Tena, Ecuador

The posting tonight is from Tena, Ecuador. We decided to take a short weekend trip about two and a half hours north of Puyo by bus. About half the trip was on excellent roads and the other half was on roads under construction or should have been under construction. I think an excellent business here would be the selling of heavy duty suspension systems for busses.

Tena is a river town. Two major rivers join just a few hundred yards from our hotel. The island that makes up the upper fork of this joining of two rivers is a sort of natural zoo. We spent some time attempting to photograph monkeys in the trees until we discovered that if you stand still under the smaller trees, they will jump on you and sit on your shoulder and head. After this happened several times, I now know why monkeys scratch a lot. I felt the need to work my hair over a number of times.

My nephew, Nathan Miller and his wife Tiffany are making the trip with us. Seeing the rainforest for the first time, they seem to enjoy it and conclude it is a ¨wow¨experience.

Tomorrow (we are skipping work) we will travel back down south a bit to see several river communities and will possibly visit an animal rescue zoo where the animals of the area are nursed back to health. The rainforest does not present an opportunity to see wild life because of excess hunting and cutting of the forest. If one were to travel inland far enough, this would change. However, none of us are in condition nor have the time to try this challenging trip. A few people ¨cheat¨by riding down the rivers for several days to say they have ventured into the primary jungle.

We have run in to a number of Americans here in Tena who took a five hour bus trip from Quito to do some white water rafting. We have had a couple of interesting conversations.