We breakfasted at the British Council on bacon, eggs, juice and coffee, with toast and marmalade at 7.30. After breakfast we went to catch a bus to the airport, but they were all full so we took a taxi. I sat in the front and became quite scared at the standard of driving. The brakes weren’t very good, and he didn’t like stopping for lights. We got to the airport at 9.15 and met two other travellers who were Yuturi bound. The first was a Chilean woman who had taught Spanish in Chicago for the past 10 years. She was called Sonia. The second was her colleague from Chicago who had grown up there, gone to university near San Francisco, and now taught in the 4th grade at a school in Chicago. Her name was Helena.

At 9.30 Anita, the tour organiser turned up, as promised, and gave us our tickets. She also checked us and our rucksacks in and saw us into the departures lounge.

There was a lot of confusion over which of the 3 gates we had to go through, but logically, since the passengers for Lago Alagrio departed through the gate marked ‘Coca’, so we departed through the gate marked ‘Lago Alagrio’. We left only 45 minutes late at 11.15.

As we flew away from Quito towards the East, the Andes fell away into the relatively flat forests of the Oriente. As we approached Coca we could see the vast size of the Rio Napo. Coca is a ghastly shanty town and I was glad that after a short trip across town in what might pass for a bus, we only had to wait for about half an hour before we were aboard our ‘canoe’ heading down the R.Napo towards the R.Yuturi.

On the trip down the R.Napo we were impressed by the size of the river and the sheer volume of water which must flow down it. It is full of trees and sandbanks and the cox had to keep switching sides to avoid these hazards. All the way down both sides of the river there are small settlements. There are also occasional oil wells. From time to time we saw turkey vultures and other birds.
 

After four hours we turned into the R.Yuturi which is much narrower than the R.Napo (over 1 mile to about 30m), but has a slower flow. The birds were much more prolific on the Yuturi. The most impressive bird which we saw was the snake bird which we saw dive into the water from it’s perch on a branch about 4 metres above the surface. It is so called because it sits so low in the water that only its snake like head and neck show above the surface. On arrival at the lodge we were surprised to see about a dozen well kept huts with palm roofs and bathrooms with showers. We were allocated to a 3 bed hut at the end of a row. Once we’d settled in we had about an hour to spare before supper, so we spent that time out on the river, near to the lodge, fishing with hook and line. There were a few bites, but nothing caught. It was just nice to enjoy the tranquillity of the river. To watch the sun birds sharing the sunset with us. On return to the lodge we had a very nice supper served to us - three courses and ½ glass of wine. After supper we met our guides, David Nash and a local indian called Innocentio. Our group consisted of we three plus Sonia and Helena.

Our first excursion was a night walk into the jungle behind the lodge. David explained to us how to hold the torch behind the eyes or just above the head, and look along the beam for the reflections of eyes looking back at us. We’d gone less than 100 yards and had stopped to admire a small tree lizard when I spotted a coral snake moving through the fallen leaves! This was only the fourth one our guide had seen, and even Maier, a guide who had been at Yuturi for over two years, had only ever seen four. It turned out to be the best find of our whole trip. We watched it for a few minutes, then moved on. That night we saw lizards, praying mantises, crickets, katydids, spiders (including the "trash spider") and stick insects. Dave also showed us the large centipedes which are in abundance in the jungle. "The difference between a centipede and a millipede," he explained, "is not the number of legs, but that there are four legs per segment (two pairs of two) on a millipede, and only two per segment on a centipede."