Ferns, feathers, frogs and fronds in the Ecuadorian Amazon dawn, message, nothing, monkeys

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'This is nothing like the Rainforest Cafe," cracks my boatmate. He's right. Rather than the cacophony one might expect, the sounds of the Ecuadorian jungle are surprisingly ordered at dawn on the Napo River, the Amazon tributary from where Francisco de Orellana first navigated the full length of South America's great river. The macaws caw. Then the frogs chuckle. Next, the howler monkeys howl a message that is conveyed from tree to tree. Everyone takes their turn. Think about it: If they all spoke at once, who could make sense of it?
Vines, ferns and fronds the size of Smart cars droop wearily in the swelter that grows heavier by the minute as the wan sun gains strength. We paddle noiselessly past a thick tree trunk. On it is a spider with hair-thin legs that span the size of a pie plate.
The biodiversity so teems that a Canadian traveller barely knows where to look. In fact, this is one of just 17 countries to be designated by UNESCO as "megadiverse."
A nation the size of Arizona, Ecuador boasts 1,800 species of birds (compared to about 700 for all of North America), 20,000 kinds of plants (of which 4,000 are diverse orchids), more than 300 species each of mammals and reptiles, and probably millions of species of insects. A single hectare of rainforest holds more species of trees (655 to be precise) than in Canada and the U.S. combined, says our guide, Jairo Sanchez.
Eco-tour operators and guides here are eager to tell you that climate change and corporate rapaciousness are all too real, with oil companies getting the most flak. In the Amazon region especially, don't say "Chevron" too loudly. Formerly Texaco, the company has been blamed for "dump and run" tactics that have left large swaths of the rainforest floor pockmarked with toxic waste pits and streams laced with heavy metals and known carcinogens (30,000 Cofan natives sued Chevron, resulting in last year's US$18-billion judgment against the company).
The story was similar in the Pacific coastal town of Manta, where a grizzled fisherman who guided us through a mucky mangrove habitat dotted with small red crabs spoke wistfully of the days his father caught 300 kilos of fish a week. Now, 300 kilos a month is considered good, and he blames a combination of climate change and aggressive oil exploration (though he omits the subject of local overfishing, which is a problem).
Contradictions abound here. The country contains 135 protected areas, one of the world's highest ratios, and its constitution mandates respect for nature, yet, unprotected regions are being deforested at an alarming rate. Since the early 1970s, according to one study, nearly one-third of the Ecuadorian Amazon has been deforested and polluted, and entire indigenous cultures, such as the Cofan and Huaorani, have been endangered.
However, none of that is on the agenda this late afternoon as we venture into the rainforest, the setting sun igniting the sky into slashes of ochre and crimson. "We'll have to come back in the dark," I thought, followed by hopes that our canoes had headlights.
Then, sudden darkness, and the sound of birds overhead. What kind of birds fly at night, I ask Sanchez, whose binoculars are permanently strapped across his chest. "Oh, those aren't birds," he pronounces breezily. "They're bats." A lot of them. The flapping, leathery wings of thousands of bulldog fishing bats blot out the half moon. Sanchez shines a flashlight onto the river bank. The thin ray reflects the ghostly glow of a dozen caimans' (cousins of alligators) yellow-green eyes at the water's surface.
Actually, the scene was set the night before, when bloodcurdling shrieks from an otherwise good-humoured New York woman emanated from a neighbouring bungalow. Seems a hairy, fist-sized tarantula had come to visit. Makes my experience with a hard-shelled eggsized bug lurking beneath my shaving kit look tame.
This is the Napo Wildlife Center, a 16-bungalow ecolodge that sits on 21,400 hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest in eastern Ecuador. Owned and staffed entirely by Anangu Kichwa indigenous people, the facility is so deep in the jungle that one must fly east from Quito, Ecuador's capital, to Coca, a grubby oil frontier town, then bump along 70 kilometres of river in a motorized canoe built to look like the fuselage of a plane, and finally, paddle another two hours in a dug-out canoe to the centre.

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It's all inside the Yasuni National Park, a UNESCO protected biosphere reserve created in 1979 and the largest tract of tropical rainforest in Ecuador. This is where half forgotten childhood memories of a brontosaurus lifting its mighty head above the canopy come flooding back.

On our second day, we trek through a muddy, sun-starved jungle floor in rubber boots helpfully provided by the hotel. (Tip: Bring your own hikers; the boots will melt your feet.) Impossible tangles of vines and trees with visible root structures the size of a cottage are within reach of the beaten path. For fun, Sanchez lets a tiny, poisonous tree frog dance on his neck. By 9 a.m., the silence is huge and the clamminess overwhelming. And this is spring.

Within the hour, we come to a 40-metre-high steel observation tower. Climbing through layers of vegetation (by now the mist has cleared), the top reveals a glorious carpet of discrete greens, most of it below the observer. Sanchez and our other guide, Remi, whom we have rather ungraciously dubbed Jungle Boy, have brought a spotting scope on a tripod. Good thing, because our cameras alone cannot see the rainbow-beaked toucans, three-toed sloths and "stinky" turkeys (so named because their meat, though edible, is said to smell putrid - keeps predators away) arrayed on branches.

This is also the place to witness a relatively recent addition for tourists: clay licks. These are mountain-sides of soft beige clay on which thousands of parrots, parakeets and macaws feast every morning before their daily intake of seeds, which as it happens, are toxic. The clay neutralizes the toxins. Cobalt-winged, yellow crowned and blue-headed parrots meet their dusky-headed and white-eyed parakeet relatives for breakfast. The racket they generate can drown out all human conversation, which is forbidden anyway.

If you plan well, local Kichwa women will show you hand-made animal traps that are ingenious in their simplicity, offer you some chicha, a traditional drink made from fermented manioc, perform a native dance, and may even let you try a blowgun. It's harder than it looks.

With nature's abundance in full view and the humid air working wonders on my urban lungs, it's jarring to reconcile the degradation that has happened here. Sanchez and Jungle Boy agree: Leadership in environmental protection in Ecuador has fallen to indigenous and rural peoples. Thanks to the country's notoriously unstable governments (11 presidents since 1980), someone has to do it.

IF YOU GO

Delta Airlines flies daily from Toronto to Atlanta to Quito. American Airlines flies daily from Toronto to Miami to Quito.

Napo Wildlife Center: napowildlifecenter.com Travel and Excursion Tips: travelecuador.com

Ron Csillag was a guest of Ecuador's tourism ministry.

The eye of a black caiman is seen in a national park in Ecuador

The sun sets over the rain forest in Ecuador.