I enjoyed my breakfast with Antonio, Roque, and Theresa while listening to the rushing river behind the din of conversation. We were soon off to be outfitted for our morning adventure. This mainly consisted of rubber boots and a life jacket, although the lifejacket was only needed for the boat ride. Antonio had advised us to wear pants, long socks, long sleeves, a hat, and lots of bug spray and sunscreen for this morning in the rainforest. After a quick jaunt upriver we were at the Misicocha Private Nature Reserve for a tour with our local guides, Caesar and Andrés. The nature reserve is owned by the hotel and they're trying to preserve and conserve the rainforest in that area, as it takes a long time to regrow.
The locals used the rainforest as their medicine cabinet, and one example is the tea we learned about yesterday, called guayusa (wahh-you-sah). They believes that regular consumption helps to prevent snakes and mosquitos from biting you because you sweat it out and they don't like the scent. Blessedly, we saw no snakes, but we did see a lot of spiders. Can you find the spider in this picture? When I was looking back through my pictures I almost deleted it because I thought I'd mistakenly photographed the ground.
When I was looking back through my pictures I almost deleted it because I thought I'd mistakenly photographed the ground. In fact, there's an effectively camouflaged tarantula!
The hike, overall, was less than 2 miles in length, but what it lacked in that respect it made up for in altitude, as many spots were very steep, and the hike was generally upward for the first half. We all hiked together for the first half a mile, with lots of stops to view spiders, bugs, interesting plants, etc. They told us that the Amazon Rainforest has more trees than all of North America combined, which seemed accurate when I learned that they estimate that the Amazon Rainforest has "390 billion individual trees". But, when I tried to check that against the number of trees in North America, the US Forest Service conducted their FIA (a.k.a. “America’s tree census” they estimated "nearly 300 billion trees in the United States", which wouldn't even include Canada, which is largely forested as well.
Either way, Britannica declared the Amazon Rainforest " is the world’s richest and most-varied biological reservoir". Caesar spoke English so he did the explanations and Andrés scouted and searched for the bugs and insects to be pointed out to us. We learned about the Remo Caspi tree, which is a hardwood resistant to termites, and the Iron Palm (the "chonta palm" - remember those grubs from
yesterday's escapades?) which has extremely hard bark that they used for spears and blow guns, and even the Walking Palms (the Quechua people use the young roots, which have protective spikes, as sandpaper). Shortly before our group split into two (one group for the "difficult" hike and one for the "less difficult, thought not easy" hike), we all had to try out the tarabita. This basket-like cable car, which only holds one person, sort of ziplines you from one part of the forest to another over a canyon. Caesar and Antonio went first (Antonio took photos of everyone as they came across), and Andrés ran the cables, ensuring we all stopped on time. Although I do not enjoy this sort of adventure normally, I think the basket made me feel safe enough, and the journey was short enough, that I actually enjoyed it.
Only 5 of us chose the difficult hike, and it really wasn't difficult, though it was hot and humid. We arrived back at the starting point for our hike and waited for the remainder of our party to traverse the remainder of their trail.
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| View from the "top" of the hike |
The reward of the hiking adventure (for those willing to accept it) was taking off our rubber boats and climbing onto the balsa wood rafts waiting for us in the river. Although I enjoy being on the water, the raft was not the reward. The sun was searing down on us in our long sleeves and long pants and the guides told us we could jump in the river. I hesitated as first, why be stuck in wet clothes, and the water was very muddy. After recognizing I was returning to the hotel and could change right away, and my but was already wet from sitting on balsa logs tied together, I also jumped in the swiftly moving water. Glorious! Relaxing, refreshing, we stayed in the water, floating in front of the rafts, until they made us all climb back on (to ensure we could then transfer into our motorized canoes for the final leg of our journey home). No photos of our rafting as we'd all handed over our electronics to be stowed in a drybag safely in one of the canoes.
As I was not interested in any of the afternoon's optional tours, I decide to relax by the pool and enjoy some extended free time. We all enjoyed lunch together and then by 2:30pm everyone was off again for ziplining, a butterfly farm, or an animal rescue tour. When I returned to the pool (having followed proper sunscreen protocol - the high altitude of Ecuador and its location near the equator make sunburn extremely likely) there was only one family and they didn't stay more than half an hour. Solitude and sunshine, just what I needed by day 7. A French tour group arrived around 4:30pm and many of them were soon in the pool. I had already finished my book ("Josephine Baker's Last Dance" - can't really recommend it, but she lived quite the life) when the group arrived, and with the sun beginning to set the mozzies were coming out. Yes, some Australian slang still sticks with me, so that's 'mosquitos' for anyone who hasn't read my
Australian Adventures. I had failed to bring any bug spray with me to the pool and decided that scrubbing off my sunscreen and giving my hair a wash was a good way to kill the last hour before everyone else returned and we all had dinner together.
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