Ecuador - Rio Napo I

 The last part of our trip to Ecuador took us by plane to Coca, along the Rio Napo, a main tributary of the Amazon.  Coca is the Fort MacMurray of Ecuador, a not-very-pleasant oil boomtown - except that it is +40C at this time of year, not -40.  From there, we went 2 hours downstream in a motorized canoe, then into Sacha Lodge on a blackwater lagoon in the rain forest.  It is a lovely lodge, the height of rustic luxury in the middle of the jungle (mind you, anywhere that provides a waterproof roof and cold beer in the Amazon would qualify as luxury to me).

Plants were a big part of my drawing there, because, of course, that's the whole point of a jungle, but also because I love the old botanical drawings, particularly from the tropics.  Unfortunately, my tropical botany doesn't extend much past the level of "big leaf", "funny-looking red flowers" and "sap-green-with-a-bit-of-Hooker's-green stem".  The lodge owns a big reserve of forest with a network of trails, as well as towers that let you hang out in the canopy with the monkeys and birds (even if you don't have a prehensile tail).

The birds are so diverse, and the lodge's guides so good, that my bird list for two days filled most of a page, although I managed to fit in a quick drawing of an extremely odd sunset that we saw over the lagoon - a great place for a swim, unless you get unlucky with one of the many piranhas, caimans or electric eels that you are sharing it with.