Rain Forest Sin Lluvea

A pomegranate with a cold... very tasty stuff. (dangit, we can't remember the name.)

So we flew from Quito out into the jungle and then took a 3 hour boat ride to this cool lodge. We spent 3 nights there and saw all kinds of cool stuff. Let me tell ya all about it...

That's the (eco)lodge on first approach. Mom's apparently not wearing her life jacket. Tom and Dad, notice the regular hat!

We went on a short hike the first night to an observation tower. We could look out over the jungle, seeing all sorts of birds, and listen to the far off growl of the howler monkeys. You had to be careful where you set your hand because the tower was crawling with these atomically painful ants. PS That's Rita in the foreground. 

Oh and up on the tower we saw this guy mating. I guess it's rare to catch them doing this cool throat thing to attract the female. I guess just not quite as rare as someone as awesome as us!

Day 2: We woke to the growl of the howler monkeys along with 57 birds and my alarm clock. We canoed over to a cool trail which lead to other cool monkeys, but this time visible, and a million other things which posses forgotten names.

This tree has taken over the other tree which is now totally encapsulated. Oh there are all these small ecosystems everywhere usually involving some weird type of ant. 

I just wanted a picture of me in the jungle looking tough, like I am.

This weird guy flies like Bobafet (I have no idea about the spelling) from Star Wars, straight up and down and he appeared to spin those head things to do it. We also saw him mating.

Day two took us farther down river which as you can see is their highway. We waited for hours to see 100s of parakeets and other I think parrots swarm this clay lick. I have a video I'll post. They do this because the clay has the antidote to this poison that is in the seeds they eat.

Then our 2 guides, one a college grad from Quito, the other from the community that helps run the lodge, took us to families house who has these monkeys as semi pets. 

So what you do is suck on the seeds, getting all the sweet sweet goodness off them and then you send them into nestle and they make chocolate. Like a reverse cereal box prize. 

They then took us to the house where the local guide lives. His soon to be wife cooked us some traditional food that I'll elaborate on soon. On all the poles were empty dvd boxes on movies like Rambo and Techno Babes. 

So of all the things we ate, the best was the worms! What they do is cut a hole in the palm trees, wait a few weeks, and then come back to a tree full of worms. They roast them over the fire and it ends up tasting like a ham smoothie only with crispy eyes. 

Their poor kitten was starving. As we were leaving, our guide gave him the rest of an avocado he had picked up off the ground for us. Everyone owns lots of machetes too. I really want 2. It makes hiking cool!

We left the next morning for the cloud forest... Oh and the guy who started the lodge and one of the guides there both went to U of O. I actually recognized one from the dorms, Ganoe, and he had travelled to Ecuador with Erin.