Our visit to the Ecuadorean Amazon started with a flight from Quito over the Andes mountains to the beginnings of the Amazon river in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve.
This river is just one of hundreds of rivers that start in the Andes and combine to form the Amazon, which flows all the way across South America to the Atlantic Ocean, 4,000 miles away.
We landed at an airport in the jungle, then drove for two hours to the very end of the road. After that the only way to go further is by boat. The river is narrow at first, but as more and more rivers join, it gets bigger and wider, until it is almost 150 miles wide when it reaches the ocean.
Here’s where we stayed, at the Tapir Lodge. We were surprised that, contrary to our expectations, it was rather cool here, though humid. At night, we were able to sleep comfortably without even a fan. Also surprisingly, there were very few mosquitoes. According to the map, Cuyabeno is in a malarial area, but our guide assured us that in his 38 years in the reserve he had never seen a case. We each got two or three bites. Nothing compared to the many bites we got in the Galapagos. Everything here , even the walkways are built on stilts because it rains so much, about 120 inches a year.
Partly because of all that rainfall, the Cuyabeno Reserve has the highest amount of biodiversity in the world. There are more types of plants and animals here than anyplace else—more than 500 species of birds and ten species of monkeys. We saw six of the ten species while we were there, including big wooly monkeys, red howler monkeys, little squirrel monkeys, and clever capuchin monkeys like this one. His whole family is in that tree with him, but they’re really hard to see.
And speaking of hard to see, can you spot the two monkeys in this photo?
They’re in the hole in the tree. They’re night monkeys resting during the day so they can go out at night to find insects to eat. There was a baby in their nest with them.
We also saw bats, like these long-nosed fruit-eating ones sleeping on a dead tree. In the evening, we saw fisher bats skimming the river to catch fish.
We saw a lot of these “stinky turkeys.” They are hoatzins, also known as stink birds because they smell so bad. We could smell them from 25 feet away and they were stinky indeed. But their stink is a good thing for them, because no one wants to eat them. I know I wouldn’t, and I’m a pretty adventurous eater. The reason they stink is their unusual digestive system. They have an enlarged crop that they use to ferment vegetable matter prior to digestion. This cud is also regurgitated to feed their young. It smells very bad.
We saw several pods of pink river dolphins, too, but they were too fast for us to get any good pictures of them. Here’s the best shots we got.
Later we went on a hike through the jungle at night when many creatures that sleep through the day are out hunting for food. We saw this huge tarantula.
And this tiny frog. He looked so much like a leaf that we almost missed him.
We almost stepped on this bushmaster snake that was hunting right by the trail. It’s a good thing we didn’t step on it, because bushmasters are among the most venomous snakes in the world. 80% of people bitten by them die, even with anti-venom treatments. They can grow up to 12 feet long. This one was only about 3 feet.
We also walked across the equator twice in the dark, once going north and once going south!
There were quite a few tarantulas at our lodge, too. This one was lurking on the walkway to our room.
And this one was hanging out in the bar, which is aptly named La Tarantula. She lives there year-round. We never knew exactly where in the bar she would be, but that didn't stop us from having Pisco Sours and Cuba Libres in the evening.
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