It was an extra long bus journey followed by a stay in a dismal establishment that lead us into the amazon, so we had high hopes that it would all be worth it.

Arriving into a tiny river side town we met our group and piled into a motorised canoe that would be our transport for the next three days. Our group consisted of two full of life American girls Sarah and Crystal, the Danish boys Oliver, Mark and Nic, 18yo American Carter, Netherlands couple Emily and Geert and an older couple from Europe. Ebi (affectionately known as Bangladesh) picked us up and was our guide for the 3-hour boat journey into our lodge accommodation. He pulled out all the stops straight up. We passed a baby anaconda nestled in the shrub along the water’s edge, spotted numerous oro-pendulas and other interesting bird life and found a sloth in the far distance. He upped the excitement anti when after driving under a low-lying tree we came very close to having a tree snake in the boat with us. Then to top it off he led us to a hollow tree stump where we located a huge anaconda sleeping off its latest feast.

The jungle was lush and thick, and heavily flooded for the time of year. Looking around you could see few river banks, just water-drenched, tree lined river paths, fallen trees laden with bird life and occasionally monkeys or bats, shrubs and hanging vines. There was every tone of green imaginable with the occasional splash of pink, yellow and red flowers.

When we arrived at Nicky lodge, Ebi introduced us to our guide for the rest of our tour, Diago. The next three days consisted of canoe adventures and jungle discovery walks by day and awesome dinners and extremely comfortable beds at night. Diago and Ebi were both impressively knowledgeable and enthusiastic guides so no matter where we were, our jungle adventures were always educational and entertaining. On our tours by foot we were exposed an enormous variety of flora, Diago explaining that each had their own purpose and function in the jungle eco system. My favourites were the stunningly huge Sabor trees that towered high above the canopy and the spider like ‘walking trees’ that could change their route system to track the sun and appeared to walk through the jungle. Then there were the plants with traditional medicinal properties which Diago keenly accosted volunteers to test the effects!

In terms of animal life, Diago was keen on finding us each and every big-ticket item and more. We found Anacondas and Tarantulas, Sloths and Pink Dolphins, many assorted bird varieties, tiny bats, tree snakes, even a rainbow boa at our camp! We watched as sake and tamarind monkeys swung effortlessly along the canopy and were even lucky enough to witness the smallest monkeys in the world, ‘Little lions’. SO CUTE!

Visiting the native Schona community was so much better than we anticipated for a ‘cultural experience’. We met Mama Aurora on arrival, the last of the Shona’s traditional ancestors. She is the last of the woman who lived in the deep jungle, wore clothes made of palm trees and lived a nomadic life, moving wherever the food options were most prosperous. She remembers the time before tourists came, the time when life was truly simple. Short statured and surprisingly youthful looking (Mama is not sure how old she is, maybe 80-85!) Mama lead us into her crops, machete in hand and helped us to select and harvest her yucca. The process required a fair amount of muscle and Muma was sure to let us know when we weren’t giving it enough umph.

Once harvested be carried the yucca back to the cooking hut and we helped Muma and her daughter prepare the yucca by peeling (Muma was like a surgeon with her machete, leaving only millimetres to finger tips), washing, grating, squeezing dry and baking the yucca into bread! It was a surprisingly difficult process and required many hand-crafted tools and a lot of man power to aid the process. Our yucca flat bread at lunch was on the drier side and probably not what we would traditionally call bread BUT after having endured the three hours of preparation to get it, we all carried on like it was the best thing we had ever eaten! The most delicious part of lunch was the banana bread that Mama whipped up with some starch she had saved from the yucca. She simply grated some platano into the watery starch mix, carefully wrapped the wet dough in a banana leaf and baked it over an open flame. Diago topped the bread with an Ecuadorian chocolate spread and we were all in heaven.

Then as if the trip hadn’t already offered everything we would have hoped for there was more. In attempting to organise our accommodation post the jungle, Adam happening to mention to our guide in passing that our wedding anniversary was coming up. On our last night together as a group, an announcement at dinner completely shocked us, as a beautifully decorated cake arrived in front of us, in celebration of our anniversary. The cake was then followed by the chef serenading us with his guitar and surprisingly beautiful voice. I had tears in my eyes and we couldn’t have felt more spoilt.