We`re five guys who want to take a trip to the jungle in  Ecuador’s Amazon region.
From a town at the edge of the forest we manage to organize a guide who lives in a village deep in the jungle.  He is willing to accompany us on our trip and tells us over the radio what we need to bring. He also suggests we should take food with us. At the airport we charter a small Airplane, agree on the price for the return trip, the time for tomorrow’s departure and the pick up day and time. With six people including pilot and our luggage we are close to the weight limit for the plane.The flight goes smoothly and we’re landing save on a short grass-strip cut into the Forest. The whole village comes to greet us at the „airport.“ It is a very small village, actually only a few scattered huts along a river. Our guide, Danilo,  is also the village chief. He takes us to his house on stilts and we are welcomed with a cup of tea. He invites us to spend the first night on the floor of his terrace. Luckily I have my mosquito net with me because at night its teeming with mosquitoes and in the morning huge bumble bee-like insects armed with a long spike, fly from the jungle right through the open hut, down to the river. Early in the morning, after coffee, rice and beans, we load up the long dugout canoe with our equipment and enough fuel for the outboard motor. Our guide takes one of his friends along for additional support. Off we go, floating slowly downstream, without the motor running to safe fuel, drifting away from any inhabited settlement. On the way, we buy a bulk of cooking bananas from an oncoming canoeist as additional food supply. After 6 hours, we reach two ruined, overgrown but still partially covered huts, right on the riverbank This huts on stilts will be our home for the next few days. The five of us stay in one hut, our guides in the other. The floors and walls are still reasonably intact and the roof seems, except for a few holes, still leak-proof. So we settle in and each sets up his night camp. The following days we fish, with net and leash, make excursions into the forest on foot or canoe, or paddle to a nearby lagoon to fish and watch caimans. Our Guides occasionally shoot a bird as a supplement to rice, beans and bananas. On one excursion, they kill two wild boars, which are immediately gutted in a small creek. In camp, the guides build a grate of wood, on which the meat is laid out in small pieces in order to dry over the fire. During a nightly excursion to the lagoon for night-fishing we see the glowing eyes of the caimans moving about in the water. As we get close to one of the animals our guide harpoons it. We didn’t actually want him to, but it was already too late to intervene. I assume the guides want to stockpile some meat for their families. In camp the five of us cut off pieces  to grill over the fire. Delicious, best meet ever. But our guides say we should not do that because eating the meat like this would make us sick. We ignore that and keep on grilling. But then I recall that they eat everything except fish, cooked in water. Birds, into the water, crocodile meat into the water. I think this behavior derives from the missionaries who told them to cook everything in order to not get sick. By the way, we did not get sick. After four days of jungle adventure and many educational jungle lessons from our guides we return to civilization, respectively to the village. On the evening before our departure Danilo invites the entire village to a delicious crocodile- pork- meat dinner and later we party till late into the night with a lot of local schnapps.

The next morning return flight in the same small plane to real civilization