TREEHUGGER HEAVEN
Melanie Harris heads deep into the Amazon jungle
AS our plane landed in the forest clearing that is the town of Coca, deep in the Amazon jungle, each woman passenger was handed a rose. But the poor things promptly wilted as the aircraft door opened and let in a blast of equatorial heat.
We were ushered to boats on the banks of the Napo river, a muddy tributary of the Amazon.
The rainforest closed in on the trip upstream, the dense green curtain parting only to reveal the occasional dwelling on stilts, where children cavorted in the shallows. After two hours, we moored at a muddy bank and walked for 15 minutes along a boardwalk.
Just as the heat became almost too oppressive, we came upon an expanse of dark water, where dugout canoes were lined up. It was a memorable arrival indeed — being paddled across to the lodge, set on the edge of the lake and overhung with palms and creepers.
Sacha Lodge resembles the set of a Tarzan movie, thatched and perched on wooden stilts, with walkways to the cabins.
The night was loud with the sounds of myriad nocturnal creatures. The loudest of these was a whooping cry, which I assumed was a large primate, but next morning we were shown the culprit — a tiny nondescript amphibian, the smokey jungle frog.
We set off very early each morning to escape the worst heat of the day. Our guide was a Quichua Indian, who wore a ponytail and wielded a machete. He led us further and further into the jungle, pointing out armadillo holes, leaf-cutter ant columns and once, memorably, the tracks of a jaguar. Trees grow so tall and tangled that the forest floor is always cloaked in shadow. The forest is mostly uncannily quiet, but every now and then the silence is ripped through by the cries of Howler monkeys. We followed the trail to a parrot lick, where parakeets gather at clay banks to swallow the healing mud, which neutralises the poisons of the seeds they have eaten — a technicolour feeding frenzy.
Afternoons were spent piranha fishing, or in my case, bird and insect spotting from a hammock. Diminutive poison-dart frogs, bright as jewels, lurked in bromeliads and butterflies as big as saucers drifted among tropical blooms.
One day, we tackled a canopy walkway: a 46m high tower to climb, then a swinging gangplank to negotiate. Beneath stretched the jungle, a sea of green, punctuated by the occasional giant kapok or fig tree, elders of the forest, with beards of lichen and moss.
One evening, we paddled out on the lake in search of caimans. Flashlights picked out a pair of glittering eyes and three metres of reptilian body sank into the depths. The reeds along the edge started rustling and the torch beams caught the sinuous folds of entwining electric eels.
On the day of our departure, the heavens opened. The canoes filled up and sank. Good, thought I, we are marooned. But the staff, being used to such occurrences, good-humouredly bundled us into rubber ponchos and gumboots, resuscitated our dugouts and paddled us away. — © Melanie Harris