Visiting the eco-lodges in the Ecuadorian Amazon & Yasuni National Park involves a journey of several hours down the Napo River.  You begin at Coca and the first part is on a wide section of the river so you don’t see any wildlife but it’s still an interesting trip.  The guides give a safety briefing and point out the sights along the way.  Our bilingual naturalist guide was Lena and she did a fantastic job of spotting wildlife.

We encountered a storm about an hour into the trip and plastic covers were lowered to protect us from the rain.

Everyone gets a small pouch with a few snacks inside.

This is the transit area where you change from the motorized boats to the smaller paddleboats.  There are restrooms and you can stretch you legs.  From here, it’s about 90 minutes-ish to Napo Wildlife Center depending on how many stops along the way to see wildlife.

Paddleboats

We saw lots of spider monkeys along the way.

Lots of birds too!  My bird checklist on eBird.

Here you can see the “black water” of the Anangu Creek.

Caiman lying in wait!

I was really excited to see Hoatzins!  These cool-looking birds are called “stinky chickens” by the locals which doesn’t do justice to these awesome birds.

Double-toothed Kite

A lizard, well-spotted by our guide.

Even though the journey was interesting, we were happy to see Napo Wildlife Center come into view, the seats in the paddleboats aren’t the most comfortable.