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Title image - BAI takes you to:  Ecuador's Amazon Basin

Ecuador's Amazon Basin Adventure Dispatch

December 20, 2008 – Back Upriver and Out of the Amazon

We awoke in the cool jungle morning at 5:00 am; breakfast was served at 5:30.

After 4 days that passed surprisingly quickly it was time this morning to head back upstream and return to Quito, the mountains and our plane flight home.

Sighting the Zig Zag Heron is one of the supreme prizes of an Amazon visit for bird enthusiasts

Sighting the Zig Zag Heron is one of the supreme prizes

of an Amazon visit for bird enthusiasts

As we got into our paddle canoe for a final trip across our peaceful lagoon we knew immediately that something had changed in the rivers overnight. Our black-water tributary had changed color and direction overnight!

Our guides explained that an apparent surge in river levels out on the Napo from water flowing from the Andes, perhaps caused by major rains and/or snowmelt, had forced large amounts of water up our small side stream. Our waterway was now 2 meters higher than it had been when we went to bed, it had turned a light color from the mineralized mountain sediments forced upstream and the river water was literally flowing upstream into our lagoon.

It normally takes 1 hour 45 minutes to paddle downstream to the Napo River. The guides knew they would have to work double hard to move our little river craft against the new upstream current.

Soon after we stared our journey, Sixto, our local guide, excitedly stopped paddling and gestured to the vegetation on the right back of the river. He had spotted a “Zig Zag Heron”, one of the least sighted and most poorly understood of Amazon Basin birdlife.

The guys were sweating by the time they reached the big river, but we made it with plenty of time to catch our motorized canoe that would take us up the Napo to the airport.

He showed us how his mother washed clothes

He showed us how his mother washed clothes

Sixto never stops teaching. While we waiting for our bags to be loaded onto the motor boat, he grabbed a plant and demonstrated to us how lightly rubbing the leaves produced “soap,” a foamy, nice smelling cleaning agent. He told us that his mother used this plant to clean the family’s laundry when he was young.

The Amazon is alive! Even though the Napo was swollen with debris-filled floodwater. Just as we got seated on our motor boat we were startled when a fish leaped out of the water and landed at our feet in the boat. It was a “dogfish” that apparently was leaping from the water to get a bug for breakfast when he landed in our boat instead. He was no doubt more scared than us and he likely missed his breakfast snack, so we did return the Amazon resident to his river home. He’ll be more cautious with his breakfast hunting for a while.

As we made our way up the big river I was struck by how much water exists in the Amazon. The Napo sometimes makes it into the list of top 10 source tributaries of the Amazon, sometimes it does not. Yet when we were in the middle of this small portion of the world’s greatest waterway, I looked across to one bank and could not believe the size. It is always easy to remember when one is in the Amazon that this is a place as significant as any feature on our earth to life, climate and atmosphere.

The water of the Amazon Basin is massive in scale

The water of the Amazon Basin is massive in scale

A surprise visitor, a Dogfish

A surprise visitor, a Dogfish

Sixto was sweat covered but happy when we arrived at the Big River

Sixto was sweat covered but happy when we arrived at the Big River