In the evening we hiked up to the Virgen Statue.
There were nice views of the town.
This is our hotel.
There were some pretty flowers along the way.
The statue itself was quite ugly, dirty, old and vandalized.
This is the view from the statue.
The white square is the cemetery. It is practically a little city of its own with streets and everything.
Then the sun went behind the mountains and we walked home to bed.
(If you like guinea pigs, you may want to skip this one.)
There is sugarcane everywhere.
They sell tons of sugarcane juice and sugarcane toffee, but no sugarcane syrup. We had to have fake maple syrup on our french toast instead.
This is a funky flower.
They were selling barbequed coy at the market. It looked pretty horrific.
We tried a little piece. (Actually we tasted it the day before we took the picture above, when all you could see was the pieces on the grill. Seeing them on the spit kind of kills the appetite.) It’s like very greasy, bony chicken.
There was a sign showing directions and distances to major cities around the world. Quito is pointing the wrong way, which seriously confused Kerri.
We went on a walk at night to hunt for nocturnal critters. This is mostly going to be more creepy crawlies in case you haven’t guessed.
The stick bugs are huge.
Many of the crickets had antenna much longer than their bodies.
This is a stingless scorpion. It is an arthropod between spiders and scorpions.
The butterflies were sleeping. This is the only time we saw them landed in the amazon. They flutter around all day without rest.
This is a grasshopper that just finished shedding its exoskeleton.
The leafcutter ants were really active at night. I traced one of their trails for 20m before both ends disappeared too deeply into the jungle to follow.
They were moving pretty fast.
And here’s the tarantula you’ve all been waiting for. He’s just a baby. We didn’t see any big ones.
This afternoon we tried our hand at blowgun hunting for our dinner.
Even the papaya was not afraid of Kerri. Her dart didn’t even make it all the way to the papaya.
Matt did much better.
But still missed the papaya.
Fortunately Habier, our guide, got it in the neck, so we still got papaya for desert.
Today we prepared and ate a traditional Maito de tilapia lunch. Making lunch started with a walk through the fields to gather ingredients. This is not quite what I expected when they said “fields”.
There were tons of banana trees.
Harvesting the yuca involved pulling it straight out of the ground.
This is the raw yuca.
These are the bananas.
This is the traditional way to carry the food, in a basket hanging off of the back of your head.
This is Matt preparing the tilapia in a leaf.
You put lots of salt on the fish, then wrap and tie the leaf.
Then you put them over a fire to roast.
It was very delicious.
