Rain in Quito! Rain on the coast! And .... rain in the jungle! As the crowds returned on Easter Sunday from their holidays, we decided to go against the flow of traffic and spend a few days in the jungle, before Robbie and Maia had to be back in school. (John is able to enjoy a few days more.) El Establo de Tomás (see link on the right) is perfect for a few days in the jungle - just three hours away from home, assuming no landslides or broken bridges, 7 km away from Tena (Napo region's capital city), on the banks of the small, clean Rio Lupi, and with good, simple and cheap accommodation, which is shared with numerous squirrel monkeys, toucans, trumpeters, macaws and parrots, and wonderful butterflies such as the magnificent Blue Morph with its hand-sized wong-span. The flowers too, this time, were more spectacular that we ever remember them before.
Although often Toby would not be a problem on our travels, understandably Lodges are not so keen on visiting dogs. So we packed Toby Thomas off to Campamento Canino in Tumbaco for a couple of nights. He always seems to enjoy himself with the other residents but is very happy when we collect him.
Here are Robbie and Maia on the bridge across the Rio Tena. Tena is a growing city and, like so many towns and cities in Ecuador, has benefitted from a cleaning-up in the last year or so. In the case of Tena, much of this resurrection of the city was a necessity after the dreadful floods of 2010, which destroyed so much of the river-side, and led to loss of life. Quite how municipal politics works in Ecuador is difficult to ascertain, but the revamping of cities and roads is always very publicly attributed to the local mayor, with streets named after this dignatory, his/her name in big lights and even statutes. Tena is no exception, with some Blackpool-style illuminations at night, feting Sr. Washington!
Tena is built on and up from the banks of the Rio Tena and its tributary, the Rio Pano. These Amazonian rivers can be streams or raging torrents. After heavy rains in the mountains in 2010, both the Rio Pano and the Rio Tena flooded as they had never flooded before, carrying away houses and restaurants and inundating other buildings, including the newly opened Tena police station.
A wonderful resource in Tena was the Parque Amazónico La Isla, a small island reserve situated between the two rivers and reached by a wobbly footbridge across the Rio Pano. La Isla was home to a multitude of orphaned wild animals and birds and, in recent years different funding agencies had helped build an education and interpretation centre. Several IB students from Colegio Fiscomisional San José had worked there on their CAS commitment, with John helping. (John's school had been instrumental in the successful IB accreditation of San José, and there has been some very successful exchanges between students of the two schools.)
The 2010 floods completely destroyed La Isla, and washed away the footbridge linking the town to the park. Sadly most of the animals, including tapirs, huge boa constrictors, alligators, monkeys and some of the caged birds were drowned or washed downstream. La Isla is now a depressing place to visit. A short canoe ride across the Rio Pano delivers visitors to a destroyed and empty island. A few forest animals were on high enough ground to survive. These include mud-loving agoutis and peccarys, one tapir who is now wild somewhere on the island, some ducks and geese, two large boas, and not much else. The scientific and education centres more or less survived but a great deal of very committed and resourceful work has been lost. Of course there is talk of the 'new' Parque Amazónico La Isla, and of a new bridge but these do not seem to be so high on the list of priorities of Sr. Washington. Bright lights are much more important!
We were carried across the river in the small canoe, after a pizza lunch on the banks nearby, but within 20 minutes we were engulfed in torrential, torrential rain. It is difficult to photograph rain! But in the picture above Robbie and Maia are waiting patiently for the rain to stop. The rivers in Amazonia can flood dramatically quickly, so we were in a conundrum. One option - make a dash for it, get absolutely soaked but get back quickly to the car, assuming the canoe-man would take us there; other option - wait until the rain stopped and hope the river was still safe to cross. The canoe man only gave us the second option! So we waited until the rain eased off, and watched alarmed as the river grew in size and logs and trees began to float past. We were happy to make it back to the car, even though we were dripping like forest trees.
The other picture here is of the Park symbol. it is a nice little drawing which appears all over Tena, mostly a part of graffiti on walls, as well as on posters.
Robbie and Maia enjoyed their time at El Establo de Tomás. Here, still in pyjamas and while it was raining outside, they are playing with the bunk bed ladder.
Luckily we were blessed with no mosquitoes and other nasties, so the mosquito nets were somewhat redundant.
Here are the children floating down Rio Lupi. Such clean and safe water; warm enough for hours of play. When the river rises after rain, it is sometimes used to float timber out from the forests. Timber felling is of course the biggest industry in these parts and is mostly illegal, but no-one seems to care.
And here are Robbie and Maia happily at the end of their journey down the river. With those teeth missing, maybe Maia should be a filter feeder in the river!
El Establo de Tomás is shared with a veritable zoo of birds and animals, which makes for a lot of fun. They are free to come and go as they please, but most stay. The toucans are especially very persistent in their pursuit of snacks. There are some 5 or 6 White-fronted or Cuvier's toucans living around the lodge. A pair of gigantic macaws are also resident, and some parrots. Since our last visit, a small flock of grey-winged Trumpeters has also decided to stay around. These birds, about the size of a guinea fowl, do fly but spend most of their time on the ground. On our previous visits there was a large group of squirrel monkeys but these have taken themselves up to the mountains for a period, leaving behind just one pathetic little fellow, who always followed us along the river bank.
Here is one of the beautiful toucans having a snack on a seed pod near the lodge. Of course the birds and monkeys should not be fed at El Establo de Tomás, but they are very, very good thieves, and if you turn your back for just a moment, any of them will have stolen whatever was on your plate. There was one small, whinging toucan which spent most of its time trying to nip our ankles. It simply did not get the message that it was not welcome to do that with its massive and evil looking beak!
Sadly Robbie had holiday homework to complete. Robbie is very slow with his homework! Poor Maia, who was drawing pictures to give to the staff at the lodge, obviously fell off to sleep, waiting for Robbie to finish!
There are two lovely black labradors at El Establo de Tomás and they accompanied us on all our walks, as well as when we were in the river. Typical labradors - they spent most of their time chasing stones and sticks which we threw for them. The bigger of the two was quite comic the way he would dredge the river bed for a stone which had long been washed far away downstream!
So we had a good couple of days at El Establo de Tomás. One highlight was being able to Skype with Pace and Jane. They in deepest Cornwall and we in deepest Amazonia, both with good internet signals and able to chat. Wow! for modern technology! On the way home we visited and had lunch at our favourite jungle place, Hakuna Matata. It is financially beyond us to stay there now, but we always visit. In all these years the staff have hardly changed and they treat Robbie and Maia as their own! We had a quick swim in their pool before getting on the road back to Quito - in torrential rain!
