AMAZED IN THE AMAZON

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Jun 21, 2009 | by SUE JOLLY

BE careful what you wish for, they say. I've always longed to go to South America and I happen to like frogs. But now I'm in the Amazon rainforest in deepest Ecuador, I've decided that if I ever meet Kermit I may strangle him.

I'm due for a dawn wake-up call. But the noises Kermit's froggy pals and other creatures of the rainforest night are making are too interesting to let me sleep.

I'm getting used to the shrill peeps and trills - and a lot of loud chirping and buzzing - but something like a cross between a demented duck and a barking dog is getting going. What the heck is it? Insect? Amphibian? And something else sounds like a mechanical click. And it's getting closer. This is silly. On they go, peep- cheep, cheeppeep, trill-trill. It's fascinating.

That's what they don't tend to tell you about a rainforest - it's noisy at night. Especially if you are staying somewhere with just mesh in the windows and 5,000 acres of pristine forest outside.

Getting to Sacha Lodge was an adventure in itself. You fly over the Andes from Ecuador's capital of Quito, then take a two-hour, 50- mile motorised canoe trip down the River Napo - a wide, muddy- coloured tributary of the Amazon.

From there you amble along a raised boardwalk through about half- a-mile of flooded palm forest, clamber into a dugout canoe, get paddled along an inlet and emerge into tree-lined Pilchicocha Lake - at the opposite end of which is the eco-friendly lodge and private reserve (www.sachalodge.com).

There isn't a road for at least 30 miles. There's just you and your fellow guests, the lodge/restaurant/bar, 26 cabin rooms and the endless stretches of rainforest.

Oh, and about those fellow guests. You'll be thinking they must be an adventurous lot. Which they were. But they wouldn't be going home and telling Mum, Dad and the grandparents all about it. They were the grandparents.

Sacha Lodge is a destination for over-fifties specialist Saga. And some of my lot had gone a long way over 50. To 79 and 80 to be exact. But flying to Ecuador one day and journeying deep into the jungle the next didn't faze them a bit.

For some, nor did swimming in the lake with piranhas - which is something I drew the line at, even though there was no danger (piranhas, like sharks, have had a bad Press, apparently. No guest has ever been sent home as a skeleton).

Besides, there was too much other stuff to do. The Amazon rainforest is all you have been led to believe by wildlife programmes - and then some.

Of the two million known species of plants and animals, about half live only in rainforests. And Ecuador's chunk of the Amazon Basin has the lot - incredible vegetation, birds, beasts, reptiles and insects. I've never been anywhere so bursting with life. Not surprising really given that I was staying in an area next to the Yasuni National Park - said to be the most biologically diverse place on Earth.

Yes, it's hot and humid. Yes, there are things that can bite or sting - but none got me, and even mosquitoes weren't a problem as the water is too acidic for them to breed.

On our first evening, dusk found us being paddled up one of the backwaters. Bats - some of them fish-eaters - flitted over the water. We saw lilies that come out only at night, so bats can pollinate them, and the frogs and other night creatures calling up in the trees (some frogs never come down).

Howler, squirrel and capuchin monkeys scrabbled overhead, fireflies darted about and we caught sight of a caiman (small crocodile) whose eyes glowed an eerie red by torchlight.

Just as I thought it couldn't get better... we came out on to the lake and were paddled back under a magnificently starry sky.

The next day we spent hours on Sacha Lodge's unique claim to fame, a 94ft (30m) high, 940ft (257m) long walkway that puts you ABOVE the forest. Eat your heart out David Attenborough. He was famously winched into a rainforest canopy to see the wealth of life that lives only in the tree-tops. We just walked up.

About 550 species of birds have been recorded in the Napo region. Purple-throated fruit crows, toucans, parrots, macaws, double- toothed kites, hawk eagles, spangled cotingas (small birds like turquoise jewels). I saw the lot, along with butterflies with huge, electric blue wings, a pygmy marmoset, the smallest monkey in the world - and three crested owls asleep in a tree. And then there's the "ground" life. Army ants, leaf-cutter ants, caterpillars, vast termite nests, stick insects, a praying mantis and - on a night walk - a huge, furry tarantula and a cicada emerging from its pupa case. "That's a rare sight - like something on a wildlife film," our guide said. Quite.

Oh, and there was a cute red and black frog he picked up to show us. A poison dart frog. The sort that kills if the toxin on its skin gets into your bloodstream. Best not give Kermit ideas.

For a country only about half the size of France, Ecuador packs in an amazing range of scenery. Because it is on the equator (where do you think they got the name?) the coastal areas are warm enough to have coconut palms and mangrove swamps. Between them are the Andes, with snow-capped peaks that tower to more than 6,300m (20,700ft).