Go feedback: Eva McDonnell, a reader from Kilmacud, in Dublin, had an eye-opening trip to the jungle of Ecuador
WE WERE HEADING for the Ecuadorean jungle, for what would turn out to be a magical three days. But first we had to get through Coca, a sweltering, dirty, dingy oil town geared towards the workers who fly in and out of its airport.
This is oil country – Rossport, eat your heart out. You can bet your bottom new-energy shares that when the oil companies came here in the 1960s no protests hindered their progress. The area’s hundreds of indigenous communities were doubtless unaware of how the oil industry would affect them. The Ecuadorean Amazon has been damaged by the quest for oil.
This backdrop made our trip all the more interesting. Getting screwed by the big boys is bad enough when you’ve willingly bought into capitalism; it’s all the worse when you are an indigenous community living off the land.
Anyway. From Coca we took a speedboat up the Río Napo, then transferred to a dugout canoe for the final hour of our journey to Sani Lodge, where we would be staying.
The sights and sounds around us as we paddled up to the lodge were out of this world: the jungle was lush, green and full of life, including a storm of butterflies that greeted us as we stepped off the canoe. (As long as you clamped your mouth shut it was fine.)
Sani Lodge is owned and operated by local Quechua people. Their way of life is fascinating. The jungle is their supermarket, pharmacy, playground and so much more.
We spent three magnificent days and nights getting up to all sorts of jungle fun.
Our guides, Javier and Mauro, were almost tiger-like in their ability to sense animals from way off. Mauro walked ahead of us in the jungle carrying a machete.
Whether this was to clear a path or behead a threatening jaguar we weren’t sure, but we hoped it was the former. In general he just seemed to use his machete to swat mosquitoes away.
We spent most of our time hiking. We saw monkeys, deer, snakes, tarantulas, monkey spiders and loads of exotic birds. We went caiman-watching at night and piranha-fishing during the day.
We caught two piranhas and a big pacu that was cooked up for dinner that night.
All the food was great, although invariably some sort of fly was floating in the soup or resting under the banana bread.
They don’t sleep in, these Quechua folk, and breakfast was served at 6am, so nights were pretty low key, and we were under our mosquito nets by 10pm, lulled to sleep (although it took a while) by the sound of the Río Napo Philharmonic, with a special appearance from the night monkeys.
It was a brilliant few days, and the experience of paddling slowly up the river in such serene tranquillity will stay with us for a long time.
Despite the heat and humidity, the cold showers – when there was water – the insects and their bites, leaving Sani Lodge felt like coming to the end of summer camp. To be so close to nature was a privilege.
If you’d like to tell us where you’ve been, e-mail us at go@irishtimes.ie