Amazon Jungle

Our original plan was to go to school in Quito for four weeks but after a couple weeks in Quito we wanted a change of scenery and decide to do a week of school in the Amazon jungle instead.

In order to get to the jungle we needed to take a 10 hour bus ride to Coca. The plan was to meet our new teacher at the bus station at 9pm, to take an overnight bus to Coca. I should mention that Quito is NOT safe at night and you need to take a taxi if you go anywhere. We actually saw a guy get mugged outside our hostel the night before and 2 of our schoolmates had been victims of attempted muggings, so we were both on edge waiting at the bus station (where theft is common). So upon arrival at the station this guy with long hair, an eyebrow ring and tongue piercing came up to Trevor  and said something to him. Following what we have been told Trevor immediately told him "no gracious" without even listening to what he said. When I asked what the guy had said, knowing our teacher was suppose to meet us at the station, Trevor said he didn't know and realized that he might have been our teacher. After waiting 15 minutes we finally asked the guy what he had said and found out he was our teacher and had asked Trevor  if we were "Allison and Trevor" but after Trevor's insistent "no" he figured we must not be the right people.

I don't sleep well on buses and surprisingly Trevor wasn't able to sleep either so when we arrived in Coca, at 5:30am, we were both pretty tired and irritable. The worst part was the one hour boat ride into the jungle won't  be ready to leave until 10:30am. So we ended up making makeshift beds out of our surrounding till the boat was ready. I actually ended up sleeping better all curled up on a little bench then I did in the bus. And I felt like a true backpacker.

We didn't really know what to expect from the place we where staying but when we arrived we were thrilled to see it was a little jungle paradise. It actually reminded us of overnight camp and it was actually a resort for tourist.  We got to stay in cute little bamboo huts with hammocks on the porch. They also had parrots and a monkey we got to play with.



I thought the jungle would be relaxing and would give me time to study, read and blog but this wasn't the case at all. Our day would start at 6:30 with breakfast, we would then go on an excursions such as a jungle hike, bird watching, fishing for Piranha, visiting  jungle communities, and learning how to use a blow gun. The activities would last from 7:30-11:00. We would then have lunch at 12:00pm and Spanish classes from 1:30-5:00 with dinner at 7:00. Then after dinner we would go on a night tour with flashlights, canoeing in the lagoons to see Alligators, or hiking in the jungle where we saw the biggest insects including real tarantulas.There is also no electricity at the resort, so they just have a generator which is active from 10am-12pm and 6pm-10pm. So after 10pm you have no choice but to sleep because you can't see anything.

The jungle trip was probably the best thing for our Spanish. Our teacher Ivan was really good but what help us the most was the fact that almost everyone at the Jungle resort only spoke Spanish, so in order to speak with everyone we were force to speak Spanish. It was also really helpful having our teacher there to help make sure we understand everything correctly and to provide any words we didn't know. One day Trevor decided he would only speak Spanish all day and I thought he was upset with me because I had never seen Trevor so quiet before.

On our return trip back we tried to leave earlier so we won't arrive back at 5am but we ended up taking a 6pm bus which meant another overnight bus. Trevor managed to sleep this time but  was disturbed around 12:00 when a guy dressed in a camouflage army gear, carrying a big machine gun came onto the bus and started yelling something. We had no idea what was going on and just saw everyone on the bus grab their bags and lining up outside the bus. We were told to get our passports out and upon exiting the bus, we (the obvious none Ecuadorians) were directed to a separate line where they wrote down our passport number, where we were going and why. The Ecuadorians on the bus all lined up in another line were they had to show their ID and all their bags were searched. Our bags however didn't get searched at this point. We found out this was a drug check. All the drugs are grown in the Amazon (we saw coca plants during our jungle hike) and to stop people from bringing them into the cities they do drug checks of buses coming from the Amazon. So after this little adventure we thought we were all good but two hours later we were stopped again for another drug check. This time they didn't have a separate line for tourists and we had our bags checked with the rest of the Ecuadorians. When they do the drug checks they search the inside of the bus, the luggage compartment and  bags but I found it really interesting that they didn't use dogs. When I asked about this I was told they sometime do but they weren't used for either of our searches.


The jungle was actually really cool. We saw a lot of interesting animals and insects and learned a lot. Our teacher was also really awesome and we had a ton of fun hanging out wit himh. The only bad things was we got eaten alive by bugs even though we would cover ourselves in bug spray and finished 1.5 bottle of bug spray.