From the desert islands of the Galapagos to the rain forest of the Ecuadorean Amazon

Sacha Lodge on Lake Pilchicocha

To get from Quito to the Ecuadorean Amazon, we took the short, and much delayed, flight over the Andes from Quito to Coca, an oil town on the Napo River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon.  This is the Ecuadorean portion of the Amazon Basin, dense with moisture, heat and vegetation.  And thousands of plant and animal species.

resident caiman

Sacha Lodge canoes

It is quite a contrast, coming from the dry, desert islands of the Galapagos to the hot and humid and dense Amazon rain forest.  The Galapagos were cool and dry; here the air is heavy with moisture and heat.  Walking through the forest, it appears that everything is growing on something else.  Huge trees support dozens of bromeliads along their trunks and branches, which in turn host other plants.  One enormous tree had another large tree growing out of its trunk high off the forest floor (we could see that because the leaves of this parasite tree were different from the host tree’s leaves). 

pygmy marmoset (pocket monkey)

Dozens of other plants were growing on the branches of the parasite tree.  Such a jumbled mass of living things.

We are staying at the Sacha Lodge, a remote collection of 26 thatched cabins, 2 hours by river from Coca.  We first took large, motorized canoes to a small cove where we disembarked and walked through the forest for half an hour to one of the river’s many sub-channels.  There, we loaded onto smaller canoes and paddled (our guides did the work) up the channel 15 minutes to a beautiful black water lake surrounded by the forest.  Here is the Sacha Lodge.  Really a peaceful and lovely setting for our 3 days in the Amazon.

cabins at Sacha Lodge

The Lodge was the dream of a Swiss entrepreneur who lived and worked in Chile, Peru and Bolivia before opening his first lodge farther up the Napo River in Ecuador.  When he was shown Lake Pilchicocha, he decided to build his second lodge here, beginning construction in 1991.  Over the years, he purchased more land and now owns 4500 acres, so has an extensive private reserve of unspoiled rain forest.

yellow-rumped cacique--a regular at the lodge

After dinner, we took a canoe around the lake and a nearby channel in search of caimans.  Fireflies sparkled in the dark forest.  We saw 2 bright red dots, the eyes of a small caiman, before we actually found the animal mostly submerged in the dark water.  This was a black caiman.  Soon after, we saw 2 more glowing eyes and found another small black caiman barely visible in its hiding place.  Apparently one caiman visits the lodge often, but we haven’t seen him yet.

agouti