More monkey business

After losing our caiman friend we returned to the lodge to relax with a blow gun and some friendly piranhas. The blow gun competition was fun, although I wasn't too hot at it, and in fact we were beaten by an American girl, Ellie. Dave beat me and still gloats about his prize - a piranha tooth necklace; cool.

We then went piranha fishing on the lagoon, unfortunately we didn't have much luck, although i did catch a cat fish which was much bigger than it appears in the photos. The fish itself had pirhana bite marks on it - we threw it back in but I doubt he survived much longer. We stayed on the boat until the sun set over the jungle, a glorious sight, one which i doubt I'll ever match.

After another glorious dinner we got in the canoes for a night time ride, silently gliding along the river listening to the incredible sounds of the jungle. Unfortunately we failed to spot any small white caiman, and thankfullly Midado changed the route to avoid the large black one. What a day! I slept well that night, unaware that the next day could easily have been our last...

It all happened so quickly, on a visit to Monkey Island, whilst walking along with Jimmy in front, we heard a crack above our heads and a noise sounding like a few monkeys running past. But it wasn't. A thick, dead branch had snapped off and fallen down knocking Jimmy onto the floor. For a second he didn't move, but then he shouted, much to our relief "i'm okay". The log had hit jimmy on the shoulder, very hard and he had bruised it but luckily he was okay. He's a huge former soldier, and admitted that had it hit him on the head, or worse, one of us, it could have been goodnight. What made it so lucky was that a few seconds previously we had stopped so jimmy could show us something - had we not, the logs would have hit the main group of us and not him.

Relieved, we carried on through the jungle and did spot some monkeys. This was an awesome moment, as we struggled to get our cameras pointed up to the trees - i managed to get one good photo of a mother and baby swinging through the trees, but the rest didn't come out too well. We saw about 4 monkeys and stood and watched them for a few minutes swinging above us and making lots of noise. It was the best moment of the day, and I would have been really disappointed had we not seen any - and was glad that at least one photo came out (see it in my photos section). It's a completely different experience to a zoo, I guess the search for them made the sight of them more rewarding. I think Jimmy said they were Golden Mantle Tamarins, but he wasn't sure.

On the way back from monkey island we stopped off at the side of the river to visit a local family, they live in a traditional house, although the effect was slighltly weakened by the house owner wearing a nike cap. We asked him some questions about where how he lived, where his kids went to school etc... but it seemed as though we were intruding in his house, so it was a little uncomfortable. We did get to wear some red-berry face paint which was pretty cool. Once we had returned to the lodge, jimmy found us a dead tarantula to look at, i gently poked it with a pencil and noticed his legs jerked. Well it turned out that the creature was just sleeping, or playing dead, because jimmy bought it back later alive and well. Thinking about it now, that is quite scary! It's annoying because i didn't take a picture of it (out of respect for the dead), and i wish i had done now.

Later that afternoon we swam with piranhas. That sentence sounds terriffic, although it's not as scary as it sounds because the devils will only attack you if you're bleeding. I was a bit anxious as we slowly stepped into the water, but once I'd been in for a few minutes it felt like there was no danger, although we didn't venture too far away from the land. Still, Midado managed to catch a baby piranha, and boy do they have sharp teeth, you really would be ripped to shreds if they attacked. Unfortunately we couldn't get lisa in the water, but all credit to sarah, she got in, albeit after a bit of dragging. We also saw a baby boa constrictor asleep on a log, i would say it was cute, but it's mum was probably lurking in the background so we didn't hang around too long.

We still had time to visit a 25m high bird tower about a 30 minute trek away, and we saw some more little monkeys on the way. Lisa's scared of heights, so i had no idea why she went up there, but she did make it up the rickety structure, but was unfortunately unable to speak or move once we go up there. It was cool up there, tremdendous views of the jungle, but it was very humid and sweaty up there after the climb to the top. Again I made good use of my binoculars, up there - from such a height you can really see just how many different varieties of trees there are.

And that was the last jungle activity - we were up at 3am the next morning because it took 7hrs on the motorised canoe to get back to Coca, from where we flew back to Quito, in awe at the past few days.

And that was the last jungle activity - we were up at 3am the next morning because it took 7hrs on the motorised canoe to get back to Coca, from where we flew back to Quito, in awe at the past few days.

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