Paseo de los Monos

The morning skies were beautiful and revealed the glaciated peak of Antisana. 

Today was Christine's birthday and last night before bed Dd wrapped a gift for his momma and drew on it with a marker. It was a very touching act of kindness for the person he loves the most in the whole world. She waited for him to wake up to open it. It was a gluten free cracker she enjoys. He snuck it in his small shopping cart yesterday at the store. 

They homeschooled a bit and I went to talk to the German couple parked next to us in the Defender. They were Klaus and Luisa and had been on the continent for two years and two months in Ecuador and were planning on going to Venezuela and then back into Brazil.

We headed down the mountain and had a four hour drive ahead of us. We stopped for gas and dumped our cassette and filled up water and had lunch. We crossed the Napo river, three hours upstream of Coca, where the Sacha lodge was. Google maps directed to a smaller bridge that had a low bar that we would have clipped on the window.

We continued on to Puyo and a monkey sanctuary that David and Francine recommended. We could even camp across the street.

The sanctuary was great. It was only $3 for adults and $2.50 for kids. There were monkeys in the trees and in the pens.

The trails were very Amazonian but the best part was when the non caged monkeys came up and searched our shorts for food.

This was at the kapok or Ceiba tree and monkeys climbed around and then feeding time everyone came over to get hand outs including the wild monkeys. One monkey sat on a German man and laid in his lap.

We left and planned on parking across the street and paid the lady $2 to park in her parking lot but the weather report predicted rain all night and tomorrow and there was a rocky hill we would have to climb to leave and I decided it was safer to leave today while the road was dry.

There were a few options to boondocks camp but I found a campground across the river about 30 minutes away but when we got there it looked closed down. There was a slippery part where our back side slid off the road into a ditch but I was able to keep the RV moving and got out of the ditch in less than a second. Later after texting the campground it turns out it was up a steep rocky path we would not have attempted.

We continued on to a waterfall parking lot. This road we were on was the ruta de las cascadas, or road of waterfalls.

We parked at Machay waterfall and there were flying insects trying to get through our screens and it was warm out. I put away the sleeping bag. We might be sleeping with the AC on tonight.