left in the tour bus to pick up the rest of the group back at Indichuris Mirador. And from there it was off to a cacao plantation.

Stop 3 – Cacao Plantation

Having met back up with the bus tour group for that day, we all went to a local cacao plantation to view their products and see how they make chocolate, old-school style/

It was fun to see the process, and even more fun to try the hot chocolate and cacao tea that comes from their harvest!

Tasty stuff.

But by this point, it was pushing 6:30 pm and we had to head back to Baños de Agua Santa. We finally got back to town, completely exhausted, by 8 pm.

Closing Thoughts on Our Visit to the Amazon Rainforest

It was quite the whirlwind trip!

Very enjoyable, but our visit to the Amazon rainforest was also a little disappointing in a way.

Granted, there is little that can be done about the weather. It was just a shame that the things that Rhonda and I wanted to do the most were all canceled by the long downpour!

That said, it was really great to explore the Amazon rainforest! Definitely a bucket list checkoff for us.

But if we do it again, it will be with a laser-beam focus on the naturalist activities that were within our grasp, but unrealized.

Hopefully, we will have that chance someday.

Cuenca, Ecuador perhaps?

Until next time…

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