As abruptly as the western edge of the Andes erupts from the lowlands of the Pacific, the chain’s eastern edge plunges thousands of meters to the sweltering, seething immensity of the Amazon Basin. This is not a manicured tourist “rainfor-est”; this is tropical jungle at its most feral. The untamed expanse of northeastern Peru alone is larger than Germany. Though most people think of it simply as a geo-graphic region, those who have visited know that the jungle is our planet at its most alive. It certainly has the wildlife to support that claim. Created by a chorus of howler monkeys, toucans, crocodiles, jaguars, the mighty anaconda, and thou-sands of insects, some of the nocturnal noises that travels through the darkness of the jungle are best left unrepeated. Spend a few days exploring its depths from Puerto Moldanado and Iquitos in Per?, or Coca in Ecuador, and you’ll likely feel the same. If unsettled wilderness sounds a little bit too fore-boding, take refuge in a jungle lodge, most of which offer the basic comforts of civ-ilization, but still make visitors feel hard-core. Many of these guided excursions in Ecuador leave from Macas, Tena, and Misahuall.
