Amazon - Day 3, Part 3

We arrived at Puerto Nariño and headed straight to the restaurant for lunch. Puerto Nariño is facinating, it's an experimental ecological community made up of about 20 small indigenous communities with approximately 6000 people living there, some in the centre of Puerto Nariño and others in much more remote areas a few hours treck away. There are no cars, bikes or any other kind of vehicles (there's one exception to this, a small tractor used to collect the rubbish), you get everywhere by walking and they only have electricty between 5pm and 11pm. The first things you notice about Puerto Nariño are just how well orgnised everything is, how tidy and clean it is and how friendly everybody you see is, every single person you pass will smile and say hello to you. Almost all houses have neat little flower gardens outside and there's current a move to try and make it compulsary for everyone to have one!

After lunch we checked in to our hotel, “Casa Selva”, a wooden colonial style building in the centre of Puerto Nariño.



No mod cons here, but we did have running cold water and a ceiling fan, during the hours of 5pm and 11pm when the electricity is on. We put up the mosquito net, unpacked our stuff and had a shower, in 100 degree heat, humidity in to the high nineties and no air con this gives you about a 10 minutes restpite from the heat.



About an hour later there was a knock at our door and the receptionist told us our guide was waiitng for us in reception. Stephen our guide took us on a tour of Puerto Nariño, Stephen is from the Ticuna tribe and was brought up in Puerto Nariño, as such he knew just about everyone we saw.



At the end of the tour he took us to the viewing tower where enjoyed the views of Puerto Nariño and the Amazon and waited for sunset. We headed back to the hotel where we got changed and then had dinner. After dinner we had a walk down to the main area by the rvier where the local children were playing football, had a couple of beers, bought enough water for the next day and headed back to the hotel for an early night.