We left Quito on Monday and headed for the jungle, known as El Oriente ("the east") in Ecuador. We flew from Quito
to Coca, an “oil” town on the eastern slope of the Andes and on the edge of the
Amazon rain forest We stepped off the plane and immediately noticed the change
in climate, from the pleasant, dry, high-altitude coolness of Quito to the hot
and sticky humidity of the jungle. From the Coca airport (a single runway with
no taxiways), we then took a short bus ride to the dock on the Napo River where
we caught our river ride, a long, skinny river boat with an outboard
motor. The Napo River, a direct
tributary of the Amazon River, is a wide and muddy torrent with all sorts of
unpredictable sandbars and floating and submerged trees and other debris. We traveled down the Napo for over 2
hours. Then we disembarked and walked
for about a half-mile on a board walk through the jungle. From there we
traveled by canoe. Our guides paddled
through a mangrove swamp and across a large lagoon to our lodge. It was a great day of jungle travel.
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