Falling Leaves in the Amazon River Basin

April 1^st-5th

Siona Lodge, Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, North Eastern Ecuador

      A leaf spirals gently down from a high tropical tree into the still waters of a back creek of the river. There it will slowly be absorbed into the river and fulfill it’s own mission as part of the essential life cycle of our existence.  Who knows?  Maybe one day, months or years from now, some creature (maybe even you) will take a breath of air with the very oxygen produced by the plankton that has fed on this one leaf.

    We were in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, a region in the northeastern part of Ecuador, close to the Columbian border. What makes this park particularly unique is that it is close to the foothills of the Andes, and yet also contains a network of poorly drained lagoons and creeks, conditions that lend themselves to increased bio-diversity.  During the first few days, I was under the impression that we were in a network of different rivers, but was duly informed that it was all one river, merely divided frequently by large islands and numerous creeks. We were in fact at least three rivers removed from the Amazon itself, which has to be reached by the Aguarico and Napo rivers.  On reflection, this serves only to highlight the shear enormity of the entire Amazon River basin. 

'A' marks the whole region - we were a little to the west.

     Travelling to the region, once a major undertaking, is now relatively straight forward.  We opted for the 30 minute flight (otherwise 8-10 hours by bus) from Quito to Lago Agrio, a small oil town in the Sucumbios province.  We saw nothing of the town except for a few scattered homes from the air.  There, we joined nine others in a two-hour bus ride to the ‘Bridge’, the last stretch of tarmac we would see for a few days.  It had been pouring with rain for much of the journey, but positive visualizing on our part meant that by the time we boarded the two canoes, the rain had dissipated, leaving us to marvel at the spectacle of travelling down river in our first real venture into truly primal tropical rainforest.

Our guide Vin with a tree boa.

     As a child, I used to have scary visions and multiple fears about the jungle, brought about mostly by my phobia of snakes, but also the sense of being lost, or immersed in a world from which I could never escape. Popular culture in films and books did little to alleviate such emotions of course, but fortunately a better education and some exposure to rainforest in Nigeria and Puerto Rico has helped.  The humid smell and the noise of the cicadas are almost as powerful at first as the sight of a seemingly endless procession of trees of so many shapes and sizes on both sides of the river.  Only the palms looked vaguely familiar to me. I was surprised not to see more color, with only the occasional vivid red Bromelia contrasting sharply with the varied greens, and fleeting views of the intense blue Morfo butterfly lighting up the eye.

     Anyone used to nature shows on TV may be forgiven for believing that there are creatures to be seen in abundance around every corner on a river such as this.  Maybe that is true in some places at certain times of year.  The reality however, is that, except for the butterflies, creatures were elusive.  However, this made actually seeing them all the more rewarding.  Our first real treat was to see a small group of pink river dolphins feeding in a wide bend of the river.  They surfaced every couple of minutes or so, revealing much longer snouts and smaller eyes than the marine dolphins.  Apparently this is because they are adapted to living in muddy waters. We were traveling the river some 2000 miles from the mouth of the Amazon

     Just a few minutes later, the eagle eyes of our guide (Vin) spotted a sloth hanging from a branch about 40 feet up above the river. Nan jokes that she must have been a sloth in a past life, and was therefore very pleased to see one truly in the wild.  Such glimpses of creatures came to typify the week – long stretches of river with little evidence of wildlife interrupted by thoroughly rewarding if brief encounters with creatures such as kingfishers, a tree boa, great spider webs, and strangest of all, the Hoatzin, or Stinkbird.

     The Hoatzin is about the size of a pheasant, but wears a very distinctive spiky crest over a blue face. The most distinctive feature of this bird however is the fact that has proved exceptionally difficult to identify its relationship with other birds – DNA evidence has only complicated the process.  Equally complicated for me was taking a good photograph of the bird, even though we saw it many times. Somehow it always seemed to turn away, hide behind a tree, or fly faster than I could track it.

     It was truly a privilege to be here – in so many ways.  It was hard not to notice that all of the canoes moving around the rivers were full of Blancos like us, each paying an amount that could probably be spent in other ways to help with the act of preservation.  Selfishness can be overpowering at times.  I read that the presence of up to 12,000 tourists per year in this area has provided a significant boost to the local economy, and done a great deal to support preservation efforts.  Is this worth the energy used to fly, drive, and motor down the river with a smelly 2-stroke engine? 
   

A three hour hike in the rainforest - It really does rain!

     In amongst our animal spotting, hiking through the jungle (3 hours of it in pouring rain, but we did get to eat ants and learn about killing trees), swimming at sunset and enjoying good food at the lodge, we visited a Siona village one day. Two canoes of tourists being offloaded under the watchful eyes of children wearing outsized clothing and wide eyes is a bit hard to stomach, but we did get to watch a woman from the community harvest some yucca and make some bread with it (it came out as a flat ‘pizza’ base that was truly delicious, even without the salsa that she wanted to provide, but couldn’t).  She spoke Spanish, so I asked her if rice is particularly expensive here.  Her puzzled look was a clue that I had said something strange.  Sure enough, rather than asking if rice was expensive (carro), and had asked if it was married (casado)!! I suppose it was better than going into the community with a deforestation plan, but still pretty weird.

A Siona woman makes yucca bread - thoroughly delicious.

The tour included a visit to a local Shaman.

     A more detailed account of our five days here would tell more about the other travellers we met, the knowledgeable guides, the jam session on Wednesday night, or the 4 hour paddle canoe trip during which Emma caught her first fish – a piranha. We swam in the lagoon at sunset every night, and drifted to sleep despite (or because of) the noisy chorus of Cicadas drowning out all other beasts of the night. On some mornings, a ‘friendly’ caiman would loiter around the canoe dock looking for treats. Did I mention watching the glorious sunsets while swimming in the middle of the lagoon, rapid though they are this close to the equator? The night hike in the jungle was certainly a novelty for each of us as we learned about how the animal life transforms once the sun goes down.

The evening swimming pool.

Caiman in the same pool, but not so close.

Emma caught her first fish - a red piranha - also in the same pool.

A Killing Tree - it wraps itself around another tree, and eventually takes over the spot.

     The return trip back up river to Puerte Bolivar was all too quick, though we were treated to a close view of a tribe of squirrel monkeys playing by the edge of the river. Snake birds were out in force, but alas we did not see the river dolphins again.  On some level, the return journey was akin to being pulled slowly out of a dream.  The river journey became a bus journey to the airport, which in turn brought us fully back to 21^st century technology. By 9:00 p.m., we were back in the Riviera Sucre hostel in Otavalo, left with memories to be incubated and treasured, and an oversized collection of electronic pictures.

     As mentioned earlier, most of the tourists we saw were Caucasians, zipping around the Cuyabeno in motorized canoes (which really could use cleaner engines, but that is another story). This got me thinking about some of the stories I have read recently about the early European explorers, and their experiences of being in the same region. Europeans ‘discovered’ the Amazon after 10-20 thousand years or more of indigenous inhabitation.  Of course, their missions were diametrically opposed from ours in both intent and result. They were looking for gold, silver and even cinnamon. Many died on route.  Many were either indigenous or African slaves who, if they were lucky, were able to desert. In the process, the natural wealth of the region was greatly misunderstood and mis-represented, and up to 90% of the population wiped out, mostly by diseases introduced by the ‘explorers’. We all still live with the heritage of this time, a culture that values materialism and superiority over respect for the land in which we live. 

     We didn’t have to travel all this way to the Cuyabeno river to learn this lesson of course, but five days in the jungle, with it’s phenomenal profusion of life is a reminder that our own existence depends so much on what goes on here.  Just as each falling leaf contributes its miniscule food to the world, so we can contemplate the value of our own contributions, and remember that whatever our spiritual or religious beliefs, we are deeply interconnected with the well being of places such as the Cuyabeno.