Quito to the Jungle

18 November 2011

Quito to Sacha Lodge
Just to get us used to early starts planned in the jungle, we were up by 0600 and in a crowded breakfast room not long afterwards.  We abandonded one of our bags in the hotel baggage room, and at 0725 met our travel rep in the lobby.

Andean Snow-covered Volcanos

It was a pretty quick drive to the airport although the traffic in the airport area was chaotic.  Inside domestic departures wasn't much different.  We were lucky that a rep from Sacha Lodge was on hand and she managed to check in our bags and get our boarding passes.

Security was interesting, it seems that taking full bottles of water through is quite OK in Quito!  Our flight to Francisco de Orellan (otherwise known as Coca) was delayed so we sat and watched several flights heading out to the Galapagos.  We also watched several tourists getting rather nervous as the departures information board was next to useless and there was no information about our flight. We were reassured when three or four locals sat opposite us holding boarding cards for our flight.

Suddenly, our flight was called and we got an Embraer jet for the 30 minute flight down to Coca.  I say down, as Quito is at 2800 metres and Coca is not much higher than sea-level.  Once again we flew around several snow-covered volcanoes before heading across the rain-forest.  On the ground, it was very warm and humid, something we have to get used to for a few days. The airport is extremely basic, the baggage carousel is a concrete shelf in the open-air arrivals 'lounge'.

Once again we were met by a rep from Sacha Lodge and put on an aging Chinese coach along with a puppy and a few locals for our drive into town.  Coca is an oil town and is less than 50 years old. It is rather scruffy, but developing fast.  We first went to a 'house' where we found clean loos, lots of iced bottled water and some fruit.  We had a short briefing and collected life-jackets and after a short break headed down to the Rio Napa and our motorised canoe.

The Rio Napo starts in the high Andes and drains into the Amazon, passing through Ecuador, Peru and Brazil before meeting the Atlantic Ocean. Whilst the Rio Napo is classed as 'white-water', it is in fact a dirty brown colour from all the sediment it carries.

The long narrow canoe had two huge outboard engines on the back and had a sun shade over the length of the boat.  Passengers sat in rows of two, the width of the boat inches from the waterline.  With a muted roar, we were off on a 50 mile journey downriver which was due to take 2 hours.  Let me tell you that 25mph, inches from the water in a narrow canoe, is a heck of a ride.  Although the Rio Napo is probably half a mile wide in places, it is fairly shallow.  The ride is all the more exciting as there are numberous sandbars and lots of large floating timber in the river.  Rarely did our boatman ease off the throttle, weaving his way between logs and sandbars.  We did hit a few sandbars, but apart from a jolt, we powered on through.

After two hours we pulled into a dock in the jungle, where there was a chance of a 'comfort break' before we headed down a board-walk through the jungle.  This 20 minute hike got us up close the jungle very quickly with lots of strange sights and sounds.  Some of the vegitation was very colourful and the trains of leaf-cutter ants all bearing enormous pieces of leaf were rather spectacular.

Sacha Lodge Dock on Rio Napo

Sacha Lodge on Lago Pilchicocha

At the end of the walk, we found ourselves on another dock on a large 'black-water' lake. Black-water describes the colour of the water very well.  Black-water is rain water and gets is colour from all the millions of leaves that have fallen into it.

Cue another canoe, this time hand-paddled.  A short journey across the lake took us to Sacha Lodge and a welcome drink.  After being allocated a room, we sat down to lunch with Julio, our guide for the next few days.