November 20, 2007 cont.

Ahuano

G, Thomas, Toby and I piled into Toby’s car and headed off to Ahuano in the jungle. We drove about 6 hours over paved roads, dirt road, and super rocky roads. Before the government started improving the roads the drive would take 14 hours.

Along the way we stopped for habas, melloco (a root vegetable), queso tierno and mote (corn) with ají. We munched on it while we continued on our journey.

We stopped and had lunch in Tena at Chuchicas. It was a good restaurant on the river. The view was great and the food was good. I had tostones (fried bananas), rice, potatoes, and grilled veggies with ají. I really like the hot ají made here.

We made a quick stop in Misahualli to see the square with the monkeys. I was posing for a picture when a monkey came up behind me and slapped my butt. I turned around and then he stole my sunglasses off of my forehead. While G and I were trying to recover them, Toby went back to the car to get a bag of ovitos (tropical fruit) to distract him with. When she was trying to hand one out, another monkey stole the bag out of her hand. Luckily a loud noise distracted my bad monkey and G was able to grab my glasses. We headed back to the car only to find a monkey inside of the car. He grabbed my container of tostones and headed out of the car with them under his arm. Such sneaky little creatures. ☺



We then arrived at the Napo River. We got out of the car and grabbed our luggage and headed to a canoe. We took a ten minute canoe ride down the river to our hotel, La Casa del Suizo in Ahuano. The view from the canoe was amazing.



We checked into the hotel and then headed down to the river so G and Thomas could fly fish. I gave it a few tries, but was not very good.

After fishing, we headed to the pool and G and I swam for a while. Afterwards we headed back to the room to clean up before meeting for dinner. All food at the hotel was included and was buffet style. I had cream of yuca soup, various veggie salads, fruit, rice, and flan for dessert.