Slowly and sometimes faster, our bus crawls up the winding, partially collapsed and eroded mountain roads.
The journey through the Andes from Quito to Lago Agrio is enchanting and reasonably pleasant with a travel time of 6.5 hours.
Narrow, winding Andean road. The view: breathtaking
...although I occasionally wonder how a bus driver comes up with the idea of overtaking a tanker truck in a wet and foggy curve.
Especially when it even says: 'Hey, I'm dangerous, because if you crash into me, we'll both explode!'
The area is adorned with green mountain slopes and wide rivers. Occasionally, signs warn of bear families, and then there is a thick oil pipeline shimmering in the light drizzle.
Pipeline smeared with hate parades that transport crude oil from extraction sites in the mountains to Lago Agrio. Indication of a smouldering conflict.
Like a big anaconda, the grey-brown steel of the road winds its way along. A gloomy monument to active American oil companies wreaking havoc in the Ecuadorian rainforest.
Lago Agrio is dangerous, they told us. The reason: the hectic provincial town on the border of the jungle is an oil town. The largest employer is Texoil, and where there is oil, there is money; where there is money, there is corruption; where there is corruption, there are drugs; where there are drugs, etc. Hut of the indigenous population in the reserve. Since the arrival of the oil companies in the city, many of the indigenous people have gone to the city to work. In the indigenous village The result is the westernized way of life in the city, which clashes with the culture of the jungle. More money comes, and with it comes overwhelm. Now, alongside yuca and medicinal plants, beer crates shine, and behind them are drunk young men with Nike shirts and selfie sticks. What would the rainforest be without warm rain. Meanwhile, the Indigenous Association of the five existing tribes is demanding an additional 20 dollars per tourist and other contributions, which will result in baking yuca bread and buying handmade souvenirs with locals for 25 dollars instead of five dollars today. With the remaining fortune, there will be a lot more rum and beer, selfie sticks, and Nike shirts. Before the heavy rain From Lago Agrio, we finally go four hours into the jungle on a riverboat with Marco, our guide.Marco left home at a young age and worked in the 'narcotrafico', as a drug courier, and tells how he transported bags full of money from Colombia across the river and learned to sleep with only one eye closed. Not an entirely uninteresting skill. Our accommodation, the Nicky Lodge. Four hours away from civilization. When my gaze wanders to his t-shirt and I read the advertising slogan of the tour company 'I survived the jungle'... Well, it makes me smile. How fitting to his story. Deep in the forest Sometimes coincidences are so strange that the term fate sometimes fits better. Our journey in the jungle was accompanied by a family from Tanzania. By chance, we saw a medallion on the boy's arm that looked exactly like the one I found on the Galapagos Islands. And actually, his sister had lost it there. So, what was once lost can be found in places you would never expect. But now: Welcome to the jungle! Where the night is louder than the day and almost everything can bite, sting, or scratch you, and you are damp without even moving a meter. Baby anaconda, almost perfectly hidden Giant grasshopper... Yes, giant! Less giant Snapshot! Hunter spider. The bite is painful for humans but not dangerous. Deadly for many other animals. Eye for an eye. 4-meter caiman. At least part of it. Imagination completes the picture What grows out of the beetle is a parasite. A fungus that uses insects as hosts and kills them. The same fate has befallen this spider. Into the wild When it makes noise in the morning, the toucan is nearby. Yuck, spider! By the way, it's poisonous. After a bite, you'll have a juicy 24 hours of fever and intense pain. You have something on your hand. By the way, the shell is impenetrable from above. Only ants use it as food, attacking from below. Don't stare like that! From another space... or just a moth Great-grandfather bird What will it look like as a butterfly Water snake, non-toxic. But the tail strike can be painful.
