Experience the Yasuní National Park

Four days exploring the Yasuní National Park: Parrot clay licks, Kapok tree tower and Canopy walkway.

Day 1:

After breakfast: Pick up from your hotel in Quito and transfer to the Airport for your domestic flight to Coca City.

After your arrival at Coca, you will have a break and snack at the Lodge’s office, during which your guide will share instructions for our journey. We will take a scenic one-hour ride on the Napo River via motorized canoe.

The Amazon experience starts with a short walk along a very easy trail where you can see squirrels and tamarin monkeys. After this half hour walk, the native guides will take you in a dugout canoe to the main oxbow lake, where the lodge is located.

A refreshing welcome cocktail awaits you upon arrival at this little paradise in the rainforest. After a short introduction about the lodge, you will be taken to your cabins in order to get ready for your first walk in the forest.

Day 2:

Experience the unique Canopy Walk, a walkway on the wild side.

In order to maximize our wildlife viewing, we need to make early starts each day, as the rainforest animals are most actively foraging for food shortly after dawn.

We will have breakfast as the sun rises, then we start a short, moderate walk to the canopy bridge, located at 36m/94ft high over the treetops. This walkway offers an astounding opportunity to spot dozens of animals, including colorful birds, monkeys, unique epiphytes, and perhaps the charming Sloth will show up on the top of cecropia trees.

After a few hours exploring this breathtaking forest, we will start walking back to the lodge. This easy hike will be done with a native guide, who will point out an array of medicinal plants. You will also be amazed to see the myriad of skills the local people have developed to create tools for hunting, fishing and for making clothing.

Once we return to the lodge, we have a cold local drink while admiring the beauty of the oxbow lake. During your break, you will have the chance to swim in a lake pool, a unique opportunity to dive into the black waters of the Amazon basin.

After a delicious local lunch, you will have some time to relax or take a siesta, about midafternoon. Afterward, we will go out to explore the creeks by a dugout canoe, a relaxing and easy activity. Paddling in the streams is like traveling into a tunnel that leads to a lost world. You will be entranced by melodic bird calls, dozens of monkeys jumping from tree to tree, and maybe a mythical anaconda will surprise us during this expedition.

After a couple of hours, we will return to the lodge to admire the sunset over the lake. You will then have a delicious gourmet dinner prepared by local chefs using local products.

After dinner, we will take a short walk on one of the trails near the lodge. The nocturnal walks will surprise you with several species of frogs and snakes. If we are lucky, perhaps the mysterious Night Monkey which resides higher up in the trees will be in attendance too. After an hour and a half, we go back to our cabins to rest and listen to the songs of different nocturnal animals.

Day 3:

Exploring the Yasuní parrot clay licks and the Napo River, the main tributary of the Amazon River.

After an early breakfast at 5:00am, we get ready to start the journey to Yasuní National Park, taking a motorized canoe to explore the river banks looking for birds and monkeys. After half an hour, we will arrive at the parrot clay lick, a wall cover, consisting of terracotta clay. In ideal conditions (sunny and dry) hundreds of parrots will perch on and eat the exposed clay in a spectacular show of sound and color.

Later on, we will visit the interpretation center of Providencia Community, located inside the National park. We will learn about the community's day-to-day lives-how they use plants for medicine in the jungle, how they fish in the creeks, and how they harvest local products. You will also see how the women in the community prepare traditional food, along with an opportunity to sample. In addition, you will see some of the challenges of getting to school in the communities. It's an intimate, unique experience, in which we discover both the differences and similarities between our own and another culture. After a couple of hours sharing with these beautiful ladies, we will return to the lodge for lunch and some relaxing time in the lake pool.

Our last activity this afternoon will be paddling the creek that leads to the magical kapok tree tower. Here you will have an intimate connection with one of the tallest trees in the rainforest. The most amazing thing is you will be able to both hug the trunk and see the top of this iconic tree! Feeling the leaves and walking between the massive branches will make you feel like a kid running in their own tree house. We will finish our journey looking for caimans from the canoe on the way back to the lodge.

After dinner, you either have another night walk or go canoe paddling in the lake.

Day 4:

Transfer to Coca city for your flight to Quito

After a delicious cup of coffee and breakfast, we will start our return journey to Coca. On the way to the port, we will explore the lake, creek and the main trail, where there is always wonderful wildlife and stunning flowers to admire and photograph.

Once we arrive at Coca, we will have a mid-morning snack, after which you will receive your flight tickets and be transferred to the airport for your local flight to Quito.

This tour links with the four-day nature experience. Exploring high Andes and cloud forest, in the western slopes of the Andes.