Location: Napo River / Cuyabeno Reserve / Yasuni National park

Sani Lodge

Includes:

• Accommodation in comfortable tent with: a mattress, sheets, pillows and candles.
• All meals starting with dinner in the first day and finishing with breakfast the last day.
• Snacks for all the excursions.
• Native and bilingual guide.
• Rubber boats and rain ponchos.
• All the excursions and private transportation from airport Coca to the lodge and viceversa.

Not Included:

• Air transportation from/to Quito. (Dreamkapture Travel can arrange your flights).
• Bus tickets
• Personal expenses
• extras
• tips

  

Accomodation and facilities:

• Cabins:

  Sani Lodge accommodates a maximum of 38 guests (at the cabins), emphasizing quality rather than quantity, and thereby offering you a more intimate experience with the amazon rainforest. The lodge itself consists of ten, private, thatch-roofed cabanas and 4 family size cabins, each with a private bathroom. The cabanas are spaciously designed for double or triple occupancy, and have screened in windows to guard against insects while you sleep. Electric lights at the lodge run from ecologically friendly solar energy.

• Camping:

  Our camping site is located 1 hour away from the Lodge, at the end of our Trail named Coto and near the Challuayaku stream of our Calluacocha black water lagoon. Once you arrive to the Lodge and have a warming welcoming from our staff, depart to the Camping site in a paddle canoe along with your naturalist guide, a cooker and a native guide whom will camp with you during your stay.Our camping site offers an exhilarating experience for our more adventurous travelers. At this site you will be able to feel the energy and the vivacity of the Amazon Rainforest.

  We have built wooden platforms with thatched roofs where we place the tents to provide extra shelter. We provide tents, mattresses, sheets, pillows, and drinking water. Please bring your own flashlight.At the site, there is a shower and a dry latrine to be used by our guests.

  All meals are prepared there by our chef and elaborated with the same quality. The activities are included in the price and are exactly the same as those offered to guests staying in the Lodge but depart and arrive to the Camping. Definitely, the site is made for people who want to live close to the experience of knowing the Ecuadorian jungle.

Summary of Activities:

• Fishing
• Hiking
• Blow gun's practice
• Observation Tower
• Excursions in the forest
• Night excursions
• Nocturnal navigation looking caimans
• Cultural activities visiting an indigenous community

Location:

• The Yarina Eco Lodge is located aprox. 25 Km down the NAPO river, from Puerto Francisco de Orellana (El Coca).
• Yarina Eco Lodge, is a privately owned rainforest reserve located near the Yasuni National Park. 
• It is in a cultural reserved zone that is set aside for indigenous Quichuas and amazonian peoples all in a primary upper rainforest.
• Yasuni National Park is one of the most biological diverse regions in the world. All located in the Amazon basin, border of the Napo River, major tributary of the amazon river.

Transportation:

• Regular flights from Quito to Coca departinga at 7:30 am.
• By bus: The company "Trans Esmeraldas" leaves from the bus station in Quito, (which is located in Carcelen at the northern zone of Quito at 1 hour from the main city), at 9:30 pm (of day before your trip starts). The trip lasts about 9 hours.
• If you take the bus at night you will travel the route: Quito - Baeza - Loreto - El Coca. This trip can last 9 hours.
• In Coca you will be met by an English speaking guide and shuttled from the airport to a waiting motorized canoe at the edge of the Napo River. During your float down the Napo River, enjoy a packed lunch and the opportunity to observe the unique flora and fauna of the area. We will travel down this river for about 3 hours before arriving to a small stream called Challuayacu.

Itinerary Program for Sani Lodge:

4 days and 3 nights.
Longer 5 day and 4 night option is available, and it is possible for 6, 7, and 8 day options upon request..

Day 1 arriving to Coca: Your journey starts with a 35-minute flight from Quito to Coca where the staff will pick you up and transfer to a local hotel located on the banks of Napo River. There, your bilingual guides will explain about safety before embarking for a 2 ½ boat trip on the largest Ecuadorian affluent of the Amazon, the Napo River. During the journey you get a taste of the Amazon; ancestral communities, birds such as: herons, egrets, vultures, while enjoying delicious packed lunch. The canoe ride is followed by a 15 minute walk through flooded forest and 20-minute paddle canoe across the beautiful Challuacocha Lake. The staff will welcome you with refreshing cold drinks and snacks before you settle down in your cabins.

Late afternoon, you will have a short walk on the nearby trails or a canoe ride with many chances to observe primates, Amazonian birds, black caimans and a close encounter with the amazing flora represented by cedar trees, orchids, and bromeliads. Return to the lodge, where our chef will be happy to offer a wide variety of national and international cuisine that caters vegetarians and vegans. Briefing about Amazonia will be given by one of our bilingual guides, while enjoying Ecuadorian beers, spirits and cocktails prepared by our bartender.

Day 2 Birding from Tower: After breakfast, experience the life on the tree tops from the 36 meter (108 ft.) observation tower. To get there your leaders will paddle on the Challuacocha Lake for 30 minutes followed by a short 10-minute walk. Over 565 species of birds have been registered so far, including colorful birds such as macaws, toucans, honeycreepers, tanagers, flycatchers, hummingbirds and with a bit of luck a close view of howler, squirrel monkeys or sloths resting on the canopy. The tower gives you a unique perspective, opening up a whole new world of Amazon biodiversity that is often difficult, if not impossible to see from the understory. The journey continues exploring the nearby trails searching for more Amazonian creatures. Return to the lodge for lunch.

After lunch there are many alternatives for your enjoyment, bird-watching from the dining hall or simply get relaxed on the hammocks. In the afternoon, hike Chorongo or Coto trails, fantastic terra-firme forest to discover the relationships among the different living creatures and the rol they play in this complex ecosystem. Orchids, vines, strangle figs, ancient trees; bromeliads are all part of this fabulous tropical rainforest. Diner at the lodge.

After diner explore our black-water Oxbow Lake, one of the increasingly rare havens for the endangered black caiman, supporting a healthy population of these large up to 6 meter (18ft.) long south-American crocodilian. Back to the lodge.

Day 3 Yasuni National Park: After breakfast departure to the Napo River to board the boat and visit the parrot-clay lick at Yasuní National Park for a wonderful view of hundreds of parrots searching for a gap to land and eat the earth. Here you will see Mealy Amazon, Yellow-crowned, Orange-winged and Blue-headed parrots. Continue with a hike on the south of the Napo inside Yasuní National Park considered for scientists like the mostbiodiverse area in the world, here, some species that cannot be found in the north might be spotted: golden–mantled tamarins and spider monkeys, Blue and yellow macaws and with a bit of luck a close encounter with white-lipped or collared peccaries. Head back to Sani Community Center to visit a native house to get a taste of how a typical Kichwa family lives.

Enjoy their food, drinks, customs, and culture of the Sani community and learn how the lifestyle of the locals is environmentally sustainable. Return to the lodge late in the afternoon for a well-deserved diner. After diner take a night walk to see how myriads of insects, spiders and frogs come alive.

Day 4 Going Back from Coca: The first day, your flight from Quito leaves early in the morning so you can get to the lodge before noon. Enjoy the afternoon on the lagoon and still have time to enjoy an evening´s activity. Your last day is far from ending, because it will be time for a final activity in the rainforest so as to close your stay with a flourish. Remember, you will have more time to spend doing the activities you love the most and enjoying the biodiversity that you will find only here in Sani Lodge.

The operator reserves the right to change the itinerary without warning due to weather conditions, National Park regulations or unforeseeable circumstances.