Our 5am wake-up call lead to breakfast at the lakeside meeting house. We then set off by canoe back across the river to the boardwalk and then the 20 min walk to the Napo river to pick to the motorboat.
Daniel was to be our guide along with local guide Victor. All the groups had a local guide - which is as it should be of course.
Downstream 30 mins we came across the parrot lick where we saw four species of parrots all licking clay off the river back walls. Apparently the clay contains kaolin which aids their digestion.
We also saw a boa eating a parrot while in a tree. Nice. The rest of the parrots went wild.
Further down the river we went to see an indigenous riverside village where the women showed us their settlement. Our guide was called Fanny and she cut up sugar beet for us to taste and dug up yukka (casva) roots and peeled off its inner cyanide skin for us to see.
We were also shown their schoolhouses, the WCS sponsored turtle breeding pond and the women cooked us a traditional meal of fish and palm hearts baked in plantain leaves, baked coca nuts, baked plantains and baked bananas. Stu also sampled one of their baked witchity grubs. Yuk! He said it tasted like bacon. Grubs up!
For their trouble we all gave them $5.
It took a full hour to get back to the lodge as we were traveling upstream.
Before lunch we took the opportunity to take in the butterfly house. And next to the lakeside house on the way to lunch we spotted Lucy the neighborhood Cayman crocodile.
Post-lunch we had a siesta before getting booted up and heading northward towards the three metal pylon canopy walk.
It was fecking 41m high and guess who had the screaming abdabs climbing up it? Great views though. We saw a wire-tailed mannequin (the one that does the shaky bottom dance), howler monkeys and white billed toucans.
After sunset we climbed down (gingerly) and walked back through the jungle by flashlight. On the way back in the darkness we saw a tarantula and an incandescent caterpillar.
Back in time for dinner - this time for a barbecue at the lake - we then set off for our night canoe trip where we saw the Caymen croc again. But not much else.
G&Ts in the bar before bed.
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