just us and a couple of rucksacks: Amazon day 0 and 1

After a couple of uneventful days in Quito trying to sort ourselves out for what we planned to do we plumped for a few days in the Amazonian rainforest to get our appetities whetted for the upcoming Galapagos trip. After a long chat with the local tour operator (who looked scarily like Wayne from Wayne´s World but very kindly bought us lunch so we overlooked this) we rocked up to the alloted meeting place for our first South American night bus...after reading the Lonely Planet chapter about how you should never take night buses in Ecuador and Colombia. Hey ho though and we set off for Lago Agrio (near the Ecuador - Colombia border) where we were to meet our group and guide for the next part of the trip. Now normally here I would tell you about a mishap with a bus or the wrong train but lo and behold there was absolutely no drama and we even managed a few hours sleep.

We arrived relatively fresh faced in Lago and had some breakfast before another 3 hour bus journey and lunch. This is where it all went very Indiana Jones, we climbed in dug out canoes with little outboards on and gently pootled up the river looking at various birds, monkeys, sloths and all of the amazing vegetation. About an hour into this delightlful trip we were handed out our ponchos...which we needed 10 mins later and for the whole of the next hour until we reached our destination all a little bedraggled and thankful of a warm cuppa.

Nothing much of interest happened that evening other than chatting with the fellow guests and having a jolly good nosh up....oh and meeting Pancho. This little fella is a wooley monkey of 9 months who´s parents were killed by poachers who intended to sell her at a local market, when they were stopped by the local park police she was confiscated and sent to the lodge to be looked after with a view to being reintroduced into the wild. I am not sure what happened but she now seems more of a house guest who pops in for some food and cuddles from those staying at Samona. As you can see from the pictures she is quite hard to resist...and I wasn´t eating all of that Papaya anyway...just watch out for the course of nature as one of my shirts will atest!!