After a fabulous start in Quito, I was quite excited for the next part of the trip. It began with a 5 hour bus, to cover only 180km, to get to the Shiripuno community near Misahuall in the Amazon Basin (30 mins from Tena). Cute little community which has a tourism lodge built out the back where we stayed. An incredibly difficult climate. It's around 100 percent humidity with so many bugs that you have to wear long clothing all the time. But what an amazingly relaxing environment.

The locals are so inviting and always had a smile on their faces. Not too much English is spoken, so we communicated with broken Spanish and through our tour guide. It's amazing how far hand signals and facial expressions can go when trying to explain that you have for instance no light bulb in your room.

After having our faces painted with red symbols our group was allowed to visit the Amazon forest. We had to travel by long boat down the Napo and Arajuno Rivers which feed into the Amazon River. Once in the right spot we went exploring. We found ants, spiders, frogs, caterpillars, grasshoppers, snails, lots of interesting plants and evening a hummingbird. Tubed back down the river to return to camp just in time to miss another tropical downpour which happens most days in the rainforest as it is currently the rainy season.

Back at camp we had a look at the community garden. Here they grow bananas, coca beans, oranges, yuca (kind of like potatoes), tea and heaps of medicinal plants. One of these is Sigtar which they use for sinusitis. We were given some to try. It was the worst burning feeling ever. It burnt in your nose, the backs of your eyes and even the tips of your ears. NEVER again!

Learnt how to do some traditional Kichwa (the local tribe) activities. Cooked fish in big leaves, panned for gold, used a cerbanata (blowgun), made bracelets and of course made chocolate from scratch!