Sacha Lodge

Kyle and I got back to Quito from Sacha Lodge today. In total it took us almost 20 hours of traveling and waiting to get there. We left last Thursday on a 9 hour night bus to Coca (an unforgetable experience to say the least), we arrived around 7 AM and had to wait until 12:30 for the others in our group to arrive. We took a 2 hour journey up the Napo River in a motorized canoe, 30 minute hike through the jungle, and another 20 minute paddle canoe ride across the blackwater lake to the lodge. The trip was long but the location of the lodge was amazing. It is located on a 1800 hectare nature reserve in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest. The first night we had dinner, met our guides and pretty much passed out from the exhausting trip. We had an english speaking naturalist guide, Gus, and a native guide, Colombia. They were seriously impressive. Columbia could spot things that were almost impossible (seriuosly) to see and Gus was a wealth of information about the rainforest. Our first full day at Sacha (7/11) started quite early... 5:30. We had breakfast and headed to the canopy walk, a 40 meter high structure with 3 towers and suspension bridges in between. We caught the early morning activity of the birds in the canopy. We saw parrots, tucans, hawks, parakeets, and tons of others that I can't remember the name of. We got to hear howler monkeys but they were really too far to away see. (Our guides had a telescope so we could see birds from pretty far away). After the canopy walk we visited the butterfly farm where they breed butterflies to export for educational purposes. We had a break during the hottest part of the day. I read in our hammock and Kyle took a nap (of course). Our evening activity was a canoe ride and night hike. We saw some frogs, tailess scorpians, spiders, night monkeys, and of course a few tarantulas. Our second full day was a few more hikes, a visit to the 43 meter canopy tower in a ceiba tree (think the coolest tree house you've ever seen!), pirahna fishing, and a night canoe ride. All in all we got to see a large variety of wildlife. Our experience was truly once in a lifetime. Needless to say we decided to fly back and got back to Quito in pretty good shape.

Sacha Lodge