Ecuador, Summer 2019 (Part 9 - Puerto Misahuallí)
We woke up on the morning of July 20th and headed for the bus terminal in the heart of town. We skipped breakfast and opted instead to just buy some snacks for the three hour trip to Tena. Upon arriving to Tena, we paid $10 to take us to Puerto Misahuallí about 30 minutes away.
Puerto Misahuallí is a small town sitting on the banks of the Napo river, a major tributary of the Amazon river. Since it’s the first town located in the Ecuadorian section of the Amazon rain forest, Puerto Misahuallí is known as the “Gateway to the Amazon.”
The taxi dropped us off at our hostel: The Banana Lodge, located a 5-10 minute walk from the town center. We were greeted by Ana, a Russian woman owned the hostel along with her Ecuadorian husband Carlos. She gave us a brief tour around the compound and were informed about a full day river tour departing the following morning at 9 AM for $55 a person. We paid for our stay (cash only), and were shown to our room where we set down our things before going to get lunch.
Your dining options are a bit limited in Puerto Misahuallí, but we stumbled upon a small restaurant on the edge of the town center near the river. I am incredibly embarrassed not to have written down the name of it considering the fact that we literally ate exclusively at this place. This small diamond in the rough was owned by a gentleman named Diego. The food was phenomenal.
We both agreed that it was too late to go do too much on our first day so we lounged about for a while. I toured the grounds and got a gorgeous view of the Misahuallí River that runs right behind the hostel.
When I say that the town is small, I mean it’s REALLY small. There isn’t a single ATM, the town center is roughly four square blocks, and there aren’t a lot of hotels in the town limits either. We could not find a single establishment that accepted credit cards.
After Audrey woke up from a nap, we walked back to the town center to go to Diego’s restaurant to watch the UFC fights in San Antonio. My friend Juan was set to fight in his third match with the company against former NFL defensive lineman (and convicted domestic assaulter) Greg Hardy. You may remember Juan from my journal entry about my trip to Milwaukee to watch him in his first UFC fight.
Despite the fight not going Juan’s way, it was fun watching with a bunch of strangers who were all suddenly rooting for him just because I was there rooting for him.
After Juan’s fight, we headed back to our hostel for the night as we would be waking up bright and early the next morning.
The next morning we woke up early enough to take advantage of the complimentary breakfast at the hostel. At 8:45, a bunch of the people staying at the hostel, including both of us, boarded a taxi to the town center to go to the tour guide’s shop. When we got there, our tour guide Carlos gave us the rubber boots that we were going to wear for the day. The largest size they had was a 13 and I’m a 14 so my foot was definitely more than snug in there.
After gearing up, we all walked as a group about two blocks to the river bank and got into Carlos’ motorized boat. Our group consisted of six people other than us and our guides: An older Chilean couple, a French tourist named Jules making his way around South America, and a few Russians.
We pushed away from the shore and headed west on the Napo River for about 20 minutes, taking in the beauty of the Amazon rain forest. We disembarked on the banks of the river and made our way into a heavily forested area.
We made our way into the forest through mud and thick brush as Carlos took the time to tell us about all the different fauna in the area.
One of the more interesting things we saw was what is known as a “walking palm.” These walking palms have an elevated root system that stem from the trunk far above the ground.
Depending on the light the tree is receiving, new roots will grow in the direction the tree wants to “walk” to and the old roots will die off. Slowly overtime, these trees can “walk” about 2 - 3 centimeters a day in any direction.
It was extraordinarily humid out there and although we had applied copious amounts of mosquito repellent, it doesn’t work for all insects and Audrey and I both got a lot of bites on our forearms from some unknown winged pest.
We hiked through the forest for about 2 hours before coming full circle to the river bank and getting back on the boat. We headed back east on the river and headed to a small Indigenous community where we were shown how they are able to weave things out of plant fibers. It’s quite an elaborate process and it really makes you appreciate the amount of work that is put into it.
We purchased a few of their handmade crafts before boarding the boat once more to get some lunch at a restaurant further upstream. While we were eating, Jules and I talked with Carlos about ayahuasca and he told us that he knew someone who could perform the ceremony for us.
