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Doug & Islay's Great Escape
It took us 6 hours to get to the Jungle, most of them I spend going over and over the theft of my bag in my head, not helpful or productive. Poor Doug endured my occasional rantings about the contents and was calm and practical about it whilst I was raging and emotional!
We eventually arrived in Tena, the town closest to our lodge. After a brief stop for food in cafe in which some European cup final was playing (i think Barcelona was one of them). The boys in the group were mesmerized by the screen for the duration of lunch but then managed to drag themselves away at half time. The group and all our luggage piled into the back of an open truck and off we trundled into the depths (ok periphery) of the Amazon jungle. I shall quickly introduce our fellow travellers as they will mentioned repeatability mentioned from now on. There are only five of us, first we have Nat who is a mere 18, but comes across mature and sweet. She is only doing the first leg of the tour (although we are trying to persuade her otherwise) until the 23rd then heading home to just outside Melbourne, Australia where she just finished school and is going on to a Zoology degree in March. She is also a semi professionally horse rider and has a horse back home. Next is Melissa, shes 28, petite (I lent her my bikini bottoms and they indecently hung of her) very pretty and bubbly and the most of competent of us all at Spanish after taking lessons for a couple of months. She lives in London and is ICU nurse but with an agency so she can pick and choose when she works then, when she has enough money, she heads of travelling, jealous?!. Finally is James, a Londoner. Hes very dapper and trendy plus we have established that he is generally a hit with the ladies! He a also a web designer and has a camera I covet! Plus our lovely tour guide Julio who I mentioned before.40 mins later and we arrived in the Jungle. The sound of grasshoppers, cicada and chirping frogs emanated from the bush all around and the Napo river rushing past us. The lodges we were staying in were wooden with thatched roofs. We were introduced to Christian our guide for the time we were in the Jungle, he didnt speak much English so Julio translated for us. A long slightly traumatic journey and we were all perhaps a little over excited when it was suggested that before dinner we could have a swim in the river. Our bags were dumped quickly our costumes donned and down the water we went. As the sun was setting we sunk into the (warmish) water, and floated about, keeping to the little cove away from the rapid body of the river, excited about our next few days. Dinner was at 7 and we headed along the vast thatched building that food was severed in. We first of all congregated around an open fire pit to wait for the group to assemble, the smell of 50% deet, a general presence for the next few days, emanating for each person. Doug, having been bitten when were mountain biking was taking no chances and wore socks with sandals, although thankfully it was only our group and 5 noisy Italian women who saw this fashion faux pas. After a delicious meal of rice and chicken with fruit to finish we headed the 200m back to our lodge, the sounds of the jungle amplified now it was dark. Our guide Julio came with us and armed with a torch it took us 30mins to travel this short distance as he was an expert at bug spotting. We found, a (small) preying mantas, several massive green grass hopper, many colourful but small spiders, leaf cutting ants (they are hilarious, tottering along with huge sails of green leafs), a bullet ant which sting is one of the most painful on earth, a bug so camouflaged even with the camera pointed straight at it hard to see, a huge owl butterfly and lots of other creepy crawlies. As we got ready for bed Doug admitted he felt somewhat what out of his comfort zone! The next morning I went to have a shower and it was already occupied by a massive cockroach, not your dirty urban ones but a white and brown one with translucent wings, however I still did not wish share the shower with it and armed with a improvise plastic bag glove and a piece of paper I managed to remove it and liberate it outside (over the balcony). After a delicious breakfast of some corn and egg spongy cake thing served in a leaf we headed out for an animal sanctuary. We didnt get far until we came across a traffic jam, yip in the jungle, the reason for this was a procession of people carrying the virgin mary along, it was sunday and this seemed to be a form of pre church. We jumped out the back of our truck and joined the procession. The sun was scorching and many of the people had umbrellas or leaves to shade them. A young boy was taking them of a tree by the side of the road and gave me one. Then I noticed it had about 20 billet ants on it. After a bit of flapping and stomping I managed to remove them and attached the now slightly tattered leaf to my head, much to Dougs embarrassment! The procession eventually finished at the end of the road next to the river and they all piled onto a small car ferry which circled around a bit, the brass band blaring out. We got onto our own much small boat and headed along the river. We arrived at a museum about how the indigenous tribes used to catch animals. Christian explained all about them, Julio translated but somewhat less enthusiasm and animation than Christian. We then got to use a blow dart weapon which was a lot easier than you would of thought. Doug and I both managed to get it on the board (although doug claimed he was aiming for the chicken which bravely wandered round the back of the target board) Hot and sweaty we left the museum (it sounds like it should be a large cool building but was just lots of wood and thatched huts) and jealously looked at several people jumping into the river. We zoomed along the river only stopping a few times when our boat run aground on several shallow rapids. We arrived at the animal sanctuary where a Austrian girl (she had so many bits on her arms!) took us round. The animals in sanctuary are ones rescued either from people who kept them as pets or orphaned ones. I think it a third are released into the wild but the rest are either too traumatised, injured or tame to survive in the wild. There were huge cages with loads of Macau parrots, squawking and the ones that had been pets occasionally wolf whistled or spoke. Surreal in the jungle! We say a few monkeys, some with psychological or anger problems from being mistreated. So sad when see there animals that often look so human. As we walked around we heard some loud guttural grunting, on investigation we discovered a couple of tortoises (they can just wander round uncaged) going at it between two enclosures, we left them to they love making and headed on down the path! Now were all very overheating and glad to be back on the boat heading back to our lodge and prospect of some more swimming. A huge thunderous sky loomed above us and sure enough after a brief swim several rumbles and then clashs of thunder and the heaven opened and the rain descended. The sun however refused to go away entirely and the most vivid, bright rainbow I have ever see came out, the full arch stretched out in front of us. Dinner was again delicious, fish and veggies wrapped and steamed in a leaf. A bit more bug hunting on our way back but nothing like the night before and we headed of to bed excited about the river tubing and Jungle walk were going on the next day. Doug less excited about the bat caves included in our Jungle adventure.
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