Marysville Travel and Cruise Company - Marysville, Washington

South America

The Amazon

By Paul Dye

Are you one of those persons who would like to "someday" visit the Amazon Jungle but don't know where or how to start. That's exactly the position we were in when someone advised us about La Selva Resort, located near the Rio Napo River in Easter Ecuador.

From the U.S.A. you travel to Quito, Ecuador, a large city nestled in a valley of the Andes Mountain Range. There you board a local airline for a short hop over the Andes to Coca, a bustling oilfield town. At Coca, La Selva's motorized dugout canoes whisk you 60 miles down the Rio Napo River, a tributary of the Amazon, through jungle inhabited by scores of wildlife species and primitive (but peaceful) native people.

After landing at La Selva's Pier, you travel over land for 1 mile on a raised bamboo walkway until you reach the lake. At this point your native guides assist you boarding another dugout canoe. Your canoe is paddled across the lake to a dock where you begin a luxurious tropical getaway.