Martin and Sylvia in Japan

Monday, May 19, 2025

Mashpi Lodge Day 2

This morning we started with birdwatching, with a guide called Andres. He’s from the nearby town of Pacto (as are 80% of the employees here), and his father has a farm but also used to help the logging companies get lumber out of this area with his mules. Andres thinks it’s cool that now he gets to help conserve the forest that they’d been tearing down.

After breakfast, we did a river walk hike and learned a bit more about the forest.

This is called a walking palm. It can send roots in the direction of the sun and MOVE between 3 and 10 meters in 20 years.

The spikes of the walking palm are so sharp that Amazon tribes use it as a grater.

^us with a 500 year old mashpi magnolia tree (a new species found here)

This is a copal tree, whose sap smells like bengay and is used by locals as an anesthetic. The sap can also help start a fire because it’s very flammable (it’s hard to start a fire here because everything is very wet)

These are ficus roots on the copal tree— the ficus will eventually overtake the copal tree and kill it. As Andres said “trees eat other trees here.”

This weird sap helps protect new roots and kill any insects that try and eat it— and then the tree dissolves those insects.

Sylvia immediately got water in her boots but it was a pleasant feeling ultimately.

Very freaky looking Aragog-like spiders (that’s for Adir if he ever reads this). They’re called fisher spiders and they hang out by water and then rappel down when they see little insects or tiny tadpoles in the water. Then they rappel back up.

The wet rocks were good for face painting

River walk!

After the river walk, we headed back to the lodge via the Dragonfly gondola. It was absolutely incredible to be high above the forest.

About to board the gondola

This is a palm flower—the palm trees are all in bloom now.

Then we got back to the Lodge and treated ourselves to massages—Martins was amazing and Sylvia’s was awful (but refunded!).

Then we had lunch and rushed to our next expedition, which was hummingbird watching. But after a 20 minute bumpy van ride to get there, and after seeing 4 hummingbirds and realizing we would be there another hour, Sylvia got them to drive us back early. Everyone was confused as to why we would do this—there is a slightly cult-y vibe here— but they don’t know that we see plenty of hummingbirds at 5524 South Dawson street.

So we had a lazy afternoon reading and napping and finally feeling ready to come home tomorrow. Then we sampled some cocktails, had an excellent dinner, and called it a night.

Mashpi Lodge Day 1

We woke up in Quito and a driver from Mashpi Lodge, Ivan, met us at 730 for the four hour drive to the lodge. We travelled with an Australian couple from Brisbane who had just done a yoga retreat for a week in the Galapagos. Ivan was full of facts about Ecuador as we drove from the considerable elevation of Quito, through the equator, and down into the cloud forest. Unfortunately he did not speak much English so Sylvia was a four-hour long translator for the Australian couple.

Worst interior design of any hotel?

Equator again!

The moment we crossed the equator

We learned that there is the oso andino, or bespectacled bear, nearby. It’s supposed to be extremely cute but only really seem October-December

On the way, we learned all about Ecuador from Ivan. Apparently there were Incas here too but they were mostly held off by the other earlier native people. Also, Ecuador and Peru have a long history of war and in the process Ecuador lost most of the Amazon to Peru.

The most interesting conversation to me though was about Ecuadors economy. Number 1 is petroleum, drilled for in the Amazon. This is followed by a rose exportation business, mostly shipping out to Russia. Ecuadorian roses apparently grow very very tall at altitude (this region is unusual because it’s essentially tropical but at altitude), which allows the roses to stay intact long distances while they are shipped (they keep the stems really long which helps). Then other exports included banana and fruits, then cacao for nestle and big Swiss chocolatiers, and then coffee (but Ivan said they are obviously not as good at coffee as Colombia).

Bathroom break!

Ivan

Ivan also gave us a really interesting perspective on the Galapagos. He said that most Ecuadorians never set foot on the Galapagos—it’s too expensive, and the conservation efforts have really limited immigration and tourism there. The tension between conservation and people’s economic interests is really complicated—I recommend the Radiolab Galapagos episode. Apparently at one point local fishermen became so angry about increasing restrictions put in place to preserve species that they started burning buildings in the Galapagos and trigger warning—slitting tortoises throats.

Landscape kept changing

Oso andino on a mural

This is a sugarcane area and in that little hut is where they make alcohol from sugar cane and also a special sweetener

Then we finally arrived at Mashpi lodge after the last 45 minutes of extremely bumpy road, which Ivan called our free massage!

Mashpi is a carbon-neutral ecolodge that is privately owned and whose property is actually in the transition zone from cloud forest to tropical rain forest.