Peru to Ecuador and the Jungle!

Let me just explain our route changes. We had originally planned to go from Peru to Bolivia, then back to Peru and up the coast. Boliva would have been the cheapest and probably one of the best destinations on our plan, but we were simply running out of time to squeeze everything in. There's still so much of this continent to see, we'll just have to come back! So, now Peru 3 weeks, Ecuador - simply to do some Jungle, Colombia 10 days. We fly to Costa Rica in 10 days.

So, we left paradise behind and jumped on a bus to take us over the border into Ecuador and up to Quito, the capital city. 15 hours. Before the border we were on a local bus, sitting at the front, the door wide open, craziest bus driver in Peru. We stopped at the Peru border office, everyone jumped off, queued, passports stamped, then back on the bus. It then took us to the Ecuador office, everyone off the bus, queued, mosquitos!! Then those of us who were heading to Quito had to get taxis to the bus terminal to jump on a different bus. It took hours! As soon as we got on the Ecuador bus we kept stopping at police check-points for luggage searches, they check ALL the luggage, look under the bus, very thorough. Then our bus had a flat tyre, so more delays...long bus journey. We arrived at 8am into the smoggy, bus congested city of Quito. We jumped in a taxi to another bus depot to search for our next bus to the jungle town of Coca. We arrived at 8:45 and we realised that we could catch the 9am bus to Coca...13 hours. We made the decision to jump straight on instead of catching the night bus that night. It was a rough rough rough twisty turny bus journey through tiny little villages...Kirsty had a sick bag at the ready for about 12 hours of the journey. I watched 2 violent movies on the bus - 'The Shepherd' and 'Walk the Line' or something...the kind of movies where it didn't really matter if you understand Spanish or not. We arrived, found a hostel, booked a jungle tour and went out to get some food in the town. We were literally the only gringoes in town. We had another meal of chicken and rice before heading back towards our hostel, suddenly - wham! All the lights in the entire town had gone out! Total blackout. Everyone seemed to have candles at the ready though, all a bit suspect. It's just turned 8pm now, and the lights are still on, so it can't be everyday. (About 5 minutes after I typed this the power went off!! It's now the next morning!We were pretty sad because we'd got an amazing hotel, air-con and TV but it only ended up being until 10pm. yey.)
The next morning we were headed out on the Rio Napo towards an eco-lodge in the jungle. Our guide was this charismatic 'bird-man' called Patrick (from Ecuador). His hobby is to talk to the animals. Total nutter, but very passionate about his job. We arrived at the lodge to find a lone German eating breakfast. He jumped up to greet us. We learnt that he had been there on his own for 3 days, doing all the tours on his own...he very extremely happy to see us. That same day about 6 people all showed up, and it turned out to be a good group. We walked in the jungle, we looked for animals, looked for animals, looked for animals...we saw a couple of tucans and numerous other exotic birds, also they had a large 'enclosure' where they had a number of Tapiers (sp?) a bit like a hippo crossed with an ant-eater - these animals were very friendly, strokable...probably shouldn't be able to stroke jungle animals!! We went out in the boats at night and the tapir came too...swimming along side us as we paddled! We learnt a lot about the jungle plants, vines that smell like garlic, ants that taste like lemon, a tree that bleeds red goo that can be used as toothpaste and also with cancer treatment...all pretty fascinating stuff. We went out in the boats at night and found a small caman. We weren't sure if it was real or just a model, again, this was in their 'enclosure' - but then it did move. We tried our hand at pirana fishing. Hours in the canoes, I caught a small sardine and a tiny cat-fish, but no pirana. I suppose if the tourists are fishing everyday the piranas would either catch on and swim elsewhere, or maybe the tourists have caught them all! We were much less afraid of the murky river after our failed attempts!
All the boxes were ticked, but our expectations had been higher. I think to see tons of animals you would have to go much deeper into the jungle, much further from civilisation. The town of Coca was only an hour by boat from the lodge, and exists so that they can tap the oil reserves in the area. Not ideal conditions for animals to flourish.
Today we fly to Quito and then bus up to Colombia. I think the border crossing will be much the same as Peru-Ecuador.
All my photos are on my proper camera and none of the internet access has been fast enough to upload anything yet, so photos will have to come later!
xxx