Not long after leaving the Puyo area this morning we got a taste of our first tropical rain storm. The small rivers crossing the road were running full of brown water and puddles were building up in the villages and along the road side. This gave us a little sample of why the road builders are so keen on the road side drains we have seen everywhere.

The rain cleared a little while before we pulled into the tourist village of Misahualli not far from the larger tourist town of Tena. Misahualli sits at the confluence of the Misahualli and Napo rivers. It was once a commercial port for traffic up and down the rivers but now it is just a tourist town; the transport role having been taken over by newer roads.

We took a canoe tour on the Rio Napo. The Napo which feed into the Amazon is a pretty impressive river in its own right (though not on the scale of the Amazon) quite wide and fast flowing. The canoe was of course powered by an outboard motor. Even the indigenous guides like some modern conveniences. During the cruise we met an older indian man panning for gold on the river bank. He said he finds on average 2 grams per day and gets $24 per gram. We also visited another jungle walk to see the medicinal plants and some animals. Very different to the previous days tour of medicinal plants and we got to see a number of local animals up close. As you can see the monkeys were pretty playful.

After the tour we decided to see if we could park in one of the hotels/hostals and were in the process of turning around in a large driveway when a man came up and asked what we wanted. So I asked about parking for the night. A few conversations and $10 later we had a nice shaded parking spot in the parking lot of CRE Misahualli Hospedaje. Quite a long name for what turned out to be a very large complex of rooms and cabins.