Sacha Lodge Amazon Rainforest

Day one starts after being collected from your hotel in Quito before a short flight to Coca. After making your way to the docks of the Napo River, you board a motorized canoe and embark on a two-hour trip downstream.

At the end of the first leg you arrive at the beginning of the Sacha Reserve, where you traverse a boardwalk for half an hour until you reach the shores of Lake Pilchicocha. After hopping into canoes, Sacha Lodge staff takes you across the lake to the Rainforest luxury lodge.  

One suggestion for the first day is a visit to the Butterfly House, where you can explore the breeding process of some of the forty species of butterflies that thrive in the Sacha Reserve.

Yellow swallowtails, blue morphs, glass-wing butterflies, and nocturnal owl butterflies are a few of the species that you can observe up close in the open air, flying room - a butterfly sanctuary where the winged creatures have the rule of the roost.

After an early breakfast, one of the Sacha lodge activities worth getting up for is the canopy walk, a 94 feet (36 meters) high, 940-foot (275-meter) suspension bridge over the canopy of the jungle that gives you an eagle-eyed view of the surrounding treetops and the creatures that live in their branches. Keep a lookout of monkeys, macaws, toucans, and harpy eagles, bustling with life in the morning hours.

After lunch in the afternoon, a different experience at the Amazon Rainforest lodge is a forest walk, where the creatures of the lower part of the jungle are found with the help of a naturalist guide. Crested owls, spider monkeys, and a myriad of insects, frogs, and spiders are en force here, and the trip through the dense foliage opens up new paths into the natural world. After dinner, night hikes take you into a world where snakes, caiman, and stick insects come out of the woods.

After an early morning breakfast on day three, more bird watching awaits at the nearby Yasuni clay lick. A short canoe ride away and a heaven for the 30 or so species of parrots, macaws, and parakeets-arriving early in the morning gets you there in time to see the flock descend from high above for feeding. It’s a natural kaleidoscope of color and a somewhat clumsy symphony of movement that sparks the imagination and amazes the senses.

After a yummy lunch with a view of the lake at Sacha Lodge, head over to the Kapok Tower, a 130-ft observation tower built high in the branches of a gigantic Kapok tree. From the skyward vantage point, the massive scope of the Sacha Reserve comes into focus, as do the creatures that live in the tree tops. Guides point out birds of prey like the harpy eagle - a predator that stays up high until it spots smaller birds of the lower layers of the canopy to swoop down upon.

After breakfast and a last leisurely stroll around the Rainforest luxury lodge and the shores of the lake, goodbyes are said to the staff of Sacha Lodge and the return trip ensues. It’s often said that the best rainforest trip is one that awakens the wonders of nature, and on the journey back to the modern world thoughts begin to take shape about preserving the jungle for generations to discover for themselves.

Sacha Lodge began as a smaller version of its current self, growing in size as the word got out about the reserve, the lodge, and the strides that they were making to protect the forest from logging and threats from the outside world.

After discovering the wonders within the Sacha Lodges borders, a seed is planted that stays with you for years to come with the hopes that the jungle continues to inspire those who take the journey to visit it.