Where The Wild Things Are!

Swimming with the pirahnas and much more...

Jansa and I had another successful outing, this time in the Ecuadorian Amazon. We hired a tour that took us to the far reaches of the Cuyabeno National Park (very northeast corner of Ecuador). We took an exhausting overnight bus from Quito to Lago Agrio followed by a 2 1/2 hour bus ride to the park, then another 2 1/2 hours by a motorized canoe. We were deep in the jungle! Both of us had an awesome 4-day experience. Thanks to our guide, we saw tons of wildlife including: anacondas, freshwater dolphins, monkeys, parrots, mccaws, sloths, colorful butterflies, poisonous frogs, pirahnas, tarantulas, and lots of other creepy crawlers. Needless to say, Mi Mi was not really excited about the giant cockroaches or the hand sized tarantulas in our room.

The Amazon is truly a unique ecosystem. We were able to see, first hand, the extreme competition among the millions of species to survive. It seemed that every animal had a specific edge in order to stay afloat in this dynamic phenomenon of evolution. For example, butterflies who had wings designed to look like an owl eye or a bird that from up close looked exactly (I mean exactly) like a tree branch. I swear that nearly half of the plants and animals we saw were poisonous. Also, it was very obvious that the trees and vines were involved in this "fight for life" as they would twist, turn and jut out toward the river to compete for sunlight. I cannot even begin to describe how impenetrable this part of the world is. No wonder it is impossible to categorize the infathomable flora and fauna in the amazon. We were both inspired to experience this completely new wilderness with some intimacy. The jungle is so different from anything we had every seen before. Awe.


We stayed in thatched hut style dormitories and ate like kings. We fished for pirahnas and it looks like the Mi Mi fishing curse may have been dispelled. Not only did not hook hook his face this time but actually caught a pirahna. We hiked around a nearby lake (so dense), swam in the rivers, visited some indigenous villages, and sat down with a medicine man. One of the most memorable things that we experienced in the jungle was on our 3rd night we got one of the most incredible and violent thunderstorms that I have ever seen. The storm lasted 10 hours or more with lightening every 2-4 seconds (big lightening and close lightening). Jansa, myself, and some of our jungle buddies sat on our hut porch, drank beer, and watched this monster tormenta.