I hadn’t planned on traveling to the Amazon while I was in Ecuador (to be honest, I hadn’t considered that the Amazon reached into Ecuador) until a friend suggested it to me.

His uncle had been to the La Selva Eco Lodge in the Ecuadorian Amazon and, when he heard I was going to be in the area, told my friend to tell me I should go. Trusting his uncle, I booked a long weekend as soon as the recommendation was passed on to me.

The flight from Quito to Coca is less than an hour, but the climate couldn’t have been any different. I had gone from the thin mountain air to air thick with oxygen and humidity. I take deep breaths when I step off the airplane, happy to fill my lungs with the thick, oxygenated air.

At the airport Rodrigo met meets outside. He said we were to wait for two other guests and so I ask him about himself. He’s been a guide for 10 years and a chef for 15 before that; he prefers guiding. He’d worked since he was 14, never having gone to HS. 

I ask him what he wants to do after guiding. He wants to build his own lodge. 5 bungalows on the river. It would take 15k to start and he jokingly asks if I want to be his business partner. 

I ask what training is needed to be a guide. He said he had grown up in the area and knew the animals. He said that La Selva is his training, but they didn’t teach him English. That’s something he did on his own, and another reason he likes guiding, to meet people and practice his English. As a chef you leave your room and cook and then go back to your room. He likes interacting with guests. 

I’m not sure how but we get on the topic of drinks and he asks if I like Cuba libres. I flash back to a night in Havana where I shared many with my host and tell him I do. I ask him what he likes to drink. Lately he says he’s been drinking a lot of beer but he prefers rum. Havana Club. I tell him we should pick up a bottle. 

The two other guests arrive and he takes us to the office in town. Rodrigo and I leave them and he walks me to a supermarket where I buy the rum. He then takes me on a mini tour, past a pretty park to the open air market where I buy Amazonian grapes (delicious and only in season in Jan. They remind me of lychee in flavor. You peel the skin and the stone is large inside. Later, I’ll share them with the villagers and guests aboard our canoe.). He shows me a woman selling local remedies, including a local honey and a drink including the bark of a local tree. He said that people with covid drink the latter and none had died.

From the main market he takes me to a small fish market. Here, tilapia swim in a tank white catfish caught from the river lay on a table above. Fish from the sea (trucked in from the coast) are sold down a small driveway at another market.

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If anything, Coca, which sits on the banks of the Napo River, reminds me of Phnom Phen: the thick humid air, the town pressed right up against the river, the turgid, minerally water reflecting the vegetation.

As we walk along the malecón back to the office, Rodrigo sees a cousin of his, spending the afternoon by the river with his family. He introduces me and then they talk while I take a few photos.

Afterwards, Rodrigo tells me he hasn’t seen his cousin in seven years. Where've you been, he had asked him. Right here in Coca, he answered.

A journey up the river.

At the Coca boat landing, we add some local villagers to our small party before setting off down the river.

On board, I share the grapes I bought at the market with everyone. The lodge had provided us with lunch sacks at the office, and my fellow guests and I share these with the children who accompany us.

Some choose to nap.

Almost two hours into our journey, the canoe slows and turns upriver, ultimately beaching itself on the banks.

A majority of the villagers alight. They throw their shoes onto the shore as they step into the river, turning back to retrieve their bags and put them on the dry sand.

We seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, but the village is just beyond the trees. Later, Rodrigo will point out a path alongside the river that joins one village to another, a wide trail cut through the thick vegetation.

A little further on we drop Selmira off on the banks of the river, a child alone. She hops off quickly then turns back to wave at us before disappearing into the jungle.

We soon arrive at La Selva’s private landing. Our luggage is transferred off the canoe onto a trolley, and we walk 100 meters or so to a small creek.

There, we board a smaller canoe paddled by Rodrigo and Dario for the 30-minute journey to the lagoon and the lodge itself. Rodrigo points out tapir tracks and places where capabara had been, eating the large green leaves of a plant that grows by the water. You can see where the brush has been trampled and devoured just in from the waters edge. 

Rodrigo points out birds to us: A heron and swallows and others whose names I can’t remember. And in the far distance in the canopy of a far off tree, a howler monkey. We watch it climb down from its perch and Rodrigo tells us rain is on the way. Ponchos are distributed and sure enough, as we enter the lagoon upon which the lodge sits the rain begins. Rodrigo paddles furiously to get us to the dock before the rain starts in earnest. We almost make it. 

At one point on our journey to the lodge, he stops the canoe and has us listen to the jungle. On subsequent nights, we'll hear red howler monkeys, their voices like a wind in the distance. 🇪🇨