Imagine yourself walking through the great, endless Amazon forest. You came here to see wildlife. But all that you see is lots of tree trunks rather than even one mammal in sight! Did you spend all that money to end up in the wrong spot?
Most animals move about through the canopies of the trees. Looking up from the forest floor, your eyesight is limited, because the undergrowth along with the foliage is in your way. From the relative darkness on the ground, you get blinded when you look up towards the sky and the leaves above you appear almost black. That makes it very difficult to see the birds and mammals.
It is much easier to view wildlife and flowers from the water since they manoeuvre around, respectively are in the shrubs and lower branches of the trees along the shores. But such advantage primarily works best for narrow rivers.
On the wider waters of the Amazon, birdwatching and observing wildlife is usually much less successful, because they are often so wide that they almost seem seas. On the Amazon head waters, though, one is like being inside the rainforest but, there's sufficient light passing the opening of the stream, to spot flowers, birds and mammals on the branches and shrubs along the shores.
As upper watersheds have the creeks, aforementioned are most common in the foothills of the lower Andes. However with the terrain being hilly in the majority of the upper Amazon, few rivers close to the Andes are navigable and there are hardly any lakes in the lowlands of the Andes-Amazon countries. Cuyabeno Reserve, however, has a uniquely flat plain. It is a large plate with a shallow exit, forcing water to build up and thus creating more than a dozen of scenic lakes, interconnected by creeks and narrow natural canals. The park is amongst the few parks in the world exactly on 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 to 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 fewer than 2 hours by bus on a new tarmac road brings you to the park entrance. Many visitors find Cuyabeno National Park the very best Amazon reserve on earth!
While not excessively luxurious, the Cuyabeno Lodge is regarded as the comfortable lodge on the Cuyabeno Lake. Rainforest Alliance certified, the lodge has been constructed 25 years ago by a small grouping of conservation biologists during a period when the park had been invaded buy illegal settlers. The initiators planned to provide alternative income from ecotourism for the local communities in an era when there still wasn't any tourism to the area.
Now, twentyfive years later, the park is no longer threatened, but the owners religiously watch over the quality of the buildings, the service and the excursions. To them it is very important that each and every visitor goes home with memories that last a lifetime. Built on the only hill on a peninsula overlooking the Cuyabeno Lake, the Lodge has a canopy observation tower with a fabulous view on both the forest and the lake. With a modern solar installation, the Cuyabeno Lodge provides electricity 24 hours electricity every room and the restaurant and library while there are hot showers for all the guests. No other lodge in the reserve offers so many amenities.The lodge also facilitates the ranger station of the National Park Service; the canopy observation tower being the highest spot in the entire area, the cellular phone unit of the tower also functions as the alarm center of the reserve.
Most animals move about through the canopies of the trees. Looking up from the forest floor, your eyesight is limited, because the undergrowth along with the foliage is in your way. From the relative darkness on the ground, you get blinded when you look up towards the sky and the leaves above you appear almost black. That makes it very difficult to see the birds and mammals.
It is much easier to view wildlife and flowers from the water since they manoeuvre around, respectively are in the shrubs and lower branches of the trees along the shores. But such advantage primarily works best for narrow rivers.
On the wider waters of the Amazon, birdwatching and observing wildlife is usually much less successful, because they are often so wide that they almost seem seas. On the Amazon head waters, though, one is like being inside the rainforest but, there's sufficient light passing the opening of the stream, to spot flowers, birds and mammals on the branches and shrubs along the shores.
As upper watersheds have the creeks, aforementioned are most common in the foothills of the lower Andes. However with the terrain being hilly in the majority of the upper Amazon, few rivers close to the Andes are navigable and there are hardly any lakes in the lowlands of the Andes-Amazon countries. Cuyabeno Reserve, however, has a uniquely flat plain. It is a large plate with a shallow exit, forcing water to build up and thus creating more than a dozen of scenic lakes, interconnected by creeks and narrow natural canals. The park is amongst the few parks in the world exactly on 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 to 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 fewer than 2 hours by bus on a new tarmac road brings you to the park entrance. Many visitors find Cuyabeno National Park the very best Amazon reserve on earth!
While not excessively luxurious, the Cuyabeno Lodge is regarded as the comfortable lodge on the Cuyabeno Lake. Rainforest Alliance certified, the lodge has been constructed 25 years ago by a small grouping of conservation biologists during a period when the park had been invaded buy illegal settlers. The initiators planned to provide alternative income from ecotourism for the local communities in an era when there still wasn't any tourism to the area.
Now, twentyfive years later, the park is no longer threatened, but the owners religiously watch over the quality of the buildings, the service and the excursions. To them it is very important that each and every visitor goes home with memories that last a lifetime. Built on the only hill on a peninsula overlooking the Cuyabeno Lake, the Lodge has a canopy observation tower with a fabulous view on both the forest and the lake. With a modern solar installation, the Cuyabeno Lodge provides electricity 24 hours electricity every room and the restaurant and library while there are hot showers for all the guests. No other lodge in the reserve offers so many amenities.The lodge also facilitates the ranger station of the National Park Service; the canopy observation tower being the highest spot in the entire area, the cellular phone unit of the tower also functions as the alarm center of the reserve.
About the Author:
Renowned tropical biologist Dr. Vreugdenhil tells you what to look out for when you select your national park to explore the Rainforest. To fully enjoy the Amazon, your lodge should neither be primitive nor excessively luxurious.
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