Samona Lodge; Cuyabeno

I'm jumping my trip to the coast of Esraldas, where I saw a few birds, but only 18 new birds, which is nothing if you consider that I had never been at the coast and was at a completely new habitat. My personal favourite there were the cute Pacific Parrotlets. Also did I see Rufous-necked Wood-Rail, White-throated Crake and Stripe-billed Aracari, but not a single new shorebird could I add to my list. Magnificient Frigatebirds and Brown Pelicans were abundant and a single Blue-footed Booby led me to a colony of sleeping boobies.

But apart from that this trip wasn't dedicated to birding and so I won't write much about it. Oh yes, there were also some Green Iguanas.

But now I'll write about my experiences in Cuyabeno. Cuyabeno is situated in northeastern Ecuador. It has some magnificient lagoons with trees standing in the middle of the water. My parents had come from Germany and we were going to travel through Ecuador. Cuyabeno was our first trip.

I had much fun, since the people were all very nice and I saw tons of new animals. Only the fact that our guide didn't have the eye for animals as the other guides was frustrating. He was quite funny, but I'd liked to have been with Neiser during the trip... He saw everything

But well I saw many things:
Mammals: Pink River Dolphins, Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth, White-tailed Titimonkey, Yellow-handed Titimonkey, Monk Saki Monkey, Common Wooly Monkey, Common Squirrelmonkey, White-fronted Capuchin, White-lined Sac-winged Bat, some more bats
Although we got to see Squirrel monkeys almost daily, it was almost impossible to get pictures, where the face wasn't hidden...
A White-lined Sac-winged Bat
On the last day we finally saw a sloth!


Reptiles: Black Cayman, Anaconda, Amazon Tree Boa, 2 Anoli and 1 Skink species, Black-and-white Tegu, 1 big lizard they called I think Dracanaea...
This Amazon Tree Boa was the first snake on our jungle tour...
Our first Anaconda followed soon...
Our second Anaconda was much larger, than the first one. Almost 3 metres...
The gigantic Tegu mesured aproximately 80cm!
A baby Black Cayman


Amphibies: Smoky Jungle Frog, various different frogs and toads
A toad, that ressembles the leafs very much!
Another of those toads
Another frog, that ressembles leaves, a glassfrog.
A little visitor to our dining room...


Fish: Arapaima, Red, Golden and Silver Piranha, different smaller fish

Insects and other crawlies: Tarantulas, whip spiders, katycids, spiders, beatles, millipeds and especially butterflies were abundant and everywhere. It was impossible of getting a good picture of the big morphos but I got a few other interesting ones...
During the night we found this gigantic katycid
Also was there this terrifying looking whip spider...
In our dining rooms roof, were at least 7 of these tarantulas...
We ate those larvaes, which tastes like coconut milk, but not too good...
I was told this was the only diurnal moth existing... Looks very pretty for a moth








All those butterflies were just around the lodge...


Birds: Many,many so here's just a list of my favourites: Blue-and-yellow and Scarlet Macaw, Mealy Amazon, Green Ibis, Cocoi Heron,Rufescent Tiger-Heron, Spix's Guan, Anhinga, Hoatzin, Common Potoo, Common Paurauque, White-chinned Jacamar, Ivory-billed Aracari, Chestnut Woodpecker, asked Crimson Tanager, Green-and-gold Tanager, Purple Honeycreeper, Sungrebe and many more...
A White-throated Toucan
The Common Potoo, one of the weirdest birds in the world...
The very beautiful Red-capped Cardinal...
A Green Kingfisher and his very large beak
Hoazins were the favourite birds of many of the tourists, including me...



It was an incredible experience and it was just cool to swim with a baby anaconda, eat while you know, you are watched by 7 tarantulas and watch the monkeys jump. We swam in the lagoons, while the sun was going down and I fished the biggest piranha of the group... It just made fun :-)