Hunting for Anacondas

Location:
Ecuador

Cuyabeno, anaconda, jungle

By Sabine Schulz

Ecuador has a lot of beautiful places – no doubt – but for me, the most beautiful, gorgeous, picturesque, fantastic, stunning, amazing place is the Cuyabeno National Park in the northeast of Ecuador, right next to the border with Colombia. 602,000 hectares of pure nature! The Laguna Grande with its beautiful sunsets! Its animals - I love them all… small ones, big ones, at least as long as they are not in my bed! Its millions of different kinds of plants (one of them is the main ingredient for Chanel No 5! Its unique ecosystem!

And I just love the feeling of being far, far away from humanity and all its evil inventions like cell phones and internet, the stress, the big city noise. Just me and nature and my personal big quest: being face to face with a free-living, huge and dangerous Anaconda.

And I was so close the last time I went to the Cuyabeno: For more than one week, the guides in the Cuyabeno Reserve observed a giant Anaconda every day on the same tree. But the day I arrived it had vanished.

It can drive you crazy!

Desperate as I was, I decided to look for an anaconda on my own. Luckily I had a crazy Austrian friend with me who didn’t hesitate to join me on this adventure…

So we started the journey in a little canoe – those without a motor but to paddle. But as it was dry season we didn’t get that far - soon our canoe got stuck in the mud. Well, at least we got a bit nearer to the place the anaconda was last seen. Wisely, my friend and I went on this trip with flip flops that’s way we had to take a decision now: move on bare food or paddle back to the lodge. Of course, as real nature-boys, or better, nature-girls, the decision was as sure as eggs are eggs: move on!!! Ufff… what a decision… still 2 weeks later I had spikes in my left food. We had to struggle though knee-deep mud and torrential creeks, had to climb from fallen trees to fallen trees like Tarzan... and the end of the story: we didn’t find an anaconda but we had great fun.

Nevertheless, I have 601,998 hectares left to discover. Somewhere must live an anaconda! Or maybe they are just legends?