Official currency is the US Dollar. It is highly recommended to carry cash in small dollar bills as it is their preferred mode of accepting payment. Tipping is expected and can vary from small bills to 10 or 15% depending on the establishment.

Ecuador uses 110 volt, 60 cycle electricity, same as the US. Plugs are also the 2-pronged flat type as in the US. This is either A or B type plug adapters.

While the native language is Spanish, you can get by with English. In some restaurants and other places, it is hard to communicate without help of the Google Translator.

The weather in the Amazon is pretty consistent and varies from hot and humid to rainy season. Dry Season is from July to December and it is considered the best time to visit the Amazon as it is less humid, the water levels in the rivers and tributaries are lower, making it easier to navigate waterways or hike in the forest, and also making it easier to spot animals. Always though, be prepared for some showers.

Going to the deep Amazon to stay in forest lodges in not everyone’s cup of tea and definitely not for the faint-hearted who hate being too far from civilization.

We were asked to carry some of the following items, and others we added on our own:

• • • Binoculars
    • Camera (from phone to sophisticated ones)
    • Bug spray
    • Sunblock
    • Sunglasses
    • Hat or Roman cap (that covers the neck)
      Long cotton pants and long sleeve cotton shirts – light colored
    • Raincoat or poncho
    • Flashlight – get headlamps if you can
    • Water bottle
    • Daypack
    • Snack Bars
    • Small-denomination currency
    • Slippers or sandals and something waterproof if you wish
    • Lodges will typically ask for your shoe size in advance and have rubber boots for you to borrow – so no need to carry
    • A small first aid kit and basic medicines for fever, stomach upsets and pain
    • Battery pack for phone backup recharge – after all tons of pictures!

Writing by Jyothi Shankar and Baldev Nair.  Thanks to Sunil for taking many of the pictures, and Geeta for bringing her ever sunny disposition on the trip!!

Deciding on which Amazon to visit

— Jyothi

The size of the Amazon Rainforest is mind-boggling, being one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, encompassing an area of over 2.5 million miles across eight countries in South America of which I had a long time ago in my teens, decided to visit the one in Brazil. However, a few decades later, I found myself reading and talking to a few people about it and then being uncertain about my teenage dream :-)!

So it wasn’t easy for me to decide on which Amazon rainforest to visit – the one in Brazil, Peru or Ecuador. In fact, I agonized over it, reading article after article. A few years ago, I would have not given it a second thought and would have jumped at Manaus in Brazil. However, the more I read (and after talking to one person each who had visited one of the three forests) and planned the rest of my Ecuador and Peru trips. I got clearer. I will try to very briefly summarize what brought about my decision. For me one of the biggest attractions was to visit a large clay lick and the rest followed after. A clay lick is an area where primarily parrots and macaws congregate every day to detoxify themselves by consuming clay. Read more about clay licks here. For anyone else wanting to go, that decision would be different based on what you are after.

The Amazon trip with its long boat ride to reach a remote lodge (and being far from medical facilities) is not for everyone. But you know yourselves to make that call.

The Brazilian Amazon

• Manaus is the most common point of entry to the Brazilian Amazon. The flight to Manaus in Brazil is 4 hours long from Rio (if that is where you will be).
• Only in Brazil you will encounter the Amazon river and not its tributaries (as in Peru and Ecuador). It is also here that one can see the meeting of the waters where the Amazon meets Rio Negro if that has been on your to-see list!
• Brazil is home to so much of the Amazon and has a huge amount of wildlife. With tourism being very developed, it has several tour companies to take you on cruises of different budgets (and comfort-luxury levels) whether it is a cruise or a forest lodge. You will be able to take various little side excursions/tours (like Piranha fishing) which may or may not be included in your main package.
• Depending upon the tour company you may just skirt the rainforest, versus going in deeper. Do your research well about the tour company. Also, its common to sight wildlife like otters, cayman, monkeys and fish like piranhas. However, I heard that it is not as easy to spot a jaguar or birds in the wild and people often visit aviaries to see a host of colorful birds.
• Given that I wanted to visit a clay lick, there weren’t really any written about in the Brazilian Amazon.
• I read accounts of Manaus being a very industrial town and the Amazon being polluted by waste which put me off. And oil rigging.
• My friend who went to Brazil said that this was her best ever trip – she loved cruising on the river which was the highlight for her. She mentioned not seeing much wildlife in the wild itself but that was not her focus. She saw a lot of incredible macaws of different colors but in the aviary. She thoroughly enjoyed seeing the scenery from the luxury cruise, and a 11 pm boat ride into the forest. So different people enjoy different aspects of the same place.

The Peruvian Amazon

• Peru has the second largest rainforest and has a huge number of species too. In Peru itself there are three areas of Amazon one could visit – Iquitos, Manu and Tambopata. Read more here.
• Puerto Maldonado is the gateway to Tambopata and is located in Peru’s southern Amazon Rainforest. This is a convenient one for visitors combining Machu Picchu with the rainforest. Tourism again here is well developed and so you will find different lodges or cruises to choose from.
• The river Madre de Dios is a tributary of the mighty Amazon. Still considered the Amazon.
• The Peruvian Amazon is home to a lot of wildlife and birds – thousands of species – but most commonly you will see river otters, macaws, parrots, and some other bords, monkeys, pink dolphins, caymans and piranhas.
• The Tambopata reserve is very large and has in it the Tambopata Reseach Center with lodge.
• One of the greatest attractions of the Peruvian Amazon is the world’s largest clay lick.
• The time taken to reach the Peruvian Amazon in the south at Puerto Maldonado is much shorter (than going to Manaus in Brazil). You will take a short flight of 1 or 1.5 hrs from Cusco or Lima, followed by a short boat ride. If you are visiting Tambopata reserve you will travel by boat for an hour to 4 hours depending on which lodge you have chosen. The deeper you go, the better the wildlife. The Tambopata Research Center takes 1 hr by bus plus 2.5 hours by boat. Many go to the Refugio Amazonas Lodge. It takes one hour by bus and then an hour by boat to reach the lodge.

The Ecuadorian Amazon

• As I started to read about the Ecuadorian Amazon, and got interested. There are two gateways into the Amazon. One called the lower Amazon at Tena near Banos (a town we were going to during our Andes trip) in the Oriente region, and the other called the deep Amazon, much more north and west (and not near where we were going) with a town called Coca being the gateway into the Yasuni National Forest.
• The deep Amazon at Yasuni is what was of greater interest to me. Some points:
• Get to see the clay licks in Yasuni national park.
• The rainforest is extremely biodiverse and smaller compared to the other two, and is quite easy to spot wildlife. You will get to see pink dolphins, piranhas, cayman, macaws, parrots and other birds, similar to those in the other two rainforests.
• The river is the Napo river, a tributary of the mighty Amazon. But still considered the Amazon.
• It is the least developed of the three Amazons and so not as many choices with tour operators as the other two in Peru and Brazil. That can be good or bad depending from one’s point of view.
• I also talked to a distant acquaintance who had visited the rainforest in Ecuador.  She said that she was rather underwhelmed and went on to explain that it was perhaps because her lodge was situated at the periphery of the rainforest versus in the interior. The lodge itself was well-appointed and beautiful but there was not really much wildlife she saw and she had imagined the forest to be much denser etc, she said. However, she also told me that it might be a very different experience if I picked a lodge farther down the river and deeper into the rainforest.
• My comment upon returning from Yasuni – saw quite a lot of oil drilling enroute to our lodge. Not pleasant to see lots of foamy masses floating on the river. It is sad. Hope the government will act upon reducing this hazard.
• We really enjoyed the whole experience of living with the family and doing the forest hike, the observation tower over the canopy tower, a large clay lick, watching macaws at the chuncho tree and getting to experience the forest with its medicinal trees (my first hand experience where the bark was scraped and the sap was applied to my bites, next day they were not itchy).
• To me, the wildlife was unique. However, the rainforest itself was not what I was expecting – I expected it to be so dense that no sunlight would penetrate to the ground, I expected more rain (somewhat like a cloud forest). I expected it to be so wide that I wouldn’t see the other end of the river (may be it is like that in Brazil). So yes, different from what I imagined but nevertheless, the Amazon, no less.

Deciding on a lodge in the Ecuadorian Amazon

— Jyothi

I do not cover the cruises and lodges in Brazil or Peru in this section other than providing some links.

• Tambopata Reseach Center and lodge, Peru
•  Refugio Amazonas Lodge, Peru
• The Peruvian rainforest and Brazilian rainforest, and their lodges. This link also has various cruise operators and lodges listed for both Brazil and Peru.

At this point, my preference was to do the Amazon at the end the Andes trip in Ecuador (in Sept 2023) versus combining it with my Peru + other parts of South America trip (that was to start in Nov 2023). My reasoning was that I wanted to come home (to the US) and get over any bug bites after doing the Amazon, and then leave for the rest of South America trip. I am serious about that because once I get bitten by bugs (and I am highly prone and allergic to them), it takes me more than a month to recover.

I then started to research the lodges based on where they were located in relation to the lodge my earlier-mentioned acquaintance had stayed in. I wanted to look into some much farther into the forest in comparison to that lodge. I did find many that were deep into the Yasuni national forest and I read about each lodge and what they offered, the wildlife in the area, visits to the clay licks and so on.I narrowed down to two lodges (Sacha and Sani) and called them, gave my requirements of what I wanted to see and not see. They had a customized itinerary (set over the years) and would not budge from that. Then I came across a lodge called Sinchi Wayra, much down the river, deep into the forest, which had just begun its operations. There were no reviews at all on the web. I decided to call them and spoke to an American lady and a Swiss gentleman who were both helping the Kichwa family (who owned the lodge) with the set up and start of the business. I was skeptical because there were no reviews. But these two people who were helping told me they were comfortably living there for months and had no issues. I asked for videos of the lodge and they were kind enough to send me. It looked rustic but clean, comfortable and well-kept just as they described it. I knew it would be hot and so asked about air-conditioning. There is none but I was assured it would be bearable at night. The other two lodges, Sacha and Sani were very well established and looked like resorts with several rooms unlike this one at Sinchi Wayra which was more a house. I was told that Eddie (at Sinchi Wayra) was trained in one of these lodges before he decided to open his own family business (read more about this family in Baldev’s account below).  I next wrote to Eddie about my exact requirements on what I wanted to visit (and not visit), and promptly came the reply that it would be fine. I didn’t need to do exactly what was on their itinerary but I could customize it. This decided it for me! I was going to take the chance on them, their new lodge and their Amazon eco-tourism business!

I liked the idea of staying in a small place, having an intimate experience, both with the Kichwa family and the nature outside. The lodges I saw in Peru and Brazil seemed to provide a more touristy experience in terms of stay and interactions. While Sinchi Wayra seemed more rustic in comparison, it attracted me also because I was trying out something brand new in the Amazon (Sinchi Wayra only began in Sept 2023), we would be helping a family with their new venture, and we would be getting undivided attention as the only guests!! When chatting with the American lady who was helping at the lodge, I found that she was building their website, and I let her know that I was a UX specialist. She then requested me for some feedback about the website and I put my UX hat on, wrote it up and sent it to her. I found two airlines to get us there – Latam or Aeroregional. The difference in fares was huge. I picked the lower cost Aeroregional, a half hour flight, to take us from Quito to Coca. It was going to be a 3-hour boat ride from Coca to the lodge.

The plan was set. Somewhere along the way, I happened to mention this trip to my friend Geeta and I asked her if she would be interested. Upon hearing its location and checking out the video, she said no, this sounded a bit too out there for her!! A few weeks later however, it seems like Geeta had a change of mind and she decided she would like to do something like this. I was thrilled that Sunil and I would have their company – a few more hands to hold as well for a trip like this into the wild :-))!! I must thank Geeta and Baldev for deciding to take this chance with us! We had such a unique kind of an experience staying at this family lodge, it felt so personal with the warmth and hospitality. We got to do whatever we wanted to explore, our ears were privy to a jaguar’s kill, we saw the most beautiful macaws and ate some wonderful food. Read the narrative below by Baldev.