Imagine yourself walking through the great, never ending Amazon Jungle. You came here to watch wildlife. But all you see is a lot of tree trunks and not even one single mammal in sight! Did you spend all that money to end up in the wrong location?
The fact is that the majority of the animals spend most of their time high up in the trees. From the forest floor, your can't distinguish them very well, as they are high up in 30 m high trees. Moreover, you look up from the relative darkness of the forest floor and from where you are, the leaves almost look black as a result of contrast between the light of the sky and the darkness of the leaves. Consequently, it is rather hard to see the animals, not to mention recognize their features and identify them.
Only from the water you can distinguish the birds, flowers and mammals as they perch and move around in the shrubs and lower trees along the waterside. However, this only is the case along narrow streams. Along the| wider rivers, it is rather rare to see wildlife along the shores.
From the wider waters of the Amazon, birdwatching and observing wildlife can often be much less successful, since they are often so wide that they can almost seem seas. On the Amazon head waters, though, one is like being inside the rainforest yet, there's sufficient light passing the opening of the narrow river, to spot flowers, birds and mammals on the branches and shrubs along the shores.
As creeks are most abundant in the headwaters, the streams are typically located in the Andes foothills. But due to the hilly terrain, few Amazon headwaters are navigable and only one network of interconnected lakes is known in the Andes countries, the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve. Aforementioned features a bowl-shaped plain which has a shallow outlet, so that water builds up, thus creating a large forested swamp. It is also one of the few reserves on the planet extending on both sides of the equator.
Neither Colombia, Peru, Venezuela nor Bolivia possess an Amazon park with the same convenient access as Cuyabeno and nowhere else in South America, can one get so easily into a nature reserve in the Amazon forest at such affordable prices: Thirty minutes by airplane gets you from Quito to LagoAgrio, at the beginning of Ecuador's Northern Amazon region and less than 2 hours by bus over a new tarmac road brings you to the park entrance. Many guests find Cuyabeno Fauna Reserve the very best Amazon reserve on earth!
Of the ten or so lodges in the Cuyabeno Fauna Reserve, the Cuyabeno Lodge is the better equipped and situated on the shore of Cuyabeno Lake. It is certified by the Rainforest Alliance and owned and operated by a small grouping of wildlife biologists, the Cuyabeno Lodge was constructed in the nineteen eighties to provide alternative income for local communities when the park was being settled illegally for agricultural purposes. At the time they started there wasn't any tourism at all.
Nowadays, the reserve has stopped being threatened and with 14,000 visitors per year, the government is aware of the significance of park. To the owners of the Cuyabeno Lodge, it is important that every single customer leaves with a lasting impression, not just of Cuyabeno but of the beauty and significance about the entire tropical rainforest. They always work at improving the quality of both the lodge as well as the excursions. A tree crown tower overlooks the lake. With the combined elevation of its observation tower on the top of the hill on which the lodge is built, the cellphone system of the lodge has the best signal in the area. The ranger station of Ecuador's Protected Areas Agency resides on the land of the lodge and the tower functions as the alarm center for the entire area. The lodge also has a solar system that gives power 24 hours, facilitating battery charging for cameras and light in every building. The lodge even offers hot showers for its
The fact is that the majority of the animals spend most of their time high up in the trees. From the forest floor, your can't distinguish them very well, as they are high up in 30 m high trees. Moreover, you look up from the relative darkness of the forest floor and from where you are, the leaves almost look black as a result of contrast between the light of the sky and the darkness of the leaves. Consequently, it is rather hard to see the animals, not to mention recognize their features and identify them.
Only from the water you can distinguish the birds, flowers and mammals as they perch and move around in the shrubs and lower trees along the waterside. However, this only is the case along narrow streams. Along the| wider rivers, it is rather rare to see wildlife along the shores.
From the wider waters of the Amazon, birdwatching and observing wildlife can often be much less successful, since they are often so wide that they can almost seem seas. On the Amazon head waters, though, one is like being inside the rainforest yet, there's sufficient light passing the opening of the narrow river, to spot flowers, birds and mammals on the branches and shrubs along the shores.
As creeks are most abundant in the headwaters, the streams are typically located in the Andes foothills. But due to the hilly terrain, few Amazon headwaters are navigable and only one network of interconnected lakes is known in the Andes countries, the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve. Aforementioned features a bowl-shaped plain which has a shallow outlet, so that water builds up, thus creating a large forested swamp. It is also one of the few reserves on the planet extending on both sides of the equator.
Neither Colombia, Peru, Venezuela nor Bolivia possess an Amazon park with the same convenient access as Cuyabeno and nowhere else in South America, can one get so easily into a nature reserve in the Amazon forest at such affordable prices: Thirty minutes by airplane gets you from Quito to LagoAgrio, at the beginning of Ecuador's Northern Amazon region and less than 2 hours by bus over a new tarmac road brings you to the park entrance. Many guests find Cuyabeno Fauna Reserve the very best Amazon reserve on earth!
Of the ten or so lodges in the Cuyabeno Fauna Reserve, the Cuyabeno Lodge is the better equipped and situated on the shore of Cuyabeno Lake. It is certified by the Rainforest Alliance and owned and operated by a small grouping of wildlife biologists, the Cuyabeno Lodge was constructed in the nineteen eighties to provide alternative income for local communities when the park was being settled illegally for agricultural purposes. At the time they started there wasn't any tourism at all.
Nowadays, the reserve has stopped being threatened and with 14,000 visitors per year, the government is aware of the significance of park. To the owners of the Cuyabeno Lodge, it is important that every single customer leaves with a lasting impression, not just of Cuyabeno but of the beauty and significance about the entire tropical rainforest. They always work at improving the quality of both the lodge as well as the excursions. A tree crown tower overlooks the lake. With the combined elevation of its observation tower on the top of the hill on which the lodge is built, the cellphone system of the lodge has the best signal in the area. The ranger station of Ecuador's Protected Areas Agency resides on the land of the lodge and the tower functions as the alarm center for the entire area. The lodge also has a solar system that gives power 24 hours, facilitating battery charging for cameras and light in every building. The lodge even offers hot showers for its
About the Author:
Tropical ecologist Dr. Vreugdenhil tells you what to look out for when you select your destination to explore the tropical forest. To fully enjoy the Amazon, your hotel should neither be primitive nor excessively luxurious.
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