Advertised as a "Jungle Tour" - we took a two night / three day guided trip from Baños , via Puyo to the secondary forest on the edge of the Jungle.
The first day of the tour was by van to Puyo and then into the forest via a dirt road. Before dinner we took a walk through the forest to a waterfall. Our indigenous guide "Juan" led the way and showed us various plants and insects along the way. As we had chosen the "short" trip we were very unlikely to come across any animals as development and tourism had pushed these deeper into the Jungle. We were joined on this trip by two German girls from Berlin - Marie and Stefanie.
The second day began with a longer walk through the forest to a different waterfall where we swam again. Again the guides pointed out many interesting plants and insects and demonstrated some of the things that the local indigenous people make from the plants. This time we had joined up with another group and so were joined by two more girls who lived in Switzerland.
After lunch we took a precarious canoe ride down the river to what was described as "an indigenous community" - although our lodgings were basic tourist jungle huts and the only local community thing we saw was an empty bar that was playing attrociously loud bad music and charged more than double the usual price for a bottle of beer.
We took a night walk in search of noctural creatures - but didn't see anything other than the red eyes of a crocodile. The guide of the second group didn't bother taking his team out as he said that the full moon meant it was too bright for the animals to come out.
It rained very heavily all the second night. The final day was a walk to beautifull lookout to a point where two rivers meet - these were tributaries of the Amazon, very wide but quite shallow.
After lunch we took local busses back to Baños changing in Puyo.
After the couple of days in very basic lodgings with very simple food (provided) we treated ourselves to dinner at an excellent Mexican restaurant in the main street of Baños. Posters and newsclipping of very left wing revolutionary propoganda adourned the walls with a particularly large photo of "El Che", Fidel Castro and others doing a victory march through the streets of Havana.
