The Amazing Amazon

By Darius and Micayla (with details added)

Our adventures started in Coca, a large river town. When we arrived in Coca after a short plane ride, we were met by our guide, Jeremy. He was from the United States but had lived in Ecuador for the past two and half years. He loaded us into a small open bus that reminded us of a mini-trolley. The bus took us to a dock on the Napo River. The river was very wide and filled with dark brown water that was flowing fast toward the Amazon River. The Napo River is classified as a white water river because of the enormous amount of sediment the river carries from the Andes. The sediment makes the river banks very good for farming.

We got on a long, thin boat that had two 100 horse power engines. For three hours we rode in the boat down the river. We saw lots of trees, water, and birds on the way, but very few houses and only one other village. After 70 kilometers, we changed into a smaller canoe that had a small engine. This boat went down a small river that led to an even smaller river. After about 20 minutes of driving up the smaller river, we reached a lagoon. We then paddled across the lagoon to Sani Lodge.

Sani Lodge was kind of small, but very nice. All of the buildings were made out of wood and thatched roofs. There were about 10 buildings including a bar, a dining area, and several sleeping houses. Our room was in the largest building that had four rooms. We were on the top level and had a very large room with a queen bed, two double beds, and a hammock. There were lots of large windows that were made out of screens. Out our back door there was a small balcony with a hammock that looked out over the forest.



View From Bar and Dining Rooms:


Sani Lodge was built by the Sani Community. The Sani Community was formed by six families that came to the area in the 1930s. They claimed the land which was about 90,000 acres. Over the years, the community grew to include about 400 people and the Sani land is now the largest privately owned area of rainforest in all of Ecuador. Each family is given a piece of property along the river that is 250 meters wide and one kilometer deep. They can do anything with their property, but most people use their land for their houses and small farms. They grow things like yucca, plantains, bananas, cacao (which is what chocolate is made from), pineapples, corn, and grapes (but these are different than the grapes we have at home). They also have chickens and maybe a cow. A couple families also have pigs.


Cacao Plant and Open Pod:


During the 1980s and 90s, an oil company wanted to use their land to get oil and to build a pipeline. The Sani did not want them to do this, but the government supported the oil company. In the end, an agreement was reached and the Sani let the oil company explore their land for oil in exchange for the oil company building a school, community center, medical center, providing them with a doctor once a week, and providing funds to build the lodge. The Sani Community then built the lodge and now runs it themselves. The lodge is an important part of the Sani Community's two goals which are the preservation of the land and the development of their educational system. All the profits from the lodge are used to support these goals.

While we were at the lodge, we did a lot of hikes in the rainforest, went for canoe rides, and watched birds from the top of a 100 foot tall observation deck built around a tree.










Bird Tower and View From Top:


On the hikes, we saw all kinds of birds including parrots, macaws, toucans, potoos, an owl, kingfishers, hawks, egrets, herons, and many more birds that we don’t remember the names of. We also five kinds of monkeys, frogs, and lots of insects. One night we went for a night hike and saw five kinds of tree frogs including a poison dart frog. We also saw two tarantulas, several types of stick insects, giant grasshoppers, katydids, and enormous millipedes. Some of the millipedes were about 8 inches long. When we were walking in the woods, we were surrounded by giant trees, huge ferns, and lots of roots. There were also enormous conga ants, fire ants, and leaf cutters that carried leaves along the forest floor. Some of the trees were covered in vines and something called a strangler fig. Jeremy said that sometimes the vines and figs get so thick and heavy that they pull the tree down. We also heard lots of birds calling and singing, and insects. Sometimes we also heard monkeys screeching. There was one monkey called a howler monkey that made a really loud roar, kind of like a jaguar or lion.

Centipede and Conga Ants:


Stick Bug and Leaf Cutter Ants:


Butterfly and Tarantula in tree:


One night we went out on a canoe ride on the lagoon to see caimans. Caimans are reptiles that are similar to alligators. We would shine our flashlights across the water and wherever there was a yellow reflection on the water, there was a caiman. When we saw one, we would paddle to it and try to get a closer look. The biggest one we saw was about 10 feet and we got within 10 feet of it. It was cool to see it. When we were looking for another caiman that was near the shore, a frog jumped off a tree and landed on daddy’s knee. The frog was bright yellow and had very sticky fingers.

On one day, we went across the Napo River to see some clay licks in Yasuni National Park. The Yasuni Park is a little smaller than the size of Connecticut and has over 500 species of birds, over 700 types of plants, over 150 species of mammals, and more than 100 species of amphibians. They say this amount of biodiversity is similar to that of the entire United States!

The first clay lick was a large wall of clay on a hill. The parrots came there and would lick the clay. The clay helped them neutralize toxins that build up in their stomachs from all the fruit seeds they eat. There were about 1,000 parrots there. They would hang out in trees, fly down to eat some clay, then fly back to the trees. It was very loud because all the parrots were squawking. At a different clay lick, parakeets came to eat clay. This clay lick was much smaller and looked like a small cave the birds had dug into a hill. When we first got there, something had scared them away. We waited for an hour while the parakeets slowly worked their way down from the trees. Finally one parakeet came all the way down. A few seconds later there were hundreds of them flying in to eat clay.

One morning we visited the Sani Community’s center. We got to see the school. There are about 120 students from pre-school through “high school”. The school is really only two small buildings. One is for pre-school and the other has about 5 classrooms. In the classrooms, there is a chalkboard and several small wooden desks. The students were working on math when we were there. There were no decorations in the room, but there were drawings painted on the walls. It looked like the walls had not been painted for several years and there were only one or two light bulbs in each room. On two sides of each room, the top half of the wall was open to the outside to let light and air in. Next to the schools, there were a few small houses on stilts that were for the teachers to live in. There was also a small health center that doctor came to about once a week. The community used both traditional medicine from plants and modern medicine from the doctor that came once a week. One of their traditional medicines was from a tree called “dragons blood”. When you cut the tree, red sap came out that was good for lots of things like cuts, head aches, and other pains. They also used sap from rubber trees to put on cuts, kind of like a band aid. The community had just started to build a drying center for cacao and were hoping to start making their own chocolate. It was neat to visit the community center, but it is hard to imagine living there all the time. It is nothing like living in our house or going to our school.

While in the rainforest, we also learned how to use a blow gun, got to eat ants that tasted like lemons, and tried fishing for piranha. Unlike fishing for other fish, we did not have to worry about being quite. Instead, we would put meat on our hooks, drop it in the water, and then bang on the water to create splashes similar to an animal struggling to swim. We had lots of bites, but it was hard to get them hooked!

Everything about the Amazon was awesome.