First Stop Panacocha
Our plan was just to get to Panacocha and see what happens. We opted to pass on the5 day $350 per person jungle lodge experience since nature watching with a 2 year old is unrealistic and a buzz kill for other tourists in the group. We set out on our own.

Panacocha is about 5-6 hours down river. We took a cargo boat down the Rio Napo river and got out at this tiny small village. We found one place to stay which was quite rustic. We had a tree full of black vultures, a pig, lots of chickens, and some cool spiders as our neighbors. We shared two small beds with mosquito nets. The bugs were bad. Not so much the mosquitos, but the tiny noseeums were awful. We just kind of hung out. The kids played as they always do. One made nests and pretended she was a bird. The other was really into the dirt. Mom just passed the time laying around and trying not to get to aggrevated by the heat and bugs. We took short walks into the jungle and saw amazing things. But it´s not a tame environment and one little T got 3 stings in her foot and our jungle walks were cut short. Daddy also got some stings in the rainforest.

After two nights in Panacocha we hooked up with a group of Ecuadorean Tourism advisors and caught a ride with them to a nearby lagoon. It was about an hour and a half ride up a tributary. The real jungle cruise! We were weaving around all kinds of downed trees. It was fabulous. They happened to get out at the Amazon Dolphin Lodge to check it out. We hopped out too and worked out a deal with the lodge people to stay for two nights. It turned out to be the same tour we had opted out of earlier. But we worked out a deal to stay on with them the rest of the week and catch a ride back to Coca.

I think we had the best of both worlds. The small quaint local experience was more teamT style...make it up as you go. But the ecolodge provided some comforts and a fabulous guide to enrich our experience in the thick of it.