After years of thinking about it and months of actual planning, we are off to South America for another adventure.  In fact we are almost doing 6 separate holidays joined together, so the blog posts will aim to reflect our key destinations: Amazonia, Galapagos, Macchu Picchu, Lake Titittaca, Iguazu Falls and Patagonia.

After reasonable flights to Lima [via Auckland and Santiago], we overnighted in Lima and then flew to Quito where we rested in the Airport Wyndham Hotel before flying over the Andes to Coca to begin our Amazonia adventure.  Two hours in a motorized canoe up the Napo River took us to the Manatee, our riverboat for the four day cruise in Ecuadorian Amazon.  The Manatee Amazon Explorer is a new upmarket boat (1 yr old) built to hold 30 guests.  Fortunately for us, we are only 6 guests with 17 crew; so we are being very well looked after.  As soon as we arrived we were served a very nice 3-course lunch; and that has set a high meal standard that was maintained throughout the cruise. We are learning a lot about Amazonian Ecuador, the Napo basin and the Napo River which flows from the Andes into the Amazon River and into the Atlantic (1150 km long). This area is a biodiversity hotspot with high diversity (191 mammals, 650 birds, 630 fish, and 180 amphibians/reptiles).  With 9 different cultural groups it is also rich in cultural diversity & includes two groups not contacted by the rest of the world.  Our trip included a visit to a family who live in a thatched roof, open-walled house on stilts on the river.  It was an interesting visit as our guide obviously shares a mutual respect with them so we did not feel uncomfortable sitting in their house and learning about their lifestyle. The river is like a highway and motorboats are parked outside of properties as there are no roads here.  This ‘highway’ floods regularly and is constantly changing as new sand bars turn into islands and large flooding erodes huge chunks of land along the river or washes away whole islands.

Interesting to learn about the living culture and how the local indigenous people with their subsistence life style can survive without money as their food is supplied by nature (hunting, fishing and agriculture). They also mostly now grow cash crops and use the money to buy gasoline for the motorized canoes, some clothes etc.

It feels like we are spending most of our time in the motorized canoe bombing along the river seeing the flora and fauna, as well as hiking though the rainforest.  Our excursions have included: night spotting (magnificient sky but no animals), an early morning (6:30am) wildlife spotting trip, an afternoon in Yasuni NP learning about fertile Black Water Rivers and seeing lots of birds and pink dolphins (who were bluish grey as they only go pink when they are angry or excited), a visit to a local family where we saw the tiny Pygmy Marmoset monkeys and a wooli monkey, and a visit to monkey island (where we didn’t see any monkeys).  We also visited clay licks in Yasuni NP (a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve) where we saw two scarlet macaws along with another 30+ people. The noise from over 20 cameras clicking probably scared them away.  The birds need to eat this clay daily to neutralize the toxins in the seeds they eat.

Another excursion had us walking through a palm swamp to an observation tower 51 m high, which gave us an amazing view over the top of the canopy and some great bird shots via the guide’s telescope.

Our farewell dinner was hosted by the captain and served al fresco on the top deck.  We enjoyed our fellow passengers (Ramona and Toby from Switzerland and Jenice and Michael from England) and spent most evenings chatting together. The return to Coca was another 2 hours in the motorized canoe with three stops on the way; to drop off crew members at their homes and to pick up two huge hands of plantains from the boat driver’s wife for delivery to their kids studying in Coca.

Reflecting on the cruise – I enjoyed seeing lots of birds (29 types tracked in our bird list), 8 different mammals and reptiles (favorites were the monkeys), 6 insects and anthropods, 20 useful plants and 1 toad (all recorded in our listing) but my highlight was learning about the living culture and seeing how the local people live, as well as getting a sense of how nature, especially the Napo River governs life in the Napo basin via flooding, dry seasons, and changing landforms; as well as being the transport highway for the region. Some impacts from the oil companies are evident as well as some pollution/environmental issues but overall it is a healthy river that sustains the Amazonia region and I enjoyed getting some insights into that life.