Cotococha Lodge, Tena

We travelled from Papallacta to Tena along some of the most spectacular yet diabolically bad roads I have ever been on. Mountains, valleys, waterfalls, jungle, landslides anything and everything was to be seen along the way. The roads however would alternate between dual carriageway and single lane goat track only marginally better than the road up Pine Cliff hill at the drop of a hat. Traffic quantity seemed to have very little to do with the quality of the road. At one memorable spot on a quite nice stretch of dual carriageway we came to a bridge that had obviously never been finished. The dual carriageway then transformed into a single lane muddy goat track throught the bottom of a river bed.
Our lodge was situated on the banks of the Rio Napo which is a tributory of the Amazon. As far as we were from the mouth of the amazon we were amazed at just how big this river was and how much water it was carrying. Our cabin had no electricty and was basically a tent with beds and a toilet. It was completely surrounded by jungle with all sorts of amazing plants and fruits and the odd Tarantula.
The morning after we got there we took a motorised canoe for about an hour and a half downstream to an animal rescue centre. The river is the centre of all activity and it was fascinating to see clothes washing, gold panning, fishing and boating all the way. The animal rescue centre is a Swiss run organisation which rehabilitates injured or confiscated aimals back into the wild. It was full of Monkeys, Macaws, Toucans, Ocelots, Capybaras and other jungle animals. Needless to say it was a fascinating place. The girl that took us around was a vet student from Holland volunteering for six weeks. She had only been there for two weeks and was more mosquito bite than human. We felt very sorry for her but she seemed happy enough.
We had lunch on the river bank on the way back including a swim and a swing from from a rope which was pretty cool.
After lunch we went to an indigenous village where we had demonstrations of pottery, jungle beer making (foul), blow pipes and gold panning. Ally was very impressed with the gold panning after having a go at Gulgong with very little success. The gold here is everywhere. You can see it sparkling in the water and can pan out a few flakes with very little technique every go.
The second day at Tena we took a canoe up the river and trekked into the jungle to a beautiful waterfall where we swum for a while. When we got back to the river we floated back down to the lodge on tire tubes which was just magic. After lunch we went on a walk in the jungle with an Indian guide who showed us all the plants and there qualities. It was very similar to the walk we did in the Daintree with an Aboriginal guide. To me one green plant looked like another green plant however they all seemed to have quite specific medicinal qualities (apart from the fact that they were nearly all halucinogenic!). The ants were the things that amazed me. There must have been twenty different sorts, ranging from congo ants which gave you a three day fever if they bit you to lemon ants which were tiny and we all had a turn at eating.
A fantastic couple of days with the weather co operating by not raining and a real taste of what the amazon is like.