A couple of weeks ago the horse guide in Baños had introduced me to few of his friends who had a travel agency in town which did tours into the primary amazon of Ecuador. I had loved my last amazon trip in 2009 so much so I was exited to go again. But since I travel alone this is a whole other story! Mostly travelers have to wait to find a bigger group or the need to book an expensive single guide. So I found myself lucky to run into these people who even insured me we could try to find a jaguar since I wanted to take pictures of it. I got a really great deal for five days but since we could reach that area only by plane it was going to be expensive. They told me a plane for seven people cost US$700 and wanted me to pay half of it – US$350. I found that too expensive and was lucky to find another guy Wendolin who was looking for a trip to the rainforest as well. So I could share the flight expense between two what made a great difference. For the jaguar the guides got a alive rooster as a bait and some beef meat. They thought the sound of a rooster and the smell of meat would catch the attention of a big cat… reality was it didn’t work out since territories of wild animals are big and traps have to be set a few days in advance. To the first Huaorani / Waorani tribe we took that tiny airplane. The first time that I have taken a small airplane like that. The great rainforest was lush and seemed limitless. Before we went on the plane we needed to weight ourselves and our belongings so that there was exactly not to much loaded. Ironic enough the pilot seemed to be quite heavy but that didn’t counted. After a 40min flight what didn’t seemed that long we arrived in the village and found ourselves surrounded by the people in an instant. They guided us to a big shelter and the guides started to cook. After that we went straight to that place were they tried to set the jaguar photo trap and the tents. This night was probably one of the most uncomfortable nights in my life and we had not seen any wild animal at all… Guess that all is part of the experience.
