Imagine yourself trekking through the great, endless tropical rainforest. You came here to watch wildlife. But all you can see zillions of tree trunks instead of even one mammal in sight! Did you spend all that money to end up in the wrong location?
The reality is that most of the animals spend much of their time up high in the trees. From the forest floor, your can't distinguish them very well, because they are up high in 30 m high trees. Moreover, you look up from the relative darkness of the forest floor and from where you are, the leaves almost look black due to the contrast between the light of the sky and the darkness of the leaves. Because of this, it is rather difficult to see the animals, let alone recognize their features and identify them.
From a river, though, you can observe animals and flowers far better, since they move about along the lower hanging branches along the shores. Wildlife visibility is especially better from narrow rivers.
On the wider branches of the Amazon, it is hard to watch wildlife, as a lot of wider rivers are very wide almost appearing seas. On the streams in the Upper Amazon watershed, on the other hand, you have the feeling to be in the forest while still enough light falls through the opening of stream, to see the flowers and wildlife on the branches and in the shrubs.
As creeks are most common in the headwaters, the streams are typically located in the Andes foothills. But because of the hilly terrain, few Amazon headwaters are navigable and just one network of interconnected lakes is known in the Andes countries, the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve. Aforementioned features a bowl-shaped plain with a shallow outlet, so that water stagnates, thus creating a huge forested swamp. It is also one of the few reserves in the world extending on both sides of the equator.
Neither Colombia, Peru, Venezuela nor Bolivia have an Amazon park with the same convenient access as Cuyabeno and nowhere else on earth, can one get so easily into a nature reserve in the Amazon Jungle at such affordable prices: Around 30 minutes by airplane gets you from Quito to LagoAgrio, the main city of Ecuador's Northern Amazon region and less than 2 hours by bus over a new tarmac road brings you to the park entrance. Many guests find Cuyabeno Reserve the very best Amazon reserve in the world!
Although it is not excessively luxurious, the Cuyabeno Lodge is regarded as the comfortable lodge on the Cuyabeno Lake. Rainforest Alliance certified, the lodge has been built 25 years or so ago by a small grouping of conservation biologists during a period when the park had been invaded buy illegal settlers. The initiators planned to provide alternative income from ecotourism for the local communities in an era when there still was no tourism to the area.
Nowadays, the reserve is no longer threatened and with 14,000 visitors per year, the government has become aware of the value of the wildlife reserve. To the owners of the Cuyabeno Lodge, it is vital that each and every client leaves with a lasting impression, not only of Cuyabeno but of the beauty and importance of the entire Amazon Jungle. They always work on improving the quality of both the lodge as well as the excursions. A tree crown tower overlooks the lake. With the combined elevation of its observation tower on the top of the hill on which the lodge has been built, the mobile phone system of the lodge gets the best reception in the area. The ranger station of Ecuador's Protected Areas Agency resides on the land of the lodge and the tower functions as the alarm center for the entire area. The lodge also has a solar system that provides power twenty four hours, facilitating battery charging for cameras and light in every building. The lodge also has hot water for its
The reality is that most of the animals spend much of their time up high in the trees. From the forest floor, your can't distinguish them very well, because they are up high in 30 m high trees. Moreover, you look up from the relative darkness of the forest floor and from where you are, the leaves almost look black due to the contrast between the light of the sky and the darkness of the leaves. Because of this, it is rather difficult to see the animals, let alone recognize their features and identify them.
From a river, though, you can observe animals and flowers far better, since they move about along the lower hanging branches along the shores. Wildlife visibility is especially better from narrow rivers.
On the wider branches of the Amazon, it is hard to watch wildlife, as a lot of wider rivers are very wide almost appearing seas. On the streams in the Upper Amazon watershed, on the other hand, you have the feeling to be in the forest while still enough light falls through the opening of stream, to see the flowers and wildlife on the branches and in the shrubs.
As creeks are most common in the headwaters, the streams are typically located in the Andes foothills. But because of the hilly terrain, few Amazon headwaters are navigable and just one network of interconnected lakes is known in the Andes countries, the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve. Aforementioned features a bowl-shaped plain with a shallow outlet, so that water stagnates, thus creating a huge forested swamp. It is also one of the few reserves in the world extending on both sides of the equator.
Neither Colombia, Peru, Venezuela nor Bolivia have an Amazon park with the same convenient access as Cuyabeno and nowhere else on earth, can one get so easily into a nature reserve in the Amazon Jungle at such affordable prices: Around 30 minutes by airplane gets you from Quito to LagoAgrio, the main city of Ecuador's Northern Amazon region and less than 2 hours by bus over a new tarmac road brings you to the park entrance. Many guests find Cuyabeno Reserve the very best Amazon reserve in the world!
Although it is not excessively luxurious, the Cuyabeno Lodge is regarded as the comfortable lodge on the Cuyabeno Lake. Rainforest Alliance certified, the lodge has been built 25 years or so ago by a small grouping of conservation biologists during a period when the park had been invaded buy illegal settlers. The initiators planned to provide alternative income from ecotourism for the local communities in an era when there still was no tourism to the area.
Nowadays, the reserve is no longer threatened and with 14,000 visitors per year, the government has become aware of the value of the wildlife reserve. To the owners of the Cuyabeno Lodge, it is vital that each and every client leaves with a lasting impression, not only of Cuyabeno but of the beauty and importance of the entire Amazon Jungle. They always work on improving the quality of both the lodge as well as the excursions. A tree crown tower overlooks the lake. With the combined elevation of its observation tower on the top of the hill on which the lodge has been built, the mobile phone system of the lodge gets the best reception in the area. The ranger station of Ecuador's Protected Areas Agency resides on the land of the lodge and the tower functions as the alarm center for the entire area. The lodge also has a solar system that provides power twenty four hours, facilitating battery charging for cameras and light in every building. The lodge also has hot water for its
About the Author:
Conservation biologist Dr. Vreugdenhil tells you what to look out for when you select your destination to explore the Jungle. To fully enjoy the Amazon, your hotel should neither be primitive nor excessively luxurious.
