“Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ll just be another ten minutes or so while the ground staff wipe up several gallons of highly inflammable aviation fuel that they have spilled all over our aircraft, greatly enhancing the chances of it becoming a gigantic fireball in the sky. It is perfectly safe and quite routine. I know I’m lying, and I’ll repeat this lie every twenty minutes for the next two hours until you finally realise that my condition is pathological”. (Or words to that effect.) That was the BA chief ground steward being British and needlessly irritating as we sat in Terminal 3 and watched our connection time slowly eroding away. But it was alright on the night, as one brush with Hades and a memorable summer pudding later, we were being whisked by a very compact lady at incredible speed through a labyrinth of tunnels and corridors in Miami Airport, until we reached the crowded Latin American transit lounge. Almost every possible destination in South and Central America was called between 16.30 and 17.20, leaving the remaining handful of passengers, consisting of ourselves, a dozen Mormon missionaries, and two suspicious gentlemen in the corner who were buried beneath a pile of tripods and telescopes (what could they possibly be up to?), to board the evening flight to Quito.

Quito Airport was delightfully shambolic and the immigration officials appeared barely to be alive, such was their speed of passport processing. When we eventually struggled over to the luggage carousel there was no sign of our packs and a horrible clawing feeling started to scrape from somewhere deep inside my stomach.  Indeed all my fears were justified as nobody could tell us what was likely to happen next, save for the fact that there were further Miami flights that evening and all the other long haul tourists on the plane (suspicious or otherwise) had lost their bags as well. We left the airport and fought our way through a lively arrivals crowd that jostled us like visiting basketball stars until we discovered a short smiling man with a “Bellavista” signboard. You can never find enough short smiling men at such times of crisis. Nestor the taxi driver had clearly been in this situation before and suggested that we all went home for a relaxing cup of tea. The important kettle lay on the hob of a third floor apartment in an unassuming concrete block of flats about 15 minutes from the airport, whose lobby was guarded by a welcoming concierge in a large woollen poncho. Cecelia the apartment caretaker and her daughter Natalie greeted us warmly, the caffeine soothed our souls (a bit), and a few hours later we strolled straight through airport security to the carousel and found our bags spinning around, eagerly waiting for their next adventure.

I woke up feeling as if I had been hit by a bus. A bus that had amazingly passed through, leaving my body intact, but whose two decks and 80 passengers had left their impression firmly on my consciousness. No deafening dawn chorus in the world’s third avian richest country. We opened the curtains to a view of Quito’s rooftops and were serenaded by a blast of military marching music from the tannoys of the schoolyard on the other side of the road. Something fluttered onto the telegraph wires beyond our balcony. It was an Eared Dove, our first Ecuadorian bird.

Nestor picked us up after breakfast and soon the suburbs of Quito were behind us as we crossed a broad dry plateau of burnt corn stubble and dust. The road narrowed and started to twist down a gentle valley in a series of sweeping switchbacks, while a steady procession of brand new yellow Daewoo cars passed us in the opposite direction, on the last stage of their journey from the coast to the markets of Quito. The dust surprisingly suddenly gave way to green - you could almost see a tangible dividing line marked by the change in colour of a field on the opposite side of the valley. We turned off to the left onto a narrow rocky road and started to climb up once again. The forest pressed in on either side of the track as we crept up and up until the plants began to scrape at the skirting of Nestor’s taxi. Up and up, in fact, until we rounded yet another bend to face the unexpected sight of a peculiar bamboo fortress looming out of the forest, perched on the end of a narrow ridge like the monarch of the glen. Bienvenito a Bellavista.

We were warmly welcomed at the gate and shown to a little angular room on the second floor of the bamboo tower, with a triangular window and a tiny balcony. The lower (main) floor of the bamboo dome was encased by large windows and surrounded by a broader balcony, above which hung a sequence of hummingbird feeders. We stepped out onto the balcony and watched a procession of tiny visitors whirr onto the feeders and gorge themselves on the sugar water, but despite the fact that the birds were only one metre from my face I could not identify them. A tiny panic set in – if I couldn’t handle a bird almost in the hand, what would the next three weeks of birds in the bush be like? Deep breath, steady heart, focus mind, try again… They were Buff-tailed Coronets. Relax Keith, you’re in a bamboo paradise and everything’s going to be ok...

Lunch was gourmet and we got to meet a few of the other guests. An afternoon plan to visit Tony Nunnery’s garden was hatched by some of the other residents. Tony lived in a small cottage about 200 metres down the hill, and in the hummingbird world 200 metres lower in altitude is the distance from one planet to another. Tony was out and so we had to pad carefully and respectfully onto his balcony and leave a token gratitude in an envelope in exchange for an hour next to the series of hummingbird feeders that he maintains in his yard. And what value that proved to be, as some of the most exquisite flying machines that I have ever seen were hovering around his back garden. There was one that seemed to be trailing two miniature peacock tail feathers, one with a bright purple train that was easily double its body length, another that looked like a sparkling metallic green bee. When Jim, the American guide, turned up he started announcing the feeder visits like the caller at an exotic bingo hall (“second feeder back right lower, Andean Emerald” etc). It was dazzling and just a little but unbelievable.

The day drew to a close and the occupants of planet bamboo dined well and retired promptly to their beds. The voice of Richard (the owner) being interviewed by an American travel journalist rumbled beneath the bamboo floor, the neighbours’ bamboo room creaked and the bamboo cistern trickled. Somewhere out there a bamboo owl hooted, and bamboo stars twinkled in through the triangular bamboo window of the angular bamboo room. Bamboo bamboo…

The night was quiet and the full moon cast a ghostly light through the window. As dawn broke the valley stirred to a soothing chorus of mysterious birdcalls. Jim led a short walk down the hill before breakfast but we saw surprisingly little before withdrawing to a sumptuous breakfast of cereals and tropical fruit, accompanied by a constant buzz, rattle and whirr of hummingbirds doing pretty much the same thing as us just outside the windows of the dome. Jim was determined to improve on the early morning effort, so he took us along a narrow trail into the forest in search of a mixed flock that normally worked the eastern slope behind the dome. The forest was remarkably silent and the sun confounded things by unusually pushing through the clouds and starting to bake the valley below. We returned to the dome and then descended a steep track that dropped sharply over tangled roots to the Tandayapa road. But this was also quiet and the morning atmosphere increasingly lethargic. Jim noticed a sparkle on the track and picked up a set of beads lying on the road. Who’s could they have possibly been? (The Lord indeed moves in mysterious ways…) Swifts reeled high above us, but the forest birds sat tight and patiently withdrew from the intense heat. Jim shrugged and headed back to the dome.

We walked on. A tiny trail marked “W” followed a narrow almost vertical gully directly up the side of the mountain. Water trickled gently down the gully, turning the path into a little rivulet. Moss clothed the rocks, large ferns clustered the gully sides and huge trees offered very welcome shade. It was refreshingly cool and damp, and quite serene. Scrambling up the slope we reached a saddle and looked upwards for the source of a peculiar piercing mechanical noise. Two Plate-billed Mountain Toucans were closing in on one another up in the canopy, bowing and nodding while swinging on the branches and flicking their tails. They accompanied this elaborate display by a continuous screaming and grating, a sudden expression of life amidst the silence of the upper forest.

Ecuadorians are masters of the hearty soup. The lunchtime soup at Bellavista was never a disappointment and today was followed by another typical Ecuadorian dish, grilled trout.  The Bellavista trout came from the famous fishponds down by Tandayapa village, for the valley is well-known for attracting two kinds of big game hunters – those with restless eyes and optical equipment and those with fancy sticks and reels of nylon. The clouds started to roll in after lunch, cooling the air, and as we climbed the upper road a massive mixed flock started to flow across. “Left side of the road, passing across now, behind me on the second tree to the left, just moved down into the lower canopy, coming through now, can you see the white on the outer tail feathers, oh – it’s gone, what’s this just flown in…?” etc. Ten minutes of ornithological chaos and then it was over as suddenly as it started. A flock of fifty birds just vanishes… At the top of the upper road the cloud really got serious, blanketing the ridge in fine drizzle and a chilling grey silence. Our group split up, choosing a number of different trails of return to the dome. Jim lit up a cigarette and told us of his previous jobs, his divorce, the joys of his current posting, his dream plan. Ecuador and birds seemed common to them all.

We made another ascent of the upper road at dusk. Crouched silently on the verge of the road opposite a sandy embankment we waited, not entirely sure if were at the right spot. The light all but vanished as a solitary Blue-and-white Swallow made a last few loops above the valley and a Toucan Barbet called from somewhere well beyond the gloom. Our eyes adjusted to the twilight. All of a sudden, a bat-like shadow appeared to sweep across the road, turned and vanished. Before we had time to start to doubt our senses it came around again, and astonishingly we were forced to duck as it skimmed our heads, banking silently before being swallowed by the dark. It was a big, a very big, nightjar. The Neotropical night comes quickly and just a minute later it was dark as pitch. Dinner is never late at Bellavista, so we turned back down the hill, only to be halted one hundred metres further by some eye shine. My torch followed the pricks of red light to a tree, and then tracked them as they left and reeled into the sky. The torch lost them but then suddenly a silhouette was spotted, spread across the stars. Not the silhouette of just any night bird, but a nightjar with two enormous tail feathers, splayed apart in a dramatic elongated “V”. We’d earned our dinner, and trekked back to the low glow of Bellavista and tired murmur of conversation. The warm dome smelled of spinach pancakes, the beer was cold and a thousand moths flicked softly off the windowpanes.

Sometimes, regardless of surrounds and circumstances, you just have a bitty day. The kind of day that bumbles on, in a series of inelegant lurches, from one frustration to another. None of these frustrations are disasters, and indeed the day is not necessarily a bad one. It’s just a bitty day. And this was one.

We enjoyed another glorious golden dawn at Bellavista, but we were caught short and indecisive between going for a walk on our own and waiting for the morning group. The longer we hesitated, the more reasonable it seemed to wait for the others, but Jim and the other guests seemed to potter about too long. The sun rose high above our heads and the magic of early morning passed all too quickly. We took the upper road once again, but really should have taken a walk somewhere else. By the time we did head off into the forest on a decent hike of our own, some hours had passed and we were nearly out of time. The trail was longer, and more delightful, than we had expected. We were half way up a steep ascent when a big mixed flock blew over our heads on the narrowest part of the trail. We stood rather helplessly, unable to make much sense of the bird shower, and watched its tail end drift from sight. We then had to complete the climb in double time and literally jog back down the track to make the dome in time to pack and lunch.

Our transport arrived around 2pm to take us on to Mindo. The drive followed the upper road beyond our limits of exploration and on into high cleared land, with cattle and llamas grazing and much deforestation apparently ongoing. It was an untidy landscape of isolated farms, green lumpy fields, and straggling remnants of cloud forest. Groups of little children ran along the side of the road. Our driver chatted away in Spanish, nervously negotiating the torrid road surface and anxiously enquiring the way onwards. He seemed relieved when the main Quito road appeared far beneath us, and even more so when shortly after joining it the sign to Mindo took us left and ever downwards on a steep descent into the distant valley. Mindo looked like an outback town, a loose and dusty grid of rough and dirty streets, offering an unusual assortment of services and stores. We turned right at the apparent end of town and the driver wound down his window to ask a small girl if she knew the Cafe El Monte. She shook her head and ran indoors. The driver looked perturbed but, more usefully, Anita looked right, and on a fading sign on the building opposite were the sought for words. Tom Queensberry warmly greeted us upstairs and gave our driver the instructions for the last three kilometres south of town to El Monte Lodge. So far so good, but 300 metres on our troubles really began. No, he didn’t believe that he was contracted to take us on the last section of the drive. No, he didn’t remember Richard telling him to take us all the way. No, he was sure he wasn’t being paid for this. No, he wouldn’t go further without a phone call back to Bellavista. But yes, he would take us if we paid him. Would we pay $50? How about $20? Maybe $10? Not for $5, definitely not. Why were we getting angry? Why were we getting out? Why were we kicking his door shut and walking off? Crazy gringos...

It looked an easy walk to El Monte, but we made a wrong turning at the bridge over the river. Then we met a weirdo Dutch American dropout with straggly hair and doped out eyes, who presented us with a business card that described him as a “self-employed ethnobotanist”. Mindo was cool; he was spending a few months there; but you should see Paraguay next time you do a five year trip to South America – it is a wild place man… etc etc. The packs were heavy. We were grumpy. It was getting dark. The ethnobot was hard to shake off. We eventually found the right road and followed it to a small pullout next to the access point for El Monte Lodge. The unusual access mechanism to El Monte is a contraption that Tom called a “hand-powered cable car”. And here we faced an initiative test, for we found ourselves next to a wooden platform, above which hung a rope and pulley. The actually lift, however, was tied up on the opposite bank, just visible through the fading light some 20 metres across the raging torrent.  What to do, what to do? Well  - we started yelling of course, trying to make ourselves heard above the roar of the river. The biggest surprise of the day was that this not only seemed to work, but also seemed to be the normal entrance procedure. A shadow appeared through the gloom and started winching. The lift arrived, we straddled the platform, and then held on tight as we were hoisted to the opposite bank. We dismounted, followed the shadow into the trees and shortly arrived at a palatial wooden structure, built beneath a cliff of mountain jungle, from whence a cat called Jenny uncurled herself from a soft settee and fetched us slippers and a glass of fresh lemonade. It had been a bitty day indeed, but we had arrived intact. El Monte.

Something was brewing in the night, while the Río Mindo gushed outside our hut, while the fireflies sparkled in the trees, while the gas lamp quietly hissed on the wall outside the bathroom. It probably started brewing during the meal the night before, fine vegetarian dining on the open deck of Tom and Mariella’s house. It was probably brewing all the way back to the hut as we followed our lantern in the direction of the torrent, like forest sprites in a bedtime story. It was brewing at dawn as we grabbed a quiet coffee and the first birds started jumping in El Monte’s sprawling garden. And it started to ferment as we climbed the steep and twisting trail that wound up the mountain to the ridge above the valley.

Within an hour I was on my back in our hut once again, satisfying my one and only true longing for inactivity and sleep. Temperature rising, energy draining, aching bones. Cold wet towels, sips of water. The day passes, but it was only half an hour. Forty-two degrees. A trembling shower and another collapse. Some pills. A week of sleep. Early afternoon. Some soup. More sleep. A short read. The river roars on. The smell of fresh wood. Sleep sleep sleep. It rains. Or does it? It’s dark, but which day, which night?

I woke up feeling as groggy as could be expected after a day in bed. Standing up was possible, so was talking and breathing. So far, so good. Placing one foot carefully in front of the other I took a gingerly walk along the river. Baby’s first steps. It wasn’t brilliant, but it was good enough. Some White-capped Dippers were dancing on the rocks by the cable car. I watched them for a minute before they flew up river. The blood was pounding, the brain was waking. It might have taken a few more days without a doctor in the house, but I was open for business.

Porridge with sultanas for breakfast – the things you have to do... It was decided (by whom?) that Keith was a machine fit for the flats, but not the ascents, so local guide Herman was commissioned to undertake a leisurely stroll around the grounds. In fact these were extensive enough that this easily occupied a pleasant hour, while Anita returned to the cheating Mindo pharmacy in an attempt to this time get an honest serving of antibiotics. Moving on to solids at lunchtime (my, how he’s grown...). El Monte was a hive of activity by lunchtime. Some Ecuadorian guests had arrived to occupy another of the cabins. Three generations were represented, young bright-eyed boy, charming chatty mother, and grizzled half-naked grandfather, who had his own special diet.

The afternoon expedition was more a gentle walk than an adventure, taken along the other side of the river from the lodge. We first turned upstream, as far as the surprisingly busy car park of Mindo Gardens, and then turned around and walked all the way back to Ethnobotany Bridge. There were quite a few birds in the secondary growth along the margins of the road. The Río Mindo could always be heard rushing down the valley, but only occasionally actually seen through breaks in the thick bamboo. Some groups of rubber tyre rafters occasionally passed us on their way upstream, their screams later to be heard as they plunged back towards Mindo. We watched a tiny Torrent Tyrannulet fossicking mid-stream, dwarfed by the massive rounded boulders around which the water foamed. Herman headed back towards the town and we promised we would let him take us for a decent hike the following day. We returned to El Monte, where Jenny entertained us with a story about how she had spent years in a state of depression until she decided to stop eating potatoes… The clouds lifted… and here she was…

At dinner on the porch we were joined by Tom, Mariella and two of their friends, a windswept couple from Quito, originally from Wales and South Africa, who were tour guides for the very rich and restless. They talked about their guiding work, organising wild helicopter tours of Mongolia, staying for free at the best lodges in southern Africa, touring Bolivian gold mines. They talked about their wildlife photographic lives, lying for days in hides waiting to catch the first photos of Madagascar’s biggest carnivore, publishing spreads on African wildlife in the BBC Wildlife Magazine – “yes, they usually take our stuff, we are well-known…” Tales of Antarctica – “it’s terrible there are so many ships there now, we were the first tour leaders in and you used to just go where you wanted to…” (How responsible.) Life in Quito – “I like wresting with Jose’s pet Ocelot, I’m the only one it doesn’t scratch…” Seven continents in nine months last year. “We’ve been everywhere – Australia…” (tick), … “spent four months there as a crocodile researcher... It’s so hard to get away from the tourists anywhere in the world these days though…” (Wonder why?) “But we love it – it’s such a great lifestyle… is this your first trip to South America? You probably didn’t drink enough water, that’s what happens with our tourists, they don’t listen, you have to take care… people have no idea how important drinking is…” (Yes, thanks for playing, next diagnosis please.)

Jealous? I was, I’ll admit, a bit. Rugged world citizens educate naïve boring office boy and girl, who are on precious three weeks vacation to safe geographical location, on basics of the road. But I’ll tell you what it wasn’t. It wasn’t dehydration, that’s for sure. And I’ll tell you what it was while I’m at it... It was so boring that I feigned continued illness just to get away. (Mind you, I might just check out that article on Madagascan carnivores later, once I’ve forgiven them…)

The morning dawned to thirty-seven degrees inside, not out - a bit more like it. We turned the clock back forty-eight hours and started up the hill again. This time we all made it to the old Mindo-Nambillo ridge road in good health, and this time I was able to thoroughly enjoy the El Monte picnic breakfast of cheese and tomato sandwiches on home baked bread. Pumped full of antibiotics, we continued up the ridge road for half an hour to a viewpoint, where the vista of the valley was totally out-staged by a mixed species flock that was creeping along the track just ahead of us. Anita couldn’t handle the pressure and headed back down the road in search of Sunday mass, while Herman and I continued up in search of our own religious experiences. Although only secondary forest on this stretch of the road, the birds were good all the way up, even in the occasional clearings, which created the space for fine views on either side of the ridge. Herman was particularly good at spotting hummingbirds, a useful skill as Tom and Mariella’s honourable decision not to set out hummingbird feeders in the grounds of El Monte had left the job of seeing them a good deal more challenging. By the time we turned around, the ridge road had become surprisingly busy with Sunday traffic in the shape of four wheel drives and groups of horses, all transporting wealthy Quitonese in search of the track to the waterfall.

The last lunch at El Monte was a little disappointing, especially after Anita’s taunting tales of all the incredible meals that I’d missed during my journey to the dark side. Jenny drove us down to Mindo in Tom’s rather extraordinary truck, a machine that was surely a few trips short of that last drive to the great scrap yard in the sky. The bus to Quito cost a very respectable $2 a piece, and we boarded the last two seats, the others being occupied by a party of Ecuadorian scouts. Mindo was in the throws of a weekend fiesta, and the party continued aboard the bus with salsa all the way to Quito. We worried a bit about our bags, perched precariously on the roof as the suspension of the bus danced to the music all the way up the hill. The two-hour run to Quito took us out of the luxuriant green and back into the moonscape around the Mitad del Mundo monument north of Quito, marking the equator amidst a barren desert of lumps of rock and eucalyptus trees.

Sunday night is not a time when much of Quito is exactly open. We were fortunate (sic) to be staying just on the edge of “Gringoland”, a district of extremely competitive Internet cafes ($0.60 an hour to send a gloating email to Shazza in Geelong), youthful tourist bars, adventure travel offices – Dutch Mountain Biking, River Rafting, Jungle Adventure, Galápagos Cruises, Indian Markets (some of these sound more adventurous than others it must be said...)  - and el cheapo hostels. While not exactly in a great hurry to embrace this cultural desert, we were hungry, and so ended up in a very pleasant basement, where a series of slightly unusual boys attended a candle-lit cellar of hungry foreigners. The food was certainly interesting, if perhaps just a little challenging for a body only in recovery. I had some green couscous-like thing in the shape of a frog, with olives for eyes, and accompanied by a hefty tuna steak. It was time for bed. Tomorrow: Jungle Adventure!

Whatever was in that couscous frog was damn good stuff. I had wild hilarious dreams that had me waking up in tears of laughter. As dawn broke over Quito, the content of these mysterious dreams faded almost as fast as our first view of the mountain backdrop to the city emerged from the clouds, high volcanoes dusted with a light covering of snow. The start of our jungle journey was a catalogue of minor disasters. Firstly our breakfast host Cecelia slept in, making the breakfast of papaya, rolls and jam a rather hurried affair. Then the taxi we had so cleverly booked the day before by bribing the owner’s daughter with lollies didn’t show up, so we had to rush down to the nearest highway and flag down one of the many passing yellow cabs. At the domestic terminal there was no sign of the Yuturi Lodge representative and after an unsuccessful request relayed over the airport information system, we wandered around in a state of minor panic before discovering that the Aerogal airline desk had all our tickets and documentation. It was all a wee bit stressful, and we hadn’t even sniffed a jungle yet. However we did make it to the Aerogal lounge in time, and then had to sit for an hour waiting for the plane to turn up. Nobody seemed to know where it was. The Aerogal rep, a nineteen-year-old temptress, paced around, talking into her hand-held radio, occasionally shaking her hair in exasperation and rather disconcertingly standing with one leg cocked and throbbing like a dancer from the Moulin Rouge. Fortunately, before her sexuality exploded in such a public place, the plane arrived. We were up in the clouds in no time, enjoying a uniquely Aerogal breakfast of a glass of raspberry-ade and a sticky icing-coated apricot slice.

Coca was far more of a dump than anyone had prepared us for. Dropping down over the steaming jungle, we taxied (past the only Wattled Jacana of our trip) to a halt outside a prefabricated building surrounded by menacing soldiers with submachine guns slung by their hips. While the rather serious Brazilian army officers aboard our flight were greeted amicably enough, we were bundled into an office where our passports and professions were registered in an impressive ledger. This time a Yuturi staffer was on hand and we were transferred to a waiting van. The broad streets of Coca were black with mud and oil, the road surface eaten away by giant trucks. Rivers of grease and gasoline poured down the ruts and the van needed all four drive wheels just to navigate the high street. Coca looked one hell of a town. We jumped out after a five-minute ride at the curiously named Oasis Hotel, itself a magnificent wreck of an establishment, with peeling wallpaper and grubby rooms, perched on the northern bank of the Río Napo. Fortunately our only business at the Oasis was to try on some rubber boots for size, and hand over our receipts to a youthful administrator, the only English speaker present, who must have been ten years old if he was a day.  We boarded the front two seats of a long narrow boat covered in a low awning that was already full of mothers, children and enormous bags of shopping. The boat edged out into the shallow waters of the river, slipping away from Coca into the main current of the Napo.

The ride to Yuturi was a long four hours, but fascinating. The first stretch was rather industrial, with sporadic construction sites, jetties with giant rusting boats, landing strips with shiny white Toyota Landcruisers, tall radio towers spiking through the secondary jungle, crowds of men in bright orange hardhats. The river wound in gentle meanders around long, low, sandy islands, on which abandoned river-washed logs lay strewn and hunched Black Vultures gathered like herds of miniature cattle. Gradually the oil developments gave way to small, scattered villages, fishermen in tiny boats, noisy children running along the bank, colourful laundry dangling from makeshift washing lines. We stopped briefly at a military outpost, where more heavily armed soldiers made another check of our papers. The river widened, the forest grew in stature, the boat delicately navigated the shallow sandbars, sometimes having to cross the width of the river to find sufficient channel close to shore. Kingfishers darted up the river, swallows and martins tumbled overhead, and an increasingly sombre sky filled with awesome puffy clouds, growing and noticeably darkening in front of our eyes. The drones of the outboard motor seemed to drift into a mystic chant, first alone and then accompanied by the rhythmic beating of drums, growing louder, and wilder, until the air resounded to a steady rumble. The river, the Napo, the forest, the Amazon, the Jungle…

We were woken from all trances by a landing, and the sudden news that the boat ride was over. The Napo was too low and we were to walk from here onwards, while our bags continued on the lightened boat. Boots hastily on, we slithered ashore, and picked up the pace behind a stocky guide, who strode into head high shrubbery and slashed the jungle apart with a machete as he cleared a path towards a boardwalk of logs and rotting hand rails, which we scrambled along. My buttocks had been keen to leave the boat, but now my feet were the strugglers as we staggered behind, trying to match this electric pace as he attempted to guide us to Yuturi Lodge before the blackened sky split open. After half an hour of slipping and stumbling, we reached a clearing, in the midst of which was a pleasant village of neatly thatched huts by the waters of a quiet billabong. We had reached our home for the next week, Yuturi Lodge. We checked in to our own private cottage, climbed the giant staircase above the kitchen to a tiny veranda and watched a golden sunset slide into the lagoon, while oropendolas and hoatzins screamed and spat and clacked in a glorious celebration of day’s end.

(Check this date out. It’s more than my sister’s birthday. Where were you, when...? )

We met Jaime, our guide, at the boat ramp at 05.30. Jaime looked quite the part, straddling his little canoe, binoculars around his neck and enormous knife slung in his belt. He nodded a brief courteous good morning and paddled silently out into the lagoon. It was still quite dark, but all around the world was waking and hundreds of unfamiliar cries and songs carried over the water from deep within the surrounding forest. The weirdest of all was a muffled descending “wu-wu-wuh-whullock-wallock”, an extraordinary and slightly disconcerting noise, which was apparently a Spectacled Owl making a last statement before settling down to roost. We would hear this bird every morning as we left the jetty, but we were never close to seeing it. The light crept into the sky and a silhouetted pair of giant parrots croaked harshly as they fluttered overhead. Jaime delicately pushed the canoe into a narrow, tangled channel, immaculately encased by roots and overhanging branches, and we emerged into the open waters of another wide lagoon, as tiny parrotlets started to fly overhead in small chattering flocks. The sky was overcast, but the surface was a mirror, pierced only by the prow of our canoe. The horizon was a wall of trees, tall giants beneath which a tangle of luminescent green, dominated by broad-leafed ferns and palms, pressed in from every bank. From here, another covered blackwater channel led us down a further tunnel of vegetation, past a pair of roosting Tropical Screech-owls, and opened into a small circular pool into which we gently drifted. We were in the varzea forest of the Manduro Swamp.

Surprisingly a tiny bark canoe appeared behind us. It was little Roberto from the lodge bringing out our breakfast. Hot coffee, orange juice, cheese rolls, eggs and plantain chips – no room for complaints there. We continued deeper into the swamp, skirting around dense little islands of palm. A tiny Sungrebe darted into cover. Jaime thought he heard some monkeys, but while we looked up into the trees we were ambushed from behind by an extraordinary animal that reared its head out of the water like a seal, bared its teeth, and rasped a sharp hiss, spraying water, before diving, then popping up once again. Like Jaws. The Giant River Otter plunged from view, but ripples in the water showed us that we were being kept well within its sights for a few minutes more as we paddled deeper into the varzea.

We beached the canoe at the tip of a short arm of the swamp, where the varzea unusually broke to allow sufficient access to the steep bank beyond. Clambering up onto terra firme, we set off behind Jaime as he led the way along a narrow forest trail. Jaime knew this forest very well, having lived in the area for most of his life, and having guided at Yuturi since the lodge opened some twelve years previously. The rainforest interior was a gallery of trunks and vines, thick lianas twisting skywards, massive fern leaves trembling on the forest floor, carpets of plant detritus and tiny creepers spreading over the surface beneath our feet. Periodically we would stop and Jaime would tense up like a cocker spaniel, relaxing his knees, stooping and then setting off at pace through the undergrowth before bending low, leaning to one side, and pointing straight ahead into the foliage. Sometimes we saw... Parts of the Manduro Trail were well-beaten, other sections rather obscure. Occasionally we had to balance on submerged logs, without them our boots sinking into deep mud, other times we were off-trail, struggling along behind the man with the machete. The birds were excellent within the terra firme forest, never lots of them, but almost every time we found one it was a different species. We saw the stunning Black-necked Red Cotinga, glowing like a piece of poisonous fruit high in the canopy, and the Tawny-throated Leaftosser, like a tiny brown kiwi, scraping away at the ground with its wader-like bill. We ate a substantial picnic lunch, perched on logs in a small clearing, while Jaime briefed us on the local politics. We were never walking fast, but it was a sapping walk, with so much to see and smell and hear. Jaime’s version of the jungle adventure rather happily mocked the welcome pep talk we had shortly after arrival from Rubin, the smiling charming English-speaking side of the Yuturi operation. Rubin had served a welcome cocktail the previous evening, assured us that our relationship for the next week was to be one of deep companionship and mutual adoration, and then sternly embarked on a list of forbidden activities for the benefits of our personal safety that included “touching plants” and “walking off paths”. Now we were clambering on all fours through tangled jungle, scraping spiders and lianas off our faces, in an attempt to catch a guide who had a set of rather different jungle rules: keep up, don’t miss the birds, don’t rush my lunch break.

We returned to Yuturi in the late afternoon and found a pot of freshly made tea waiting for us on the spacious veranda. The tall trees in front of the lodge were draped in the long messy pods of oropendola and cacique nests, and birds of all species were pouring through these trees in a frenzy of late afternoon foraging activity.  We sat with the china like a colonial lord and lady of the manor, as the hoatzins crackled, watching some Black-headed Parrots engaging in acts of gross indecency (involving more than two participants). As the sun dropped into the Cariyuturi Swamp, large bats skimmed the surface of the water. In the outer reaches of Amazonia, five hours clear of reliable sources of international news, September 11^th had still been quite a day.

A very similar day, yet different, in some ways a metaphor for the rainforest itself, which has a constant look and feel, and yet in texture and detail is in endless variation. For our second morning outing, we headed down the Río Yuturi towards the entrance of the Limon Trail. As we entered the main channel, a huge golden orb pushed out of the morning river mist, and we closed in on the spine-chilling roar of Red Howler-monkeys, lions of the trees. But their thrilling cries proved somewhat ephemeral, ever distant, always seemingly just one more ridge of trees beyond our visibility. The cloud protection of the previous day was gone and the sun shone through a clear blue sky, igniting the citrus morning colours of the forest. The moistened biomass began to steam and the humidity commenced its steady rise.

The Limon appeared to be a very different kind of trail. Shortly after hauling up the canoe, we hiked across an open glade, the sun dappling a luscious carpet consisting of the kinds of plants that Europeans fill their houses with. The path wove into the interior forest, over huge rotting logs, bedecked with dense colonies of tiny white fungi. Massive forest giants kept the understorey relatively open, beneath which were clusters of broad-leafed shrubs and the occasional blaze of lily-white or flame-red blossom.  The birds were altogether more technical today, with more of the cryptic antbirds, which hid low in the forest cover, or on the floor, had dull discrete plumage, and needed excessive patience to see well. The Limon Trail progressed steadily towards an enormous swamp, the edge of which was marked by the sudden appearance of tall rattling palms, burnt pastel green and white in the harsh daylight. A group of deafeningly well-named Screaming Pihas yelled from the forest canopy, and beyond the swamp rang the rolling music of a solitary Lawrence’s Thrush. The trail was now marked by a series of rolling logs and half-submerged sheets of bark, and we picked up long wooden poles to support our balance as we made the delicate traverse of the marsh. It was safe, probably, but that didn’t stop the adrenalin pumping slightly as the penalty for wrong footing was far from clear.

Jaime again excelled along the Limon Trail. He showed us Tapir prints, peccary scrapings and dozens of conical armadillo holes. He pointed out many plants from the natural jungle medicine cabinet, and, just to test, we chewed on the end of an anaesthetic bark; the front of my mouth and lips went numb for almost an hour. Today’s lunchtime lesson was all about social history, and just how recently the Quichuas had finally decided to abandon the habit of eating one another on a regular basis. We crossed several paths of Leafcutter ants, and gave plenty berth to the local Yuturi ants, five centimetre monsters, whose affections could apparently have brought a fairly rapid end to our excursion. By early afternoon the forest had really heated up and the crickets had began to out-sing the birds. We retraced our steps to the boat, and leisurely paddled home encountering a troupe of Squirrel Monkeys crashing through the upper canopy of the gallery.

Back at the lodge there was a slightly unnerving incident involving Anita’s roaming rosary beads. This time she had noticed that they had disappeared, and the manager Nico was called for a discrete word. It looked a doomed strategy, but the morning cleaner was summoned and, against all likely odds, duly delivered the nine-lived necklace back into her hands. It was an unsurprisingly steamy evening and the peach sky turned tangerine in another gorgeous end to a day. A beautiful little Dusky Titi Monkey, with reddish rusty arms and a black and whiteface, slowly worked its way along the margins of the foliage behind our hut. The drone of the motor launch brought Daniella, a young Austrian student who was the only other guest, back from her afternoon piranha-fishing trip. Daniella was booked on the conventional Yuturi tour and was having a slightly uncomfortable time alone with the rather overly confident Rubin. In fact Daniella’s trip had started to go wrong at Quito Airport, when she latched onto the wrong travel representative and ended up following three people out of the airport, who babbled in an unidentified foreign language and tried to shake her off. I think she got about 300 metres from the terminal building before she finally figured out that they were trying to tell her to piss off!  It wasn’t clear what Daniella had been expecting of her jungle trip, but a lot of sitting around and short hikes in the jungle were rather less adventure than she had hoped for. The piranha hunt had however at least been a partial success, and she had a ten centimetre long catch to fry up for our dinner. It was all teeth and bone.

After dinner I joined Daniella and her guide on a short night walk through the jungle behind the Yuturi clearing. The forest was thoroughly dark, and yet the atmosphere benign. We saw a host of extraordinary spiders and crickets, some close to being the size of my hand. The forest tinkled and chirped, the generator hummed, the rat in our rafter scraped away at the roof thatch, Parauques sang out across the lagoon…

Our first Yuturi rain was falling at dawn, but only for about an hour, so we postponed the morning voyage and instead listened to the Spectacled Owl from the veranda of the main lodge, over breakfast. This enormous, stilted, general-purpose hut had a 20 metre high thatched roof that towered over the rest of the outhouses. The kitchen was in the back, some tables in the front, and on the front right corner, overlooking the lagoon, were some unusual chairs carved out of giant buttress roots. A set of wooden stairs at the back of the hut climbed high into the roof, giving an aerial view of proceedings in the kitchen and ultimately a fine view over the lagoon, immediate canopy and beyond, from two cane chairs next to an open window in the thatch.

The rain stopped around 7.00 and Jaime suggested a return to the Manduro Trail, in particular to a large carpeta tree that he had noticed was in fruit.  We followed a very similar route to Tuesday’s cruise on the Manduro, this time without being ambushed by any otters. Just before the entrance to the forest Jaime spotted a Common Potoo, perched vertical and motionless, pretending to be the tip of a broken palm stalk, the top of a white egg visibly straddling the narrow hollow stem of the trunk. A short distance after touching terra firme we surprised a troupe of beautiful Golden-mantled Tamarins scampering through the canopy. These small gold and black monkeys were very inquisitive, and took their chance to have a good long stare at us. Leaping up the main trunk of a tree, they were small enough to hide directly behind, with just their feline heads poking around the side, some on the left, some on the right, looking more like an image from a cartoon rather than a live and vivid wild encounter. A little further down the trail we turned off to the left and in a few paces emerged at the base of an enormous spreading rainforest giant. Close scrutiny of the canopy revealed small clusters of the tiny fruit that Jaime had been so excited about. And he was not the only one, for several toucanets and barbets were sitting up there, quietly enjoying the feast. The strategy was to sit tight and wait and see… In order to reduce the neck straining, at least a bit, Jaime turned bush carpenter and rapidly constructed a makeshift wooden bench from branches lying on the forest floor, raised from the ground by several pairs of tightly-bound crossed poles. And so we waited and we saw… The action came in fits and starts. This was a very different kind of rainforest experience. Here the birds were not calling, and would announce their presence only by the gentle flutter of wings and a dancing movement of the foliage. There were some rewarding arrivals, including an immaculate pair of Black-necked Red Cotingas, a turquoise Spangled Cotinga, a huge White-throated Toucan and a robust Chestnut Woodpecker. Others waited and saw as well, and I had to constantly adjust my position to avoid being covered by a swarm of arboreal ants that was spreading up the supports of our temporary seating. Miguel saw and waited, inaugurating a new dimension to the Yuturi bush catering service when he turned up with two enormous black bin-liners filled with the components of a piping hot lunch.  The pots of thick potato and yam soup and boxes of chicken legs and rice were certainly welcome, although it was almost too much and all rather drastically over packaged in nasty Styrofoam boxes. The ants loved it.

We abandoned our station by the tree for an hour to attempt to walk (and sweat) off the effects of the unexpected banquet. We heard the repetitive piping whistle of a Rusty-belted Tapaculo and were fortunate to find ourselves on the opposite side of a dark gully from the infuriating call. Jaime whistled it in with ease, and the poor bird paced around its side of the gully in a vain search for its tormentors. We had some luck on the walk back to the carpeta tree as a party of Red Howlers at last crossed our path, albeit briefly. They are big monkeys - no wonder they make such a giant sound. The level of humidity was now quite significant, and even Jaime was looking somewhat jaded. Both the air and the sky were noticeably thickening and we decided that we’d had enough carpeta for one day. We picked up the pace in the fading light, thunder starting to grumble as we approached the canoe. Our attempt to beat the storm proved fruitless for the heavens cracked apart before we reached the open waters of the swamp. But our efforts to evade the weather soon seemed equally misplaced as we sat back and thoroughly enjoyed a decent drenching. The rain was warm and fully refreshing, and it was all but over by the time the melodious rings and whistles of the oriole and oropendola colony could be heard ahead of us, above the Yuturi boat ramp.

Daniella was fresh from another ordeal – this time a visit to a native hut in a nearby Quichua village, whose owner had apparently cowered in the corner and refused to speak to her. She was now taking the track for one of the penultimate event of her jungle adventure heptathlon, the blowpipe demonstration. This was being led by a native guide whom she appeared to have developed a crush for, so things were looking up. We couldn’t resist entering this particular competition and were amazed by the ease and speed with which one little exhalation could propel the darts towards a distant lemon. Anita alarmingly hit the citrus on her second go, making me wonder just how fast I’d have to run should the need arise…

We also joined Daniella on her last event, a caiman hunt under the stars. This turned out to be a very enjoyable one-hour night punt around Carayuturi Swamp. The boat was pushed around the tranquil lagoon as torches swept the surface in search of telltale orange eye-shine. It was so peaceful out there at night, especially with regard to caiman, and I think nobody but Rubin seemed particularly disappointed by that. The comforting homely beat of the lodge generator marked the completion of our nocturnal cruise. Pauraques 6 Caiman 0.

It was a peaceful night until about 3am, when a fierce wind blew the door to our hut open and set the net curtains on the window flying like spinnakers, spraying fine rain through the open window. A moment later a massive clap of thunder detonated and the rain poured down. It eased by 06.30 but then the deluge returned as Jaime watched the sky anxiously. All morning it rained, sometimes fine and light, tantalisingly close to ceasing, sometimes torrential, casting grainy patterns on the surface of the lagoon. Even the hoatzins didn’t bother getting up, huddling in miserable groups on overhanging branches, sitting out the weather, as a lone Yellow-billed Tern sought refuge from the open waters of the Napo and zigzagged low over the Cariyuturi. It was immensely frustrating, hunched over the parapet of the highest veranda, watching yet another sheet of clouds building up and moving in, as water gushed in channels down the thatch and poured to the ground in a series of fine liquid columns. The only consolation was that unlike Daniella, enduring her final Yuturi insult, we had not been on a Coca bound boat on the Napo when the main storm broke, feeling our way in the dark up the channel, while lightning flashed all around.

Breakfast and lunch came and went then, at around half past two, the rain suddenly stopped and the sky brightened. Jaime was quick to suggest a hike and so we headed into the jungle behind the lodge, retracing our steps of Monday afternoon towards the banks of the Napo. We entered a very different jungle, cool and fresh and dripping. We were thankful for the rubber boots as we slopped along the muddy and extremely slippery trail.  Extra care was needed when we crossed a swamp, feeling our way over the log paths. At one right-angled timber hairpin, Jaime flushed an Agami Heron, but we were too far back to see it. As he waded into the mire in search of it, we contented ourselves with a glimpse of a rabbit-sized Green Acouchy, a small rodent of the agouti family, who started and then scurried off across the fronds of fallen fern to find a safer spot to doze off the remainder of the afternoon. The trail ended by the edge of the Napo, where several native houses, simple wooden thatched platforms high on stilts, sat amidst a luscious band of thick grass and leafy semi-open scrub. Children watched us from behind piles of plantains, pots boiling on open fires, a slight smell of rubbish and chickens in the air. We wandered around for a few minutes, Jaime taking us on a tour of his friend’s garden and then beckoning us underneath one hut to watch a Black-capped Donacobius flicking around the sedge by the edge of the smallholding. It was made evidently clear just how poor many of the Quichua families are, living by the river with almost nothing but the soil and some scrawny fowl to their name.

The Yuturi boat was back from Coca and two new guests had arrived. The tall Dutch coup brought our first details of the horrific events in New York on Tuesday morning. She expressed rather too enthusiastically her fascination of the unprecedented television images, although no doubt she was describing a reaction that many other people must have experienced, just not so keenly vocalised. Less innocently she also commented that she was glad that she had already visited New York and hence seen it before the towers came down... Her partner seemed a good deal saner fortunately and sank a cold one with us after dinner. The jungle crickets chirped and a large tarantula crawled along the beam. Something plopped, somewhere in the lagoon. Just for a moment we wondered if we’d ever get home. Worse fates have befallen man…

One of the highlights of our stay was the trip to Monkey Island, a piece of land out in the middle of the Napo that had been fairly recently acquired by the owners of Yuturi Lodge. The river islands of the Napo seem to have their own self-contained ecosystems, and numerous (bird) species of the Oriente express a preference for “riparian scrub on river islands”, so a visit to at least one such island is essential. Monkey Island was more than a leisurely paddle away and so on this occasion we had the use of a high-powered motorised canoe that sped around the tight curves of the Río Yuturi at thrilling tilt. The Napo was exceptionally low and we had a fair amount of trouble finding sufficient water to negotiate the sandbars at the convergence of the rivers. We made it in the end by first heading downstream, then tacking back up the other shore, while a pastille dawn glinted through a thick but breaking sky. The Napo, like all great rivers, is a beast of many moods, but none are more beautifully expressed than that of dawn on a calm day. The surface stretched like a skin between the banks, reflecting the forest and sky in broad sheathes of olive and slate blue.

We beached at the mouth of small sandbar and ate our breakfast in the fine drizzle of daybreak. Around the bar we left the boat, and boatman, and set foot on the sands of Monkey Island. Like castaways. The heart of the two-kilometre long island was forest, but the southern shore was a wash of sand and low sedge, glistening wet from overnight rain and heavy dew. Not the most aesthetic landscape in Ecuador perhaps, but a short stroll into the thick of it yielded its true worth as a habitat of highly productive birding. Little twitters and squeaks could be heard all around, and things darted from cover, ran across the sand, and flushed on whirred wings. We bashed through waste high grass, fought our way into a four metre high coppice of thin saplings, and tried to avoid crushing a Gray-breasted Crake as it rushed between our feet. It took an hour or so to apply, to the best of our abilities, the full rigours of taxonomic classification. Jaime showed us some big capybara tracks that wandered along the beach between the Solitary Sandpipers. A flight of cormorants flew up the river, a small launch buzzed by. We weaved through a bed of three-metre tall reeds, crossed a sandy bar and plunged into the jungle interior.

There were far fewer birds in the forested heart of the island, but it was rainforest easily of the quality of the mainland. After hiking for half an hour we came across three of the primates in whose honour the island has been named, Common Woolly Monkeys, soft-furred chocolate animals that almost looked worn and overly-loved as they noisily swung over the trail just above our heads. A little later, at a sharp bend in the track, and ungainly eruption from the edge of the path gave away the presence of four pink Undulated Tinamou eggs, poorly concealed in a shallow leaf-lined depression. The interior track swung around and continued its circumnavigation of the island, but before we had completed the loop we found the boatman waiting for us on the northern shore. The hottest of our Yuturi days was already well in the making and, after having enjoyed the protective shade of the canopy, we now appreciated the high speed trip back to the lodge as a welcome way of cooling off. We made one stop on the return journey, half way along the Yuturi, to look at the silver bulk of a Great Potoo roosting out in the open on a high canopy branch. If we hadn’t been shown it we would have written it off as a termite nest, if we had spotted it at all. It was a suitably eccentric bird to end a visit to one of the more unusual of the habitats of the Oriente.

It was a hammock afternoon. The sun was fierce and only the crazy hoatzins seemed full of energy, clambering around the foliage by the lodge, munching on the leaves. A Black Vulture padded underneath the fruit trees and the distant excited cries of the Yuturi staff afternoon volleyball session were all that broke the afternoon silence. We tried going for a short stroll in the cooler interior forest, but even that was just too energy draining. Less sapping was our late afternoon reward paddle on Cariyuturi with Jaime, listening to the occupants of the varzea preparing for another nervous night. The water was like glass and the emerald evening colours exhilarating as ever. In all the hot places of the world that last hour of the day is such a precious time, slipping away as tantalisingly as it began, leaving a slightly unsettling feeling behind that maybe we missed it altogether. The sun dropped behind another massive oropendola tree on the other side of the swamp. Jaime turned the boat around and we paddled home as he entertained Anita with bedtime stories about anacondas eating children and potoos singing to the moon…

Our last day in Yuturi (boo). Jaime suggested that we once again headed for the Manduro, but this time took a connecting trail that ran between the Manduro and Limon Trails. He was the boss. We paddled out for the last time past the Spectacled Owl into daybreak in the varzea, and swallowed hard and tried to take it all in for one last time.

The bird moments still kept coming, including some hoped for ones such as the surreal Cream-coloured Woodpecker and a distant unsatisfactory silhouetted view (sic) of Blue-and-Yellow Macaws crossing high above the forest. The connector trail was much wilder than any of the previous tracks, and it is fair to say that without Jaime we would not have even known that it was there. Much of it was an effective bush bash and the swamp crossing this time did not come with the aid of submerged logs or bark or poles. It was every-person-for-themselves as the rubber boots once again earned their keep. The water swirled within one centimetre of the top of my boots, and that glorious sound of muddy suction was heard numerous times as we swung our balance from one foot to another across the viscous forest soup. We spent thirty minutes standing patiently at a loop in the path while Jaime attempted to round up an Ochre-striped Antpitta. Sheep are easier, believe me. More successful was the White-chested Puffbird, sitting motionless on a low branch above the forest floor. Jaime lifted some leaves and pointed out Jaguar prints and, close by, a turtle shell that had been eaten by a large cat. The connector trail was proving a genuine challenge as Jaime started making little breaks in the low branches along our path – it seemed that even he needed a way of guaranteeing we could find our path of return.  Not at all surprisingly Miguel, today’s lunch runner, had difficulties finding us and Jaime had to turn back to hunt for him. He turned up looking a little bit flustered with the standard extra large bin liner full of food. We thought we were being adventurous by plunging across the swamp in our rubber boots  - Miguel had just crossed it in a pair of leaky tennis shoes.  You hack through the jungle for several hours, clambering over fallen trees and pushing through tangled lianas, and someone is really expected to be able to find you with a bag of chicken!

On the way back we chased a Variegated Tinamou down the trail, zigzagging its way towards safety. We reached Jaime’s boat and boarded for the very last time, taking a very gentle cruise back through the Manduro, down well-travelled blackwater channels, drifting past our favourite patch of green water-lilies, palm islands that we were close to naming, trees that now all had adjectival familiarity (the capuchin tree, the potoo palm). Yellow-headed Vultures drifted lazily overhead, Lesser Kiskadees perched on the tips of branches by the edge of the river, flocks of little Cobalt-winged Parakeets hurtled over the canopy.  One last show as we entered the reaches of the Río Yuturi was a small flock of Opal-rumped and Opal-crowned Tanagers, who followed us all the way back to the lodge. The big trees loomed into sight. The wheeze of hoatzin, the rasping cries of home.

A big storm threatened to cook up just before the close of light, but it was all meteorological hot air (probably quite literally).  Instead it left us with one more outstanding sunset over the lagoon, best viewed from the comfort of the unstable hammock on the porch of our hut. One more job remained – the one that no guidebook can ever fully prepare you for- to tip, or not to tip, and if to tip, how much? We arrived at a deserved tip for Jaime by some arbitrary calculation, which I am sure was both fair and generous. We tipped the general staff box, but whether by an appropriate amount I have no idea. We gave a special tip to Roberto the food delivery boy, but were left with the perplexing problem of Rubin. As the English-speaking host, Rubin was full of the “Hi guys, let’s be friends, is everything ok for you today, I love this place it is just so beautiful” stuff that I suspect gets taught in tourism colleges rather than comes entirely naturally to a human being. Perhaps we did him a gross injustice, maybe he was just trying too hard, but our only contact with Rubin each day was essentially to have dinner with him and we have never made a habit of paying people to have dinner with us. Sorry mate…

Early night, early rise. The good news: the river was high enough that we would leave by boat the next day rather than hiking the first leg in the dark. The bad news: the river was low enough that it would take us extra time – we would set off at 3am.

Yuturi was a hive of activity at 3am as everyone was up to see us off. It was particularly sad to say goodbye to Jaime, who had been such fun company for the week. Farewells exchanged, the launch commenced its eerie run down the Yuturi underneath the stars, one boy at the bow with a torch, scanning across the water for drifting logs. We had another mammoth struggle at the river mouth, searching around for a channel into the Napo, while lightning flashed over the far bank. Eventually a route was secured and we edged up river to a rendezvous with a larger boat that was already waiting, laden with local villagers and piles of luggage. More cries of farewell. The leading torchbearer now had an even more responsible task, seeking sandbars and floating trees as we pushed against the Napo current in the dark.

I dozed off as a cold wind whipped off the surface of the Napo, most of which was thankfully being absorbed by the Dutch couple who were acting as a massive windbreak in the front of the canoe. The outboard droned and morning waited in the wings. Dawn broke at 6am and it was then that I woke up and made my big mistake. The Dutch called for a toilet stop and, from my slumped position, inertia stopped me taking a last chance. We breakfasted en route, hot coffee, juice and rolls, and I started looking forward to journey’s end for one single reason only. Onwards and onwards, more islands, sandbars, villages. I started dreaming of seeing the long boom that stuck out into the river close to Coca. Surely just around this bend, not this one, not this next one, we must be nearly there... The emergency options crossed my mind when the outboard failed and we started to drift in circles back downstream. It was three hours after dawn when Coca finally appeared on the distant horizon and we took an eternity to get there. Always in sight, always just beyond the prow. The river narrowed and Hotel Oasis appeared before the bridge on the right hand side. I could even read the letters. We bumped the pontoon and I leapt ashore, almost bent double in agony, throwing myself up the stairs and into the hotel corridor. No lock, who cares? The most joyous things in life are always free.

The Andes were visible on the return flight, poking through the clouds. However no amount of sweet soft drinks or glazed bakery products could take away the angst of the newspaper headlines that the U.S. was declaring war. Bumping high above the mountains in a small jet it was easy to appreciate the fragility of life, and the comfortable existence we have while others struggle in dusty Palestine or snow-swept Afghanistan, fear and survival both daily burdens. But then again, what gives some of them the right to seek a change only by destroying the lives of others, of attacking lifestyles more apparently opulent. What makes them that different from the Quichuan villagers, arguably just as poor, in some ways just as oppressed, and yet without intention of trying to mobilise the means to destroy and terrorise? And what gives the western world the right to seek revenge? To kill more lives, to sprout pious declarations of justice sought. Oh, to solve the world’s problems in one hour of airborne contemplation. The Andes didn’t care  -they would survive whatever. There are many things much bigger than a man.

American Airlines were flying again and reconfirmed our flights. It was as if nothing had happened. We returned to the flat and got on with being on holiday. There was nothing else to do.

Well, there was actually; a bit of shopping in the streets of Quito and a visit to a bank. The shopping consisted of purchasing some very reasonably priced local pottery and visiting a Quito supermarket to stock up on different brands of red hot pepper sauce. To withdraw money on visa you had either to stand in a long line (if you could remember your PIN) or climb four floors of the massive Banco Pacifico to a small desk where a clerk carefully counted out the notes and stamped all sorts of bits of paper. This little windfall at least allowed us to dine out at the snug Mama Clorinda’s, a little restaurant that had the decor of a Belgian cafe, and fine Ecuadorian fare that featured enormous chunks of potato, husks of giant corn, half avocados, piles of cheese, fried eggs and salsa. George Bush can wage all the war he wants so long as I’m in Mama Clorinda’s and the door is firmly closed.

Anita was determined to see the old town of Quito in the morning, so we opted to leave all our gear in the flat and take the trolley into town. Cecelia fuelled all the guidebook rumours by telling us that it was very dangerous and that we must not take bags or cameras with us. That all seemed like good enough advice when we boarded the packed electric bus service to the Plaza Grande. When we got there, however, the first thing that we saw was a young under clad girl, laden with camera gear and bulging daypack, wandering around the square with her Lonely Planet held in front of her nose, looking puzzled, lost and inattentive. Either she was a honey pot undercover police agent on permanent readiness to apply her jujitsu training, or if anyone was getting robbed today it wasn’t us. There was no obvious swarm of pickpockets on her trail, but we gave her a wide berth anyway and headed off down the other side of the street. There was no shortage of uniform in the old town with a military band laying a wreath in the square and a line of riot police polishing their plastic shields in front of the bank. Unfortunately the churches Anita had hoped to see were both closed, but we took a stroll up some of the narrow streets, breathing heavily as we climbed the steep hill to the cathedral, looking into the tiny shops, enjoying the colonial architecture and absorbing the very Iberian atmosphere. We got absolutely fleeced by a shopkeeper at a small bakery, which seemed an unreasonable (or perhaps inevitable) response to having bought a pastry for an elderly crone who had harassed us in the queue. Our tolerance for urban Ecuador had lasted the best part of one morning, and it was now time to move on again.

Back to the flat, a quick pack and a short taxi ride to the Terminal Terrestre, a horrifying architectural monstrosity on the outskirts of the city centre. My adrenaline always rises slightly in big city bus stations, and I switched on the extra set of eyes on the back of my head that I reserve solely for use in such dens of travelling iniquity. For some reason the terminal was very quiet, and we had no trouble finding a bus to Lasso as the cries of Riobamba Riobamba bellowed from one entire corner of the lower floor. We accepted the first offer and boarded a quiet bus for the trip south. A procession of salespersons boarded our bus before it left to aggressively market newspapers, chocolate bars and cones of ice cream. However we were soon to discover that on every Ecuadorian bus there is always particular tolerance for one special salesman who gets to stay on board the bus after departure, and remain there for anything up to half an hour in an attempt to flog their particularly challenging travel bargain. As the Riobamba bus left we were spun a long and complicated story that started with a few warm up jokes and moved on to some kind of technical preamble. Meanwhile the reason for the lack of people in the Terminal Terrestre became clear as the bus picked up almost 80% of its passengers at the first two roundabouts beyond the station limits. It was sobering to see what lengths people would go to skip the 10c departure tax. Now that the bus was full, the sales performer had the rapt attention of a captive audience. The story became more animated, the adjectives increased in colour, and only now, for the first time was the mystery product revealed... drum roll... children’s painting sets. Hmm… Now you’d think that you wouldn’t sell too many of these on a local bus trip would you? I was amazed how well they went – either I missed something in the description (well I missed all of it to be honest) or the other passengers just had a much sharper eye for a genuine bargain...

It took some time to leave the rather dirty and sprawling outer limits of Quito, before the bus started climbing into a broad highland valley with glimpses of tall volcanoes on either side. Without warning some serious weather began to move in. The wipers swept across the windshield and the bus slowed to a crawl as sheets of rain lashed the highway and headlights peered into the sudden gloom. The internal windows misted over, leaving us quite unsure of where we were. One of the other passengers broke into song, probably through the sheer joy of having purchased the child art set of a lifetime. Now the rain turned to hail, and the bus rattled as marbles of ice peppered the bodywork. Suddenly the bus pulled sharply over to the edge of the highway and a smiling amigo pulled aside the curtain to the cabin. It was apparently our stop. We bundled out of the bus and sprinted over to a small shed, pushing our bodies against the outer wall in an attempt to benefit from the quite inadequate cover of the overhanging gutter. We looked out through a curtain of hail and discovered that we are at a road junction surrounded by frozen fields in the company of three workmen, who soon beckoned us to join them in the back of their trailer as the hailstorm did its worst. They were there to repair the billboard advertising Hosteria La Ciénega, the hotel that we were now so close but yet so far from. The hail became rain b