The Trip Comes Full Circle (and I Catch a Piranha)

I devoted about 1/3 of my vacation time to Latin America, even if that seems a bit inefficient after travelling around Asia.  First, there was a quick stop in Panama to see the Canal (and, by happenstance, find a lot of American ex-pats at a sports bar showing NFL games -- all so I could keep tabs on my fantasy football team's victorious playoff semi-final).  Then, it was on to Ecuador and the Amazon Rainforest.

After being in some of the world's most populated (and crowded) cities, I was ready to really get away from it all.  I boarded a 30-minute flight from Quito to the town of Coca.  With about 50,000 people, Coca seems like a frontier town.  You see the tin-roof shacks as you fly in and there's definitely a rough-and-tumble feel to the place.  I had to chuckle at the baggage claim system at the airport.  There is no carousel # 1 or # 2; rather, they drop the bags off on a bench.

Then I boarded a motorized canoe for a 50 mile trip down the Rio Napo, which is one of the primary tributaries of the Amazon.  In most places during this journey from Coca, the river is at least a mile wide and you sort of get a feeling for what the Mississippi might have been like before the locks and dams were built.  There were about a half a dozen oil installations along the river and some barge traffic carrying heavy machinery and refrigerated food trucks to oil workers (there are no roads here).  One of the semi-trailers on a barge bore the logo for Halliburton.  I'm told the resource-extraction is rapidly increasing.  This year, the Ecuadorian government signed over huge oil concessions to the Chinese.  And thus, in a relatively remote and hard-to-reach place, my trip had come full circle.

One of the oil installations along the Rio Napo in eastern Ecuador.

I stayed at the Sacha Lodge, which I highly recommend.  After the 50 mile boat ride, there was a 30 minute hike into the forest and another canoe (manual, this time) ride across a lake to reach the lodge itself.  There, I joined 5 other tourists and 2 guides (one a native, one a naturalist) for 4 days of hiking in the forest, canoeing, a little adventure, and some surprisingly good meals.

I should be clear that the lodge and its surroundings are totally removed from civilization and the work of the oil companies.  It's the kind of place where every animal has 3 words to its name in order to differentiate it.  There aren't simply woodpeckers and macaws.  Rather, there are crimson-crested woodpeckers and red-and-green macaws.  Somehow, the guides could spot and name the various birds and monkeys from great distances.

A personal highlight was going fishing with a simple stick and line and catching a red-bellied piranha.  My guide claimed it was one of the larger ones he had seen, but perhaps he was just telling me what I wanted to hear.  I released it back into the lake and a caiman immediately poked its head above water, but the piranha escaped.

My catch of the day.

My piranha's teeth.

This caiman came out from hiding under the dock when I threw
 the piranha back into the water, but he wasn't fast enough.

All in all, spending some time in the Amazon was a great escape -- and a much-needed opportunity to really breathe some fresh air.  The biodiversity -- from the lines of leaf-cutter ants going about their daily chores to the multi-colored birds, scampering monkeys, and giant kapok trees is as astonishing as you'd expect.  It's easy to get lost (metaphorically) in the vastness of the rainforest and assume that a few oil installations representing humanity's seemingly insatiable search for natural resources won't threaten the habitat's existence.  I can only hope that's true.