Recount of our days in Cuyabeno

After the tombola at ACJ Sur, Will and I took off for a 5-day jungle trip to the Reserva Producción Faunística Cuyabeno.

On Monday the 19^th of November, we took the plane to Lago Agrio, a small oil town in the jungle, where we were picked up - together with some other passengers - by our guide and a driver. A three hour drive through nice landscapes, all the way along the Trans Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline, took us to La Puente, which is basically a bridge with some houses nearby, but also the main entry point into the jungle.

Our co-travellers were Wilmar the guide, Nina the blond Swiss girl, Mimi, an older lady who’s been to Ecuador a couple of times, and a nice German couple (Martin and …) that also booked their trip via Kai and Karla.

From the bridge we started paddling; for every two people there was a canoe with captain aka local guide. Our captain, who later turned out to be the native guide for the whole group, was an older woman called Aurora. She’s from the Siona people and seemed to have been working as a guide for at least 10 years. On the contrary to what I expected she spoke perfect Spanish, really a shame that our Spanish wasn’t that great at the time.

We paddled a couple of hours, enjoying the sounds of the jungle - from time to time interrupted by passing motor canoes -, colourful birds and butterflies flying by, a herd of monkeys crossing the river by means of some overhanging trees - the mothers with the little ones on their back or clinging to their belly -, and we saw our first anaconda.

After our jungle trip, I had a talk with Pedro (Maria-the-landlady’s brother) about anacondas and boas. He’s been in the army and spent quite some time deep in the jungle training for God knows what. He told me that on his trips he saw quite some snakes surpassing 7 m in length and that when they had killed one of them - I guess with guns, cause how else would you kill such a monster -, they needed 24 man to carry it and when they skinned it and folded the hide double, that it reached their hips … I do want to stress that these trips went deep into the jungle, while ours was only a couple of hours away from civilisation. ;-)

So on about Cuyabeno. The first day, we paddled to El Tigre, where we spent the night in tents. After we managed to distract him from an apparently interesting conversation with blond Swiss girl, Wilmar, our guide, took us on a night trip in the rainforest, which was quite spooky. In the jungle, you have to be prepared for anything, watching out for poisonous snakes, scary spiders or konga ants with an extremely painful bite. Or that’s maybe what they say to make it more exciting for tourists, but I have to say that it’s an impressive environment and that you feel quite vulnerable at first - not knowing it.

We saw all kinds of interesting spiders, in diverse colours and with the strangest shapes, cute centipedes coiling up in a ball if you drop them, foggy frogs and their spawn neatly wrapped around the branches of a plant and lots of ants carrying leaves to their nest. Our walk ended rather abruptly after an unexpected encounter with a XXIV that Wilmar almost collided with. The XXIV (lance-de-fer?) is a small snake (maybe 40 cm long) and it got this name because - apparently - it takes you only 24 hours to die if you get bitten and cannot get the antidote in time. It was sleeping on a protruding branch and Wilmar almost ran into it with his face …

Day 2

The next morning, more people arrived: a German girl called Lea and two Quiteños on their honeymoon. We kayaked on for an hour or three until the river came out into a bigger river. Shortly after that a motor canoe picked us up and - with the kayaks being towed behind the motor canoe - we were brought to the Magic River Lodge where we would spend the coming three nights. That evening, we went for another stroll near the lodge to give the newcomers also a chance to experience the jungle at night. I guess it’s because near the lodge there are much more people, but the walk wasn’t as exiting as the night before and we didn’t come across that many animals. Or maybe I started feeling more at ease in the jungle …

Day 3

On the third day, we went to the Laguna Grande by motor canoe. This lagoon is rather huge, full of drowned trees and apparently replete with life. It is an ideal place for birdwatching, you will find caymans near its banks, it contains piranhas and all sort of other fish and at times you see pink and grey sweet water dolphins jumping out of the water. The latter are nearly blind since the water is not transparant, but dark brown because of all the organic detritus. The rainforest around the lake and various islands in it, are bursting with life as well, birds, monkeys, sloths, tapirs … I found it pretty hard to imagine, but the lake is only temporary, which of course explains the drowned trees, and turns into a gigantic muddy puddle in the dry season. We were so lucky as to see and experience it in the rainy season.

So, our boatsman dropped us on one of the shores of the lake and we went hiking. The first part of the walk was in a “dry” part of the rainforest. We were enlightened about the medicinal or other qualities of many plants, tasted several kinds of fruit, learned how to make bracelets out of the fibers of a kind of palm tree and our native guide cut some branches with large longitudinal leaves, - en passant - weaved a backpack out of one of the branches, which she gave to me, and made a jungle crown for one of the other girls she, really cool!

The second part of the trip was less fun for some of us … It started with the Bog of Eternal Stench, a very marchy peace of jungle, where many of us - despite the boots we were wearing - got black muddy wet feet, don’t ask about leaches! On top of that it started raining … ;-) I was actually quite enjoying myself, although I have to admit that - after four hours of walking, when it seemed that the guide had lost his way and the two guides, Wilmar and Aurora, were disagreeing over which way we had to go - I got a bit worried myself. But soon afterwards, we heard the motor canoe in the distance that came to pick us up.

After a late, but filling lunch, we went piranha fishing. This activity involves finding a good spot, putting some fresh meat on your hook (apparently they like chicken), dropping the hook into the water and then splashing around quite violently to make the piranhas think that a stinkey turkey fell of his branch … I could feel them biting, but had no luck. Each time I lifted my fishing line, which you have to do really quickly, I found that they took off with part of the meat.

Afterwards, we went back to the Laguna Grande to witness a beautiful sunset and swim in the water of the Amazon. I conquered my fear for water and jumped in as well; it is after all quite a unique experience to swim in the (waters that will end up in the) great Amazon River! Someone urgently needed to make a phone call, which was indeed possible if you clambered into one of the trees in the lake, but only that one! Defying the ants, our guide climbed in and managed to send a text message. In the mean time, we took some pictures that would make a great advertisement for the local mobile phone companies! To conclude the evening, we went cayman hunting, but no luck either; we didn’t even see their eyes looming out of the water …

Day 4

On the fourth day, we went for a visit to Aurora’s village in the jungle, where we learnt how to prepare “pan de yucca”. That was something I really enjoyed! Before going, Aurora “prepared” us. She had brought a kind of fruit that looks a bit like a hedgehog on the outside with lots of little fruits of a very bright red colour on the inside. You can eat the fruits, use them to colour food or your hair and you can also paint with them, which is what Aurora did. She painted the symbol of a sjamana on my face, Will became a butterfly and the others were decorated with a gecko, water strider, star or barbecue. On our walk to the village, Ariana again showed us lots of plants and how to use them. I saw for instance a cacao plant, she showed us a tree with whose bark people used to make clothes, she made us taste a couple of plants, lemon ants, grubs eating their way out of a type of coconut (coco-flavoured when raw and with a taste of bacon if you barbecue them) and a leaf that makes your tongue blue.

In the Siona community, we went to the house of our boatsman and it was his wife, who had been one of the kayak captains, who thaught us. First thing is to get the yucca out of the ground. This involves cutting down the tree and then asking a strong man to pull the roots out of the ground. The roots are the actual yucca that you use for cooking and need to be peeled, which seems quite straightforward if you have a machete and know how to handle it. Then you have to grate the yucca, a rather labor intensive process requiring a lot muscle power. These days, the grating is done with a metal grating board, but in the past they used the stem of the spiny palmtree for this! After the grating, the yucca needs to be devoided of its juice. This is done by means of a type of elongated mat that is made out of the bark of a tree. To avoid too much mess, you put some banana leaves on the floor, the “mat” on top of this, the wet grated yucca on the mat, you fold the mat, hang one end on a stick near the ceiling and then start coiling and wringing it. The juice is usually used for the preparation of a typical fish dish, while the - now dry - lumps of yucca need to be seeved to make the yucca more like some kind of flour. And that’s what you make the bread with. You just spread it out evenly on a round ceramic bowl above the fire, turn the bread to bake the other side as well and then eat it with fish or jam, yummy …

Back from our visit to the village and a brief stop-over at another bigger Siona community, Wilmar took Will and me fishing again and this time we got lucky. Rather out of the blue, a catfish landed on Will’s head and we managed to catch that piranha, the poor creature … I guess it must have been eaten by the others after we threw it back in the river.

That night, we went in search of caymans again and this time we managed to spot a couple, although they didn’t look that impressive … two red eyes in the light of our lamps, disappearing under the water if you came too close. The best time to see them is in the dry season when the river is much smaller and they huddle together in the wet parts. The guides usually manage to catch one or two for everyone to pose with …

That night I cut Will’s hair by candle light!

Day 5

On our last day, we were supposed to go birdwatching, but since our guide overslept, we were a bit too late to see that many animals. Instead, we got a lesson in being captain of the paddle canoe. After breakfast, we took off by motor canoe, back to La Puente and then by bus to Lago Agrio, where we had some time to explore the town, bought some Cofán artesanias (arrows for Kai and Karla’s office) and went for dinner with Mimi and Lea. The next day, after a quiet morning, we took the plane back to Quito.