In a most upsetting travel moment, our camera gave up the ghost exactly halfway through our time in the Amazon, so we had to make do with some borrowed shots and a handful of short videos taken on a backup device.  We’ve just invested in a beautiful new camera, so I promise the next blog will be full of amazing shots!

Twelve hours from civilisation in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the locals seemed to harbour a fair bit of disdain for us fair skinned, blonde-haired gringos. It started with a lady on the shore pointing nastily at Joel and I as we drove past in the boat, using hand gestures that told us – in no uncertain terms – that we weren’t overly welcome around these parts. We had reached savage territory and the lack of any established tourism was a key indicator of some incredible wildlife ahead. Perfect! Once we arrived in Rocafuerte, locals stared openly at us on the streets and we got ripped off for the price of our room, then the price of our dinner. Thankfully, when we arrived at the community the next day, we felt a fair bit more welcome. The locals were shy, quiet and curious. It probably had something to do with the fairly unreasonable sum we were paying them to be there, but at least they were not throwing spears.

Leaving from Coca, a dirty and grossly unpleasant town on the edge of the Amazon Basin, we spent 12 hours in a rickety steel boat motoring down the river Napo. The Ecuadorian slice of the Amazon is experiencing very low levels of rain at the moment, and the river itself was much lower than usual, resulting in multiple beachings, where all the strong male passengers were required to jump out and push us off the sand banks. To my delight, Joel managed to dodge the freshwater stingrays pretty well and we got through the rest of the journey with sore bums, hungry tummies and the odd spray of river water. This was a true journey into the unknown – passing tiny villages with thatched roof huts and dug-out canoes, but despite our remarkable isolation, it would became obvious that there is no longer such a thing as ‘authentic Amazon encounters.’ There are still un-contacted tribes living in the deep jungle just kilometres away from where we were who continue to live free of the developed society, but they actively pursue and kill trespassers, including gringos and (parasite-like) oil drilling prospectors. The ‘uncontacteds’ are a protected species in Ecuador and currently laws uphold their right to abstain from any interactions with the outside world.

From the tiny town of Rocafuerte, nestled on the border between Ecuador and Peru, we left bright and early the next day to travel another two hours down-river. Dense, lush and inhospitable jungle unfolded endlessly either side of us, casting a dappled early morning light on the smooth brown river water. Turning off the main waterway down a side river, we were welcomed by a surprise of the most exciting kind – an enormous pod of pink river dolphins had turned out to greet us, complete with tiny, half-metre long babies. Cue girly screaming on my part. These guys were beautiful, if a little shy – their dusky pink coloured skin peeking ever so slightly above the water whenever they breached. We were ecstatic. These mammals are extremely rare, and we felt humbled to have seen them so early in our trip.

The community itself wasn’t nearly as authentic as we had hoped, although they were still very primitive. We slept away from their actual village, in little raised jungle huts, that were a little run down and clearly they were not accustomed to hosting visitors. The only other gringos were a couple that we invited to join us, mostly because they had a camera and we didn’t. We were told that many of the locals travelled to Rocafuerte or Coca for school and work. Our community experience turned into more of a deep-jungle animal spotting adventure, which particularly suited Joel’s love for exotic wildlife and plants.

From our very first jungle hike it was very clear that we were no longer in Kansas. This place was a major cut above our first Amazon experience; it’s sheer isolation giving it the upper hand as a truly exotic wildlife habitat. Trees in the canopy above would rattle and sway with the antics of squirrel monkeys, and huge groups of Scarlet and Blue & Yellow Macaws would gather on branches, sqwarking loudly and eyeing us up warily. All Macaws are now endangered, but here they were in serious abundance and having these guys wake us up every morning as they flew above our cabin was pretty special. We were quietly mused at the fact that all the serious, cocky birdwatchers we had met at Sani Lodge thought they were in the top spot – how wrong they were. But it wasn’t only the birdlife here that blew our minds. Not surprisingly, the sand flies and mosquitoes this deep in the Amazon had taken on a character of their own, leaving Joel alone entirely but covering me in itchy bites from the very first day. Well, you can’t have everything!

Hidden waterways flooded the remote jungle in an astounding labyrinth of lagoons and converging rivers that ran in shades of murky brown and tannin stained black. These guys hadn’t worked out yet that paddling smaller canoes quietly increased wildlife encounters, but in spite of the fact we had a small motor, amazing critters constantly revealed themselves. We observed toucans, oropendulas, condors, parrots and kingfishers along the way, doing our best to dodge the tangle of dead trees that crowded the waterways. Twice, we came across giant river otters. On one occasion, a family of 10 or so individuals amused us with their antics and made for a major trip highlight – these animals are a seriously rare sight and a grand privilege that hardly any visitors to the Amazon Basin could claim to have experienced. Their inquisitive nature meant they would pop in and out of the water, making loud snorting sounds and trying to get a better view of what sort of creatures we were. Cheeky and curious, they reminded me of playful dogs.

Our final trip in the canoe unveiled a sight we had been crossing our fingers to see – a giant, 5m-long Anaconda; sunbathing on a tree beside the river and surrounded by butterflys that danced around his ominous bulk. With a body as thick as a dinner plate and a pitbull-like head, you wouldn’t want to come up against one of these guys in the water – or on land for that matter. Viewing him from the boat, a safe distance of three metres away was magic, if a little spooky!

Night time in our little hut was rather terrifying. Come darkness, we would shine our torches into the rafters, looking for the tell-tale green glint of spiders eyes. I wasn’t quite prepared for the numerous tarantulas we spotted – some as big as small dinner plates – and would spend the night waking up a fair bit, dreaming they were crawling on me. Joel loved the tarantulas, and spotted one under the dining hut that he reckoned was suitable to stage his own episode of Animal Planet wars. He had caught a large jungle scorpion beside our toilet the previous night, and thought that the old scorpion vs tarantula showdown could prove fairly reasonable – and he wasn’t wrong. Tarantulas are very aggressive, attacking anything that comes close, whether that be a stick or the large grasshoppers we had fed him the previous night. Dropping the scorpion into the tarantula’s nest, a burrow, under the hut, we watched incredulously as the tarauntula launched out to grab him. They tumbled into the underground lair and out of sight – presumably the scorpion had become dinner. Surprisingly, this was not the case – two minutes later, the spider came screaming out of his hole with the scorpion attached to him and made a run for it. Joel enthusiastically chalked that one up for the scorpion.

Village life was different to how we had imagined. A young girl of about 20 or so cooked all of our meals for us. Piranhas, fried green bananas and copious amounts of rice kept us going for the few days we were there. Naturally, we enjoyed the toilet-frequenting health issues that come along with eating everywhere in South America but overall it was manageable. People here start their families young; our lovely cook already had two small children of her own. We spent a fair bit of time with the younger boys of the village, around 18 or so, who would take us on hikes or boat rides. It would sometimes get pretty funny, with us trying to communicate in our pigeon Spanish and them trying out all the English words they knew. They know that guiding tourists offers them a decent future, so they were focusing on honing their wildlife spotting and language skills with us. Every afternoon would bring bucket loads of cleansing, refreshing rain; sometimes turning into thunderstorms – something that was awesome to experience deep in the jungle. I loved waking up to a clear, hot day the next morning after having gone to sleep to the sound of torrential rain.

Farewelling the village and the jungle was bittersweet. Everything here is difficult and uncomfortable, from dealing with locals to the food, communication and transport. But that comes along with such an experience and we soaked it all up. The Amazon is an incredible place; the depths of its diversity and wildlife make it one of our favourite experiences so far. Seeing it with my own eyes has made me more aware of its fragility. Oil drilling, deforestation and pollution are very real threats for this one-of-a-kind eco system, and I doubt that the government will start to realise that it’s true worth is so much more than just oil money. In a way, I don’t blame the locals for feeling hostile towards us – to them; we represent a system that is somewhat responsible for wrecking their precious way of life, although at the same time, most of them happily embrace the change and couldn’t say it was forced on them. They seem to like modern fibreglass as an alternative to timber for their boats and outboard motors in particular have been a keenly accepted technology with almost all of them happy to cast aside their old paddles in exchange.

We’re back in town after our two-week Amazon odyssey, indulging in hearty steaks and fresh fruit. Last night’s eye fillet meal was one of the best I’ve tasted in a long time! After investing in a much-needed new camera, we’re excited to head to Mindo tomorrow – a little mountain town surrounded by waterfalls – to try out our new toy on what is meant to be some of the best bird watching in South America. Joel is frantically studying the functions and learning how to improve our amateur photography so I’m crossing my fingers for some epic hummingbird shots!