July 14, 2014
Today was a day filled with excitement. We woke early and showed up at the airport hoping that we had tickets to Coca (they had been booked by others) luckily everything worked out.
The roads were busy at 5am on the hour long ride in vans from la casa sol. Our flight was about an hour long , and we disembarked from the plane straight into the baggage claim area off of the runway.
We hopped on a bus with a guide from Tiputini, and took a 5min ride to a pier where 45 minutes later, a long canopied boat took off with our baggage and ourselves.
We zoomed down the river for about 2 hours as the captain slowed and twisted the boat through the occasional 90 degree turn. We found out that he was navigating the hidden sandbanks of the muddy Napo River by memory which was quite astounding. There wasn't a whole lot of animal life to see, but the trees and plants lined the river the whole way.
It felt as if we were sailing off into the horizon the way the landscape seemed to fly by. We checked in at an oil check point before boarding a safari-type truck and setting off on a rocky road into the interior. At this point, I expressed the thought that it was truly amazing to be setting off with no real idea or conception of where we were heading. I suppose that part of that feeling is colored by previous experience and a true willingness to be open to everything. I greatly credit my parents for this. We rolled and rolled through the dense vegetation for about an hour and a half before stopping at another research station where we boarded a slightly wider gondola boat with open sides and went downstream on the Tiputini River for another two hours or so.
Here, the weather finally caught up with us as the overcast skies opened up into a downpour that continued heavily for most of the night. We finally arrived at a wooden set of stairs leading upward to two gazebos and the dining hall of the station. How to describe this place? Apart from the peace I felt from sitting in the gazebo as the sunset watching the lazy river eddy by, this was the most remarkable bit of the day. Lacquered woodcarved steps, tiled floors, well equipped cabins. It truly feels like a very nice hostel shipped miles eastward into the rainforest. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves and to be very calm, which is exactly what we could hope for. Three weeks does seem to be a much longer time now than it did before, but I am hopeful that this positive group spirit can continue beyond a night of tacos and cake.
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