Mom's annual visit

My mom comes from California every year, and we do something different.  This year a friend of mine mentioned a cool Amazon river trip, so we asked a couple other friends and made it happen. Four of us left from San Jacinto by bus to Quito...wow, 8 hours later we finally arrived. Beautiful scenery but a looooong day.

Next day after early coffee,  our tour guide and two other ladies picked us up and off we went. We had a full day of travel by van, ugh...sure wish we hadn't spent all day the day before on the bus. The area we were traveling had had some serious land and rock slides due to rain, so we got to see some really horrific sights, of course that meant some wonderful waterfalls too. The road was closed to trucks, so the usual stop for lunch was closed, so we pressed on til about 4:30 where we stopped for the night.

After a good nights sleep and breakfast we again took off East. Finally we got to the boat launch...where we waited...and waited,  and waited. 

We were waiting for a couple more people for our canoe, finally we were loaded and ready for...a couple hour boat ride, yippee!

We did see an Anaconda, very small and maybe some birds, but it was an uneventful long boat ride, and we were all very ready to not be sitting down!

The Eco lodge we stayed in had several little cabins, solar panels for some electricity and hot water, but for the most part off the grid! Everything came in by canoe. We had no wi fi, and could only charge our devices from 6-10pm when it was lights out! And wow, was it dark!! So, after what seemed like weeks getting there, we were finally in the Amazon (but it really wasnt, hahaa) 

More to come, so stay tuned...the adventure continued!