John and Tina's Travels: Ecuador Amazon River Basin

Our tour guide, Celso, knew all about the birds, plants, people and maybe everything else about the river basin. He loved everything about Ecuador and told us all about it. We can even remember some of what he told us.

The Yarina Lodge was our home base for 5 days. Great food, great rooms, great location right on the river. There was no vehicular access to Yarina Lodge, only river access from the Rio Napo. The lodge was really clean, the beds were fine, and had mosquito netting on each bed! Even though we did not see any mosquitos! But we were pretty far removed from urban civilization.

Winter made us "Jungle Hats" so we would be able to blend in with the locals. My hat looks like a Robin Hood hat made out of a palm leaf. Tina's hat looks like a Pocahontas hat made out of natural fibers:

Our tour group on the river boat on the Rio Napo going to Yarina Lodge.

Yarina Lodge boat dock

Our cabana at Yarina Lodge

Our room in side our cabana

Maggie knocking on the front door of some local termites and finding out that they do not bite even when invited out to play. Termites only each rotten dead wood and do not like human flesh. However, Maggie's hand did have a strong odor of rotten wood after these termites crawled all over her hand.

My wonderful lunch of churrasco (beef), eggs, avocado, beans and french fries on the bus trip to the town of Coca where we picked up the river boat to the Yarina Lodge. Oh, and also a pineapple smoothie. Wow!! It was all great!

Our local Amazon Basin guide, "Winter", cut open a cacao pod and showed us the cacao seeds inside. We then had a seed spitting contest, and learned about growing cacao, and later how to turn it into chocolate. We also learned that Winter keeps his machete REALLY sharp.

In our canoe going back out to the Rio Napo for more adventure!

A local Amazon River Basin family prepared us a wonderful lunch of fire grilled tilapia and palm weevil grubs that were fire roasted over a wood fire inside a very tough, fire resistant banana leaf.

Here is their home. No windows, everything is open air.

Celso challenged Jim to eat a palm weevil grub RAW. Of course Jim accepted the challenge.

Connie volunteered to help prepare the palm weevil grubs for fire roasting.

Live palm weevil grubs squirming around in the bowl. I wish I had taken a movie of this.

Place the palm weevil grubs on a banana leaf for cooking.

Fold up the leaf to serve as a fire roasting container for our grubs.

Tie the leaf to keep those grubs from running our when they feel the fire!

Celso congratulates Connie on a job well done. Note the fire roasting grill is behind them.

Another way to prepare palm weevil grubs for cooking is to crush their tiny skulls. At which point they immediately stop squirming. Then put several on a skewer and roast them over the flames.

We also had that wonderful tilapia which was fire roasted with a little bit of salt inside a banana leaf.
Our local Amazon hostess showed us how prepare the tilapia for fire roasting.

Using a very sharp knife, she cut a line down each side to provide a groove for some salt which she sprinkled on. Notice the salt on a banana leaf to her left.

Vito checking out his knife cut!

Our hostess folding the tilapia inside the banana leaf.

Cay folding her tilapia inside the banana leaf.

Our hostess completes the fold.

and she ties the banana leaf around the tilapia. Now ready to go on the grill.

Celso showed us how to make a red dye by crushing up the seeds inside an Achiote seed pod.
Before crushing.

After crushing.

Then he put a face tattoo on Carol M. in a traditional style for good luck.

Close-up view of Carol with her new Tatt! She is wishing she could go back to her school and show her high school kids that she now has a face tattoo just like that famous boxer guy! They would think that was WAY COOL!!!

Celso and Winter took us to a very small local 1 room school, Escuela Josefina Villamar Obando. Their teacher had not shown up for the past 2 weeks and had apparently quit without a letter of resignation. The local the parents were asking the school district in Coca to send them a new teacher. Which may take another month. So, on the day of our visit, one of the moms was there with her baby in a sling to supervise the little kids so they could have a chance to meet us. The bigger kids were not there that day. We sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" for them and then taught them how to do the hand moves. They liked it!

Then we played "Duck-Duck-Goose" (in Spanish it is "Pato-Pato-Ganso") and had a lot of fun running around. Believe it or not, the little kids were FASTER than all of us old people. Then we gave the kids our gifts of rubber boots (suggested by Celso), which the kids really appreciated. It is pretty wet and muddy there many days, so rubber boots are really a staple item for everyone's daily attire.