Ecuador

Amazon Rainforest (Sacha Lodge)

We picked Sacha Lodge for our first visit to the Amazon Rainforest, and it was well worth the ~$1k/night price tag. The organization and communication from the moment we booked was impressive. We had a greeter who met us at the Quito Airport, gave us our boarding passes for the ~25 min flight to Coca, and helped get our bags checked in. Once in Coca we handed over our checked luggage and didn’t see it again until we got to our rooms at the lodge. There they loaded us into a small van for a 5 min ride to their local office where they had coffee, tea and snacks waiting. They then loaded us onto a long, fast riverboat for 1.5hrs on the Napo River. When we got off the riverboat, we had a 20 minute nature walk along a boardwalk/trail, and then another 20 minute canoe paddle through a blackwater creek and across the lagoon where the lodge is located.

The lodge itself is beautiful, with elevated walkways throughout, outdoor dining facilities, and air-conditioned rooms for guests. Believe it or not, most Amazon Lodges do NOT offer A/C! The infrastructure is impressive with miles of walking trails, blackwater creeks for canoeing, 3 towers, 1 suspension bridge, and a crane in order to get guests up into and above the canopy.