WE TRAVELED DEEP INTO THE AMAZON RAINFOREST! - Ecuador

We have made it deep into the Amazon jungle. We have been looking forward to this destination for such a long time. It's such a great feeling to be so surrounded by nature, the dense jungle with all of the sounds and just the peacefulness of it all. It was also a very fun journey to get here today so let me catch you up. This morning we took a cab to the airport and we met Luis at the airport and he got our tickets and got us all checked in for La Selva had a coffee in the lounge. We made it to the airport and we're greeted by our host Rodrigo and welcome to Chukoka. We took a bus from the airport to Napa River. We took a motorized canoe from the town of Alcoca to the La Selva boat landing. We made it! We just got dropped off the motorized canoe at La Selva boat landing and now we're in this paddle canoe on our way to La Selva Lodge. It's a huge predator of the birds. We just spotted our first animal. Well we saw a blue morpho but this is a northern cayman lizard. He's up in the trees trying to hunt for birds. You guys catch dinner yet? We just arrived. This place looks amazing. They greet you with some nice warm towels. What a fun adventure to get here. Let's check it out. Cheers. We made it. Made it to the Amazon. Yes and that guava is so long. Tastes so fresh and delicious. Wow. We have just arrived you guys. We just finished meeting the whole staff here at La Selva. We had our welcome drink. We got to know a little bit about the lodge and we just checked into our room. This place is huge. It is massive. We have a huge bed with like a mosquito net, a beautiful sitting area and the best part always the balcony. Let me show you. Wow. This balcony is huge. We have a beautiful view of the river and the sounds are wild. I almost feel like I should be whispering because I don't want to like disturb the peace. Wow that's gonna be so amazing. I'm so excited. So lucky this room is humongous. It is super nice. What a fun travel day too. So excited for this new adventure. So we're all settled in in our beautiful room here and of course in rainforest fashion it just started raining. Time to get a coffee for a little pick me up. Cheers. This restaurant area is so nice up here. They have coffee and tea and the beautiful view. Look at the view. After that much needed coffee refresher it's time to start our first excursion. It is 4 30 on the dot. I think we're doing a canoe ride and a night walk. So excited. I'm so excited. Let's go explore the Amazon. He's just showing me these night hawks. They're like nesting in the trees. They're nocturnal so they will come out at night and eat the moss and insects but right now they're asleep. Getting in our first canoe ride. Here we go. So our guide just spotted a very colorful toucan. He went inside of his little nest and we waited for him to come out and he came out. He's so much smaller than I thought he would be but with this like huge yellow beak and then he just flew away. Very cool. So we just saw a paite. It gets up to nine feet over 300 pounds. They can be dangerous and their babies keep coming up for air and you can see this dark shadow. It's very scary. Rodrigo just spotted five bats underneath this branch. They're the exact same color as the branch. I don't I don't know how he sees all of this stuff. Yeah it's amazing. I don't know how he does it. I'm wild. So many monkeys. So we're lucky that actually rained because it brings the monkeys out. They're much more active. Tonight is the monkey extravaganza. We've seen three different species so far. The red howlers and the squirrel monkeys and the capuchin monkeys. So it's pretty awesome that La Selva Lodge works with the local community here and our guy was just telling us back in 1980s you could hardly see any of the monkeys but now since the lodge is funding the local people and they're not hunting the animals as much you get to see a ton more of the monkeys. A lot of it all circles back together. We can actually support the local people being tourists and it saves animals and we get to see more as well. It's a win-win-win. Win-win-win-win. Our guy just spotted our first caiman. Our first Amazonian caiman. Black caiman. It's almost nine feet long. He said that's big enough to attack us so you gotta be careful. You have a positive energy friend. That's you know like we always bring the good luck. So we just heard a monster. We're heading to them. I believe they're howler monkeys but they sound way different than I've ever heard before. That sound is so crazy. He said the howler monkeys become very active at like 4 30 a.m and 4 30 p.m which is the evening time right now and they're marking their territory and protecting the females. It's a gray reddish. This is a very good bird for bear watchers especially you know and it's very rare. Once a year. Oh that's it. Yeah also the population is very small. Wow it's a beautiful bird. Yeah that's the most colorful caiman. Wow what a fun first night huh? It's very rare to see those. Like once a year. It's very for bird watchers it's a huge deal. So we can hear Rodrigo said that it's the Amazon bullfrog and he said they get like this big. Bigger. Bigger. We're just like paddling along and the sunset has like everything in like the most beautiful colors. It's so peaceful. I'm so glad we're here. Thank you so much. You're welcome. You were so excellent. That was amazing. Oh hello. Oh I'm so hungry. How about you? I'm so hungry. We had a lunch on the boat earlier but I mean that was like 11 and it's like 7 30. Yeah we usually eat around 5 5 30 so this is late for us. Yeah. Should we get wine? Yeah. Yes. Don't be breaking stuff. I know and I feel like there's so many people here. Okay. Okay we just sat down to dinner. It looks like it's table service so they're going to serve us. We just ordered some wine. Tommy looked at the menu. He said we're having fish for dinner so I'm really excited. Are you excited? Yeah. Salud to amazing first day of Amazon. Salud. For our first course we had a choche which is a local squash. It was stuffed with rice and like veggies and it was like au grain. So it had like a creamy sauce with cheese on top. Really really good start to the dinner. The one we saw out there. Oh my gosh. For dinner for our main course we're having the tai chi fish which is a big black shadow that we saw when we were out on the boat earlier. Okay so we're having prehistoric fish for dinner. Let's give it a try. So the presentation is beautiful. Going in for the first bite. It's in some kind of coconut sauce I believe. It doesn't smell coconutty. Okay that's delicious. Super flaky. Coconut sauce is delicious. Yum. Dessert has arrived. It is a crepe filled with what is this fruit? Oh babaco. The star fruit that we had Tommy and I tried to juice up in Quito. And it has maracujá ice cream on top with like a raspberry sauce. Super light crepe. Super refreshing dessert. This was the perfect end to a perfect day and we will see you guys in the morning. Cheers.