Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve

Eleven years ago, Paul and I brought then-baby Dillon to Siona Lodge in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in the Amazon region of eastern Ecuador, commonly referred to as the Oriente. We celebrated his first birthday there. I am not exactly sure what we were thinking, but we were young(er), adventurous and apparently invulnerable, even with a baby. It's funny how memory works. I remember struggling to get Dillon to take the bitter malaria medication. I remember holding him on my lap in the canoe. I remember sharing meals with a lovely group of strangers in the outdoor dining area. I remember jumping into the lagoon at sunset. I remember the mosquito net over our bed and the steamy night hike. I remember our animated guide, Luis. I don't really remember the birds or the monkeys.

Well, we had the opportunity to revisit Cuyabeno and Siona Lodge last week. I vow to remember the birds and the monkeys. They were spectacular!

This time there were no babies; instead, we brought three big kids who love adventures, birds, and river swimming. Plus we brought Pat, Stacia, and Evan. The trip to get to Cuyabeno was long and exhausting -- a taxi from the hostel in Quito to a plane to a long shuttle bus ride to a canoe. But as soon as we stepped onto the canoe, and our captain, Peluche, -- which means stuffed animal -- hit the gas in his brand new boat, it felt like we were in heaven. As I whispered to Stacia, going down that river feels magical like the Disneyland Jungle Cruise, but it is so much better, because it's all real. (Paul despises this comparison).

As you might guess, it is warm in the Amazon. Hot, really. But riding in a canoe with the spray of river water coming from the prow and a good strong breeze in your face, it's actually pleasant and absolutely gorgeous. All around us, flooded tropical rain forest. Tucked into the forest, flying above the forest, and jumping through the trees of the forest: an unbelievable array of wildlife.

On the two-hour boat ride to the lodge, we saw pairs of brilliant blue and yellow macaws, hoatzins (locally known as ¨stinky turkeys" for the smell of their meat when cooked), three different species of monkeys, both types of sloths, a myriad of tropical birds including toucans, oropendulas, and caciques, and to top it all off, elusive pink river dolphins right by our canoe.

Within an hour of arriving at the sweet little lodge, we all loaded back into the canoe to jump into the lagoon for a refreshing sunset swim. It was well worth the ten or so hours of travel. Also, this had the makings of a true vacation: all the meals were cooked for us (and delicious!), the dishes and tables were wiped down by not-me, and the plan of the day was made by someone else. Don't over-interpret; this was not a luxury vacation, but it turns out my vacation-fantasies are fairly basic. :)

On our first full day in Cuyabeno, we took a nature hike through the rainforest, intermittently getting rained upon, oohing and ahhing at the flora and fauna, including an orb-weaver with a web that spanned the entire path, frogs and toads, new monkey species, amazing tropical trees (including mahogany, copal, and root wall trees that we cannot remember the name of but is not the ceiba), and vines used for medicinal purposes (e.g. curare for anesthesia, quinine for malaria). This region of Ecuador is one of the most bio-diverse regions in the world. Our guide told us that one hectare of the reserve (2 3/4 acres or 108,000 square feet) contains more tree species than all of Europe!

Later that afternoon, we returned to the canoe for more wildlife viewing before a pre-dinner night hike. Somehow our guide spotted a baby anaconda resting in the branches of a riverside shrub. Eek! Of course, we had lugged along our beloved Wildlife of Ecuador book and found ourselves checking off creatures left and right. On the night hike, we saw several different species of spiders, a scorpion, a giant toad and giant frog, and a tarantula, which our guide literally fished out of a hole with a long piece of grass.

The next day, after group deliberation, we decided to participate in what is called "the community visit", an hour and a half boat ride to a Siona community (one of only four small settlements in the region) to meet indigenous peoples who have inhabited the rainforest for thousands of years. And still do. The only way to get to these communities is via river boat. We briefly visited the small school, which was obviously under-resourced but, thankfully, was being taught by a native Siona teacher in both Bi-Coca (the Siona language) and Spanish. Then, we "helped" a woman named Gladys make the traditional version of pan de yuca, which is a flatbread made from yuca flour that is extracted from fresh yuca that we harvested. We did help grate the yuca, then watched her use a traditional palm-leaf woven squeezer to turn the grated yuca into flour. The end product was nothing like the cheesy pan de yuca we have come to love on the coast, but it was still tasty. I filled mine with tuna salad; the kids preferred pineapple jam with a sprinkling of salt.

Finally, we met likely one of the Siona community's last shamans, Isaac, who gave a trilingual presentation (he spoke in Bi-Coca and Spanish, our guide Neiser interpreted into English), about local shamanism and the use of ayahuasca. Sadly, Isaac shared that he has no students who want to learn his trade. He expressed concern that the younger generation is not interested in consuming ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plant that shamans use to connect to patients and create treatment plans. He also said that there are other opportunities (e.g. higher education, opportunities to work as river guides) that are more enticing. Our kids' favorite part of Isaac's presentation was when we all got to experiment with his poison blow dart gun. Paul particularly enjoyed the realization that Isaac convincingly missed his target three times and then gave us each multiple attempts. Once we all failed, Isaac used the blow dart gun to confidently and precisely strike the small red achiote pinned onto the top of a wooden macaw the size of a clothespin.

While Paul, Pat, Stacia and I had been ambivalent about participating in a cultural tour because of our concern about its impact on the community and how uncomfortable such encounters can be, this experience turned out to be quite chill and, thankfully, not-cringe worthy. In the end, we were all glad we did it. These indigenous communities are tremendously fragile and having some way to preserve them and make some money through tourism makes sense to me. Also, here we are traipsing around on indigenous land gaping at the amazing wildlife and landscape that they have inhabited for generations-- it makes sense to me that we take a moment to thank them for allowing us to be there.

That night, after a final sunset dip in the lagoon, we went on a night-time caiman hunt in the canoe (I know, that doesn't sound too smart, but we were assured that caiman do not spend time in the middle of the lake). This was Stacia's favorite part; Brynna, on the other hand, didn't love it. It is pretty spooky to be boating around the swampy lagoon in the dark of the night, slipping between trees rising from the water looking for monsters. The way to find caimans is to shine very bright flashlights at the river's edge into grasses and low shrubs and look for a reflection of eyes shining back at you. Creepy. And cool. Because the water level was high, we didn't have a lot of success, until we got back to our lodge, where our persistent guide managed to spot two, a big black one and a baby.

The next morning, our last, we went on a dawn bird watch, where in addition to plenty of tropical birds we had come to love and recognize, we also spotted a super cool common potoo, a nocturnal bird that camouflages itself by acting like a branch on a shrub. The potoo had a baby at her side, doing just as its mother told him: sitting perfectly still, eyes closed, not moving a feather. The grand finale was spotting a pair of gorgeous green-backed trogons, cousin to the quetzal. The male was a beautiful deep blue-green color you don't often see in the wild. Stunning.

This whole family bird-watching gig really does turn every moment into a treasure hunt, and a very colorful one at that!! By the end of the three days, we counted no less than 34 bird species, five different types of monkeys, not to mention slithers, creepers, and crawlers!

As an important aside, our lovely and knowledgeable guide, Neiser, and our cook, Blanca, shared some about what life was like for them during COVID. Tourism in the Oriente ceased entirely for almost two years. Neiser, who is multilingual and educated, was forced to sell his car for cash and sold french fries on the street to feed his family. He was part of a group of guides that organized to ask for financial help from the Ecuadorian government; months later they each received one kilo of rice, sugar, and beans and a liter of vegetable oil.

Blanca, on the other hand, was lucky to remain employed by the lodge for the duration of the pandemic, as one of two caregivers who lived on site and kept the lodge kept up and safe. Though it was lonely, she was very happy to have a job. At some point, she brought her 100 year old Sionan grandma to stay with her there to protect her from the risk of COVID exposure in her community. Grandma never got COVID. Meanwhile, Blanca's teenage daughter lived more than a day's travel away. Both Blanca and Neiser are happy to have things getting back to 'normal" in their industry, though numbers of tourists are still low, and reality as they previously knew it feels tenuous.

Another critical aside is acknowledgement of the terrible environmental and health impacts that oil drilling has had on the Cuyabeno Region. As we traveled the 3+ hours in a small tourist bus from Coca to the Cuyabeno Reserve, we saw plenty of oil workers, petrol trucks, and a thick oil pipeline coursing the entire length of the road we were travelling along. There has been a lot of destruction. Before the oil companies discovered oil in the Sucumbios province in the 1960s, the entire region was a pristine rainforest; only small populations of indigenous folks lived for thousands of years. The entire city of Lago Agrio, also known as Nueva Loja (population 48,000), was created by the oil industry and people flocked there for jobs. Much of the forest has been cleared. Perhaps unsurprisingly, oil companies are known to have dumped billions of gallons of toxic wastewater and millions of gallons of crude oil in the area. There are well-documented increased rates of cancer, birth defects, and miscarriage in local indigenous people. Lawsuits against big oil have been ongoing for 30 years now without much impact. All of this is terribly depressing.

And yet, even in the context of ongoing destruction, that the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve exists is a good thing. That the Ecuadorian government and local people are actively looking to preserve the remaining sliver of primary forest and its wildlife is essential. The fact that indigenous people own the boats that transport people into lodges is also positive. Neiser reiterated as we were leaving Cuyabeno that eco-tourism in the rainforest of Ecuador is the only way to both ensure preservation of the remaining forest and guarantee an income source for these tiny indigenous communities. Money talks, and people need money to survive.

Tourism is a strange thing, and even though I love to travel, I don't particularly like being a tourist. But if done correctly, I do believe that tourism can offer something to local communities and to efforts to preserve their surrounding environment. I hope I'm right!

PS. I forgot my phone in my bag at our hotel in Coca, so all the photo credits go to Stacia Okura.