Our bus arrived at Lago Agrio around 6:30 this morning. We read for a little bit at the bus terminal, but still had a little bit of time before we met up with our guide, so we took a taxi to the area and grabbed some breakfast (Alejandro had caldo de pajarillo- liver bits, ribs, salad, and molido plantain crumbles. Cassie had calentado- meat, fried egg, arepa, rice, and beans). Our guide, Fabian, showed up at 9:30 as planned, and we were on our way to the jungle!

First stop was a choza (hut) that sold fresh sugar cane juice with lemon juice. We saw the wooden sugar cane mill that they use to extract the juice (the stainless steel ones give a different flavor, apparently). They also had a lot of old birds and wasps nests hanging up, as well as a bull scrotum for good luck.

We got back in the van and continued on our way. Before even getting into the reserve, we saw a ton of wildlife, including black mantled tamarinds (babe leche), parakeets, vultures, toucans, Hoatzin prehistoric birds, woodpeckers, jacamos, and cookoo birds.

(**Note: Though we saw TONS of animals on this trip, a lot of them were through binoculars, and our camera just wasn’t good enough to get photos of them. Or, they were just too fast.)

We reached the river after a few hours and loaded all of our things onto a motorized canoe, then headed onto the Agua Rico river. First stop on the river was along a sandbar to eat some lunch- potatoes, beans, corn, avocado, and salad. We realized again that we wouldn’t be going hungry on this trip, either. Second stop was the house of our driver’s mother (from the indigenous Kichwa people), where we waited while they went to chop us off some plantains and yuca.

After a couple hours, we reached the Cuyabeno River, where we could see the mixing of the “white” river from the Andes and the “black” river from rainfall.

Here, we started seeing more wildlife- a 3 toed sloth, hawks, turtles, kingfisher, tanager, falcon, Saky monkey, and a different type of toucan.

After a few hours in the boat, we arrived at camp.

After some unpacking and a beautiful sunset, we headed out on our first night walk.

On our walk, we saw lots of creepy crawlies including a tarantula, spiders, grasshoppers, frogs, and millipedes.

When we returned, we enjoyed a dinner of plantain soup, chicken, rice, yuca, salad, and a tree tomato dessert. We were exhausted after the day and went to bed after dinner.