Amazon Jungle

Next, we decided to make a trip out into the Amazon jungle. We went WAY out there, meaning that we first had a 30 minute flight from Quito, then a 2 hour bus ride, then a 4 hour boat ride to get to our tent camp. This is one of the houses we passed on the bus. They are all pretty much out in what seems to be the middle of nowhere. There were also oil pipelines all along our bus ride. You can see Scott and I here bundled up under our ponchos for the long, wet boat ride. We then arrived to our tent camp, which is in the next picture, along with our guide. It was basically just a raised platform with mosquito nets and a little mattress inside. It was a nice, though.

On our first hike, we passed plenty of crawly creatures, including this centipede. It had a very hard shell and would just roll up in a ball like a roley poley. It felt weird to have it crawling on my skin!

We had a second guide who was a local person from the jungle and he walked along with us to show us things. He carried a machete with him everywhere we went and used it for everything, including cutting fruit! This was a local fruit from the forest that tasted a lot like coconut - yummy!

We saw these ´walking´ trees that were very similar to ones we had seen in Costa Rica. These ´legs´ are constantly growing and planting themselves into the ground, causing the tree to move over time. The sap that comes out the ends here is used by the jungle people as a sort of Viagra. Our guide called it the Jungle Viagra!

The local guide found this frog, called the leaf frog. It is called that, because as you can see, it looks just like these leaves!