29.08.-01.09.11

Jungle Trip-Laguna Limoncocha

Our trip to the Jungle, to the "Laguna Limoncocha" started on Monday, 29.08.11. Michael, the German owner of the hostel drove us, two guys from Italy, one guy from Australia, a guy from California and Heather and Ronni from Ecuador to the bus station.

The bus left at 11pm and hardly any one of us could sleep as the bus was packed with people and a few of the seats were broken so we were more or less forced to sleep upright!

We arrived in the village of Limoncocha at 4.30am and it was still dark. Thank God it was only a 300m walk down to the "Laguna" as most of us took their big back backs to the jungle. After 20 Minutes the owner of the "lodge" came with his canoe and picked us up. It was a beautiful 25 Min. boat trip back to the lodge as the sun was just rising above the other side of the lake! And the only think what you could here was the sound of the birds, frogs and crickets!

After FAUSTO, our guide for the next three days showed us our rooms we all went to bed and slept until 9am until Eduardo, our cook was calling us for breakfast. We then slipped into our gum boots and followed Fausto on a 2 hour walk into the jungle.

Fausto showed us a lot of plants and trees and explained the medicinal or practical use of the plants. It was very interesting especially when he showed us some tiny worms, pressed his thumb on them and they turned into a red colour. He told us that these worms are mainly exported to France to the company "Lancome" in order to make cosmetic and lipsticks from them!

When we came back from our walk we had a big and yummy lunch and went straight to our rooms to have a "siesta". In the afternoon we went with the canoe to a part where the "laguna" was quite narrow and went Piranha fishing. Wow….and I could believe it but after 20 Min. I caught a decent size of Piranha. At the end we had only four……but thankfully the family who we stayed with could provide us with some more and much bigger Piranhas. Check out the photo album "Laguna Limoncocha" and you will see the size of them we had for dinner!

The next morning, Wednesday, 31.08.11 we could sleep in until 8am….yiphee and I think we all needed the sleep! After a good breakfast we all slipped back into our gum boots and walked even deeper into the jungle until we reached the muddy swamps. Wow…..I took us ages to get through there and we sank up to our knees into the mud until we finally reached the huge "ceibo" trees (not sure about the correct spelling). The second one we visited was approx. 200 years old and the trunk was so big that you probably needed 30 people holding hands to surround it!!! I was just massive….and very impressive!

At night just after dinner we went on a "caiman tour" (crocodile tour). Everyone included our cook Eduardo and his sun came to search for big "caimans". Eduardo seemed to be a specialist in spotting out caimen's…. and therefore it didn't take long to find one…..even though it was only a baby caiman of one metre. I couldn't believe my eyes when Eduardo just crabbed it by his neck and dragged it out of the water and proudly presented it to us.

Later on we saw three more but much bigger caiman and we got so close to them that I was even scared to take some pictures as I thought they were jumping into the boat.

On Thursday, 01.09.11 we got up at 5.45am and the plan for the morning was…bird watching around the Laguna Limoncocha. So we left at 6am without breakfast and Fausto paddled the canoe at the edge of the Laguna. It was a beautiful morning and we saw heaps of Jungle birds…..but it was so hard to take photos of them. Even it was me who was still not awake or the birds were just too quick for me to give me a chance to take a photo…..and twice I missed the chance of a beautiful "Kingfisher"!

Later on we dropped our anchor at a different spot of the jungle and Fausto told us that he had a surprise for us. So we walked for approx. 1 hour into the thick jungle and suddenly arrived at another huuuge "Ceibo tree". But this one was nearly the double of the one we had seen the day before…..and approx. 300 years old and sooo tall!

On the way back to canoe suddenly a very strong wind came up and 10 Min. later it started to rain. Fausto told us to look for shelter as it was too dangerous to drive back with the canoe. Even though we had a motor but the lake was just too rough. So we were standing under a big tree but the rain was so heavy that we got soaked after 10 Minutes.

As the rain didn't seem to stop, Fausto decided to take off after 30 Min standing in the rain. When we arrived back at the lodge it was still raining and everything around the lodge was just muddy. So we changed into some dry and warm clothes and went for breakfast. Thank God Eduardo had prepared a massive breakfast for us as we were all starving after the 3 hour tour.

Unfortunately we had to pack our bags and couldn't even enjoy a morning nap in our hammocks!

We all said God Bye to the nice family and left the "Jungle Lodge" at 11am by canoe. When we arrived at the wooden quay it finally stopped raining and we could carry our back packs to the bus stop in the village of Limoncocha from where we took the next bus to "Sancha". In Sancha we said God Bye to Dan and Daniel from Italy and to Fausto, Eduardo and his son Frixon as they continued back to Tena.

Jo from California, Ronny from Sydney, Ronni and Heather from Manta and me changed onto a bus straight to QUITO. Puuhh….the 10 hour journey was very tireing as the roads were very bad and the bus was full with Ecuadorians. So finally we arrived in QUITO at 1 am in the morning where Jo, Ronni and I took a cap to our hostels.