The second nighttime activity was one of our favorite things we did at the lodge. It was a walk through the forest with flashlights and headlamps, looking for whatever we could find. I think I liked it because I was surprised at how much we could find and I felt like I had slightly better odds of finding something myself instead of needing the guides 100%.

On our way into the forest, our guides started us right off with this Tarantula. It was perfectly still the entire time we watched it because, if you look closely, you can see the wings of a cockroach it had just killed and was waiting to eat. Including the legs, this was probably about as big as my hand.

We saw another stick insect feeding on a leaf.

And here is a whip scorpion hanging out on a tree:

I did see a snake moving under a bush about 5 feet away but when I called the guide over, he was only able to see it for a split second before it slithered away into the leaves. It was long enough for him to know it was a very poisonous snake though so what does he do? He and the native guide head right over to the bush and start digging through the leaves and underbrush with sticks to try to find this thing. Um, what part of “very poisonous” did they not understand? No pictures of it but hey, there’s a piece of bravado instead.

- Dave

Many of our walks were on land, hiking on a trail through the forest. The foliage is dense so it’s harder to see wildlife than it was in the open such as in the Galapagos. Much of the time, we needed our guides’ trained eyes to see animals even if they were very close to us.

This Crested Owl was about 30 feet up and very well concealed. His coloring matched the shade he was in very well. I had to brighten the shadows in the image below to make him easier to see.

The Amazon Tree Boa below on the other hand was at eye level right off of the trail. But did we notice him? No, our guide did. It was a juvenile, probably 20 inches long. There’s no sense of scale in the picture but his head is about the size of my thumb. (Everyone knows the size of my thumb, right?)

I mentioned in a previous post how our guide had no problem picking up creatures you and I wouldn’t dare to. But he picked up this very little frog and held it out to us, saying is was a Poison Dart Frog. The natives use the skin excretions from these frogs to coat the darts they shoot from their blow guns. The poison is only effective if it gets in the blood though so handling them for small amounts of time is actually just fine.

There were lots of bugs for the budding entomologists out there. Millipedes on the ground, wasps in the air, lots of ants in the ground. This Stick Insect was right next to the trail a foot or two off the ground and was about 6 inches long.

One of the nicer canoe rides we took was spur of the moment. We were returning from an afternoon trip and crossing the lodge’s lake to return to our room. We heard lots of rustling from the trees to our left so our guides made a quick turn down a narrow creek and into the trees. Immediately a troop (about 40 or so) of squirrel monkeys (below) appeared overhead making screeches and checking us out. They were very curious. They climbed through trees and jumped from one to another as we followed the creek’s path all the way until it opened back up into the lake. This was one of our favorite experiences at the lodge.

The boat rides were probably our favorite type of activity overall. I liked them because being on water meant that you were in a more open piece of the forest so it was easier to spot animals. It also was a lazy way to endure the heat . Plus, you’d see animals typically found in the water such as the Caiman Lizard below.

The Amazon Basin in Ecuador is a major destination for birders and one of the activities the lodge offered was to leave the lodge and take a boat down the Napo River to Yasuni National Park so we could see the flocks of parrots there. There are some clay licks (natural, not man-made) where they have set up some viewing platforms. it started out looking like that day was a dud with only 2 or 3 parrots but by the time we left, there were several hundred that we could see, all jockeying for position and flying around. The picture below is just one piece of the whole scene.

Finally, I mentioned before that the lodge had a butterfly house that you could go to anytime. Our guide showed us a moth there whose wing markings looked like huge eyes to deter predators.

You didn’t have to wait long for butterflies to land on you. This one clearly thinks Meredith’s leg is a source of pollen nectar.

That concludes our tour of animals we saw in the forest … during the day. Stay tuned for night-time creepy-crawlies!

- Dave

It’s a nice ride. You learn quickly that straight lines are not desirable here. The river is very shallow and there are many sandbars hidden just under the surface. The boat’s pilot knows where they are though and he weaves all over the place, sometimes all the way to the opposite side of the river to avoid them. He was pretty good but there were two occasions where everyone on the boat had to help rock back and forth to work it loose from where we had just run aground. Oops.

The jungle, erm, sorry, rainforest scenery along the river was a refreshing change from the Galapagos and the highlands near Quito. And because you’re moving quickly, there’s a cool breeze in your face. And that was the most misleading of all. You see, the Galapagos were very hot and humid. But you’re on a boat a lot or snorkeling so you have ways to cool down. But in the rainforest, it was even hotter and even more humid. Have you ever been somewhere so hot and humid that you’re never really dry at any point in the day (or night)? You get out of the shower and dry off only to realize you’re already sweating again. Two showers per day was the norm and there was a day in there that required three. Luckily they had laundry service.

Activities at the lodge were pretty mellow. They usually involved a walk in the forest, a canoe ride (normal size canoes this time), or watching birds from a platform. Sacha Lodge is known for its canopy walk, a set of three towers that rise to the level of the forest canopy and have a suspended walkway between them. The idea is that since the canopy is where most of the birds – and some monkeys – spend their time, you gotta go there to see them. When we were up there, we saw a few colorful birds including some toucans and, in the distance, some howler monkeys.

Oscar, one of the naturalist guides, looking for birds.

Meredith on the canopy walk’s suspended walkway.

Typically there was time after lunch to rest a bit before the late afternoon activity and you could swim in the lake next to the lodge to cool off. There were piranhas in the lake but it turns out there are a lot of myths and in the end, they’re scavengers so if you’re alive and don’t have any open wounds, they won’t touch you. Lots of people swam and had no issues. Still, I thought it was a better bet to take a guide up on his offer to take us out on a canoe and go piranha fishing instead. And if we got one big enough, we could take it back to the lodge and eat it. Apparently, piranha is a tasty fish. There were four of us in the boat: Meredith, myself, another guest, and our native guide (you had two types of guides: a naturalist guide who spoke English and a native guide from the area). We didn’t catch a lot – I caught one and our guide caught two.

Dave and his Super, Giant, Man-Eating, Scary Piranha.

The guide showing us the piranha’s teeth.

I asked the guide if the piranha has upper teeth as well to match the lower teeth you see in the picture. It turns out they do. I know this because, when he reached in to pull back the piranha’s upper lip , it bit him deeply on his finger. He said it was only the second time he’d ever been bitten by a piranha. He was bleeding a lot. Remember what I said about piranhas being scavengers? We didn’t stay out fishing much longer.

One of the other unguided options the lodge offered was a butterfly farm with many local butterflies and moths. This wasn’t unique to the rainforest but still pretty cool nonetheless to walk through huge numbers of them flying around you. See the Ecuador gallery for a few pictures of those!

On our walks through the forest, the native and naturalist guides would point out birds, insects, reptiles, etc. The picture below shows a large ant on our native guide’s arm (he put it there intentionally). It’s called a Bullet Ant because when provoked it bites you and then immediately stings you too. Supposedly the first English speaker to whom this happened decided it felt like bullet.

A Bullet Ant climbing our native guide’s arm. Before you ask, no, it didn’t bite/sting him.

A typical scene of a canoe activity through the rainforest.

Crossing the lake towards a creek that heads into the forest.

A typical view of the rainforest from a canoe ride. Very lush and dense.

Another view of the forest.

Ivan, our native guide, was excellent. Very friendly, knew so much, and loved sharing it with us. In addition to picking up harmful insects (see above), he showed us medicinal plants and told native stories about plants and animals in the forest. He even created a trap from scratch with trees and vines, set it, and triggered it to show how they would catch small animals. It worked! Now I feel like I could survive if I were stranded in an Ecuadorian rainforest. In the above picture, he’s fitting Meredith with a crown made from a palm frond.

Another great thing is that, after hearing me and another guy in our group joking non-stop for a few days about blow-guns, he brought one out with some darts and a target. He set a papaya up on a stake about 30 feet away. He then loaded a blow gun with a dart and we each took turns with target practice. The gun’s barrel was pretty long – harder than I thought it would be to keep steady. After a couple of misses, I was able to hit it just off-center with the dart going through the papaya. Surprisingly lethal!

All in all, we had a good time at the lodge and we’re glad we went. It is a little unfair to compare it to our experience in the Galapagos since there we saw more wildlife and much closer but the rainforest has its own look and feel which made it worthwhile. Now if they could just turn down the heat…

- Dave