The Amazon! Part 1

From January 31st till the 4th of February I was in The Amazon! It was a Rotary trip to a jungle lodge called Yachana. The lodge is located in the Ecuadorian Amazon which is relatively at the start of the Amazon basin... it is crazy to think about how Ecuador has rivers which eventually flow into bigger and bigger rivers until they reach the Amazon River, which has the largest volume of any river in the world... And the rivers here seem huge!? Yachana has won a National Geografic award for ecoturism and geoturism. Essentially there is a touristy lodge that is completely set up for tourists, english speaking guides, really nice cabins, etc. Just down river is a population that is probably about 20 families. And a little farther down is a high school that has its focus on stewardship of the land and specific education for the Amazon. Essentailly completely epic. Yachana is along the banks of Napo River, which at this point is about... well 2 football fields seems right.
I met up with the other 19 exchange students in the airport on saturday morning. It was great seeing everyone again and we had a fun moment to talk about all that has happened since many of us have seen each other. Spanish, English, French, and German were all spoken, we boarded the plane and were informed of our long 30 minute flight to Coca, a city in the Amazon. We were off the plane before we knew it. One thing that stands out clearly was watching the Amazon jungle change. When we first saw it it was just a sea of green... Slowly it began to change, there were little roads leading to and from clearcuts... and then the red earth, which seemed just like wounds, and finally houses. Fields and the city of Coca finally filled my view. There was a wound around this town. Slowly the people were taking their influence farther and farther into the heart of the Amazon.
The humidity assailed us the second that we stepped off the plane, we met one of our guides, a man who by the looks of him didn't seem much older than us. We collected our bags and got into a chiva... which is pure ecuadorian travel. It is a converted truck to carry a bunch of people, I rode one during the fiestas de Quito. I asked if we could sit up top and we got a yes. We drove to the river and got out of the chiva to find ourselves at a hotel with monkeys, parrots and turtles running around...