Well, what else could I call this posting.  After leaving La Casa Verde we stopped in Banos for some lunch at one of the many local cafes in town, as we headed out on the road towards Tena, on the edge of the Amazon.  Our plan was to arrive at Puerto Napo Sunday morning but didn’t know where we would be staying for the couple of nights in between.  As we neared Puerto Napo we were looking for campsites but Paul wasn’t feeling so well so I suggested a local hospitaje (cheap hotel).  Just as well, as it turned out that the nice clean looking cafe with hot food (a rarity we discovered all through Central and South America so far as food is usually just kept warm and can be served anything between cold and lukewarm) had given him some kind of food poisoning (we think it was the chicken).

Consequently we ended up staying in this little ribbon town along the main road to Tena for four nights!!  Ah well, such is life.  The hostal/hotel was the only one in town and was in the process of being built.  It’s common enough here for people to build as much of their house as they can afford at any one time, adding rooms, and floors and roofs as they rais the funds.  The second floor of the hotel (that’s third floor in the US) was still only a concrete floor with a few posts sticking up starting off the plans to continue building.    There were other bits of unfinished concrete, but the room itself was comfortable and clean enough.  Turned out the hotel was next to an evangelical church and we were entertained to some rather out of tune singing most nights!!  Along with the cicacadas which we haven’t heard for ages and ages.

Arosemena Tola

Didn’t feel like there were many tourists in town, guess most of them continue on to the more popular town of Tena just a few miles further along.  One shop sold fresh vegetables, there were about half a dozen internet cafes, a couple of pharmacies, a couple of mechanic repair shops, a solicitor and several general grocery shops that sold everything from fresh bread, a few oddments of veg, packets of biscuits, crisps, toilet rolls, etc, etc.  Oh, and the usual chickens and dogs wandering back and forth across the road.

Eventually we decided Paul’s bacterial attack wasn’t going away quick enough and we attacked it with some antibiotics and he is now feeling much better.  And going stir crazy stuck in the room most of the time.

Before we arrived at Arosemena Tola we enquired the price at an off road hostel.  As we drove along the track to get there it began to look more and more expensive.  At $50 a night we turned around to move on and spotted a field with what we think were some kind of ants nests attached to the trees.

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