Laguna de San Pedro
I hadn't given much thought to Ecuador before arriving but it quickly seemed like a country to spend some slow time in. From the crossing, the pace and people reminded me of Guatemala. There's a large indigenous presence, colourful clothing and soaring mountains. There's a warm calmness to the people who have plenty of time to chat. I was handed a map from the tourism board at the border and decided here was where I would enter the Amazon, the paved roads lead deep into Ecuador's slice of the rainforest of rainforests. It's a small country with an impressive landscape - the Andes cut through the country from north to south and climb significantly from the Colombian heights including several active volcanoes, the Galapagos islands west of the mainland is a wildlife haven and an important place in Darwin's studies on evolution and almost half the country in part of the greater Amazon. Relative to size, it's the most biodiverse nation in the world. It's also the worlds largest producer of bananas. They have a healthy growing economy and a significant reduction in extreme poverty in the past decade. The roads are in great condition, easy to navigate and the petrol is the cheapest I've found by far, 55c a litre for the high octane.
From bending through the mountains for a few hours I stop in Otavalo for a couple days. I ride out to a couple nearby lakes and try the local delicacy - guinea pig, reminding me of tender roasted rabbit. The Saturday morning animal market is interesting and disturbing where all sorts are tied to stakes, squealing and moaning and sold off.
Obligatory stop when crossing the Equator with a foot in each hemisphere
I stop in high altitude Quito for a few days, it's a relaxed place as far as capital cities go and gives me time to see a couple of museums, wander through the old town and visit the bike shop and order a few parts, new tyres and get a couple things repaired. Sebastian and the boys in the workshop are super helpful. We agree on a suitable set of tyres for the roads ahead and I meet Sebastian and motorcycle friends for a beer one evening to discuss my experiences travelling north and what to expect south of here. I also meet Fabian, a motorcyclist and photographer who shared his impressive South American photos with me and a group of travelling Brazilians one evening. The mixed hostel group and cool staff also made Quito entertaining and relaxing.
Once sorted for a return loop to Quito in a few weeks for tyres I make the journey east to one of the larger Amazon towns, El Coca. The city turns to suburbs, then through the dry, brown and open mountains into wet and green flat lands as I reach the beginning of the Amazon. There's a few lookouts which offer views over the rainforest canopy for as far as the eye can see. Humidity sets in as I reach a small town at dusk, pushing on to El Coca the following morning. The insects are biting, the living a little simpler and the meals now just a big pile of rice, a plantain or yuca and a piece of chicken or fish. I'm directed to the port at the town and am approached by Raul and we chat for a while watching the river boats come in. The town sits at the convergence of three rivers, the principal being the the Rio Napo which begins high in the snowmelt of the Ecuadorian Andes, crosses into Peru and eventually joins the mighty Amazon in Brazil. Raul introduces me to Juan, a quiet and gentle man who worked for 20 years as a guard for one of the protected areas of the jungle. He monitored the river traffic from a hut and was on the lookout for illegal loggers trying to exploit the rainforest, mainly coming in from Colombia. Juan agreed to take me into the jungle for a few days, camp at the hut with his ex-colleagues, and explore what the pristine primary forest has to offer.
We met the following morning and took off on a river boat with food, water and a machete - four hours east along the Napo towards the Yasuni protected area and the hut by the river.
These trees are in abundance, shooting over 70 metres into the sky with huge webbed bases. If the canyons in the southern U.S. made me feel small and the open seas into Colombia made me feel weak, being here really made me feel like a dot in the universe. This is the richest ecosystem on the planet, home to a third of all the earth's life forms and a fifth of the world's birds. It's 8 million square kilometres in size where there's more plant species in a single hectare than in all of Europe. Because it lies on the equator the climate barely changes all year round and its stable environment allows plants and animals to thrive. It's so dense that only 2% of sunlight makes it to the jungle floor and its plants produce 20% of the world's oxygen. It's importance and brilliance goes on and on. The daily energy generated by the sun shining over the Amazon is equivalent to 6 million atomic bombs.
Juan takes me out for a night walk the day we reach the hut and somehow spots this snake. Over the following few days we fish and take hikes and his love for the jungle shows as he tries to point out as much as possible. What interested me most is how humans have forever lived here prosperously with a resourceful and sustainable respect for its capabilities, its food sources and medicinal offerings. To the indigenous, the jungle serves as its supermarket, pharmacy and church. Juan picks a dry fruit which tasted like smoked mussels.
We open up these plants, there's ants running inside, a source of protein, they have a strong, sweet acidic flavour like eating a whole lemon
Juan cuts down this tree which retains water very well and is used if lost in the jungle and in need of fresh water. There's also shells used to whistle into if lost as well as a certain hollow tree base used to knock the machete against to communicate.
Juan cuts into the Sangre de Drago 'Blood of the Dragon' tree which pisses out a red liquid as deep as human blood. He cups it in a leaf. It's the most bitter taste I've experienced. It's used to soothe stomach aches. There's so much more just in this small patch of jungle, a tree oil used for shampoo, tea leaves, a liquid used in darts to stun animals, jungle viagra, insects to eat. We visit an indigenous community one morning and I sample the fermented sweet potato with a decent alcohol content which to some village women is their only source of food and drink.
I'm lucky enough to spot a lot of wildlife, this coral snake, a deer nearby the hut, woodpeckers, toucans, howler monkeys, turtles and hundreds of parrots which come to feed in the mineral waters every morning. We head out searching for caiman (alligator family) one night in the boat and spot one on the river bed, a pair of bright red eyes on a hunt. It dips into the water as we approach and it bumps the boat seconds later.
Fishing on the Napo, we only manage to catch one small Bagre which we eat for breakfast
Visit to a turtle conservation project, at this size they're easy prey and numbers are dwindling so the project tanks allow the turtles to grow big enough to defend themselves before they are set into the wild.
After leaving Juan and returning to El Coca for a night I spend the next day riding west in the rain. I stop under some shelter for a while during a heavy downpour and am approached by this group of siblings and cousins leaving the nearby school who annoy Sixto for a while and eat all my biscuits. A fun experience in the jungle, I hope to return further down the track.
