Today was literally a travel day as we headed to the Amazon. Apparently it rained a lot yesterday. Like enough rain to wash out parts of the road and take out a bridge. A bridge that we need to take to get to our Amazon destination. So we had to take an alternate route–a two hour longer alternate route. Since we had 2 hours extra to drive, we had to leave 2 hours early–which is well before the 6:30am sunrise. Everyone knows that thetwinsontour need lots of sleep, but that sure didn’t happen because we had to have our luggage ready–it’s so painful to say–at 4:45 am and ready to leave at 5am. We knew that we would both sleep on the bus.The problem is that thetwinsontour both awoke with splitting headaches–the kind of headache you only get when staying at 11,700 feet above sea level. The magical coca tea was a necessity for survival. The other benefit of coca tea is that it gives you energy–too much energy to be able to immediately pass out upon boarding the bus. So the first hour or so was passed with my eyes closed trying to sleep and not groan in pain– the remaining 5 hours I mostly slept. Which is what you are supposed to do on a bus, especially when the road twists and turns through the Andes mountains and your driver keeps passing on double yellow lines. Sometimes you just have to close your eyes until you arrive at the next gas station potty break.Our guide did also stop to buy us some local bananas which as you know, thetwinsontour loved. We had the little tiny delicious ones with a really thin peeling. This goes without saying, these are far superior in every aspect to the Cavendish bananas we can buy at home. Ecuador has about 400 types of banana plants and 47 that produce edible bananas. (Our guide even mentioned a PINK banana, but I don’t think we will be able to find that. So sad.) Despite the wide variety of Ecuadorian bananas, they only export one kind. Apparently they only export the ones at the top of the tree and then they feed the ones at the bottom to the COWS AND PIGS! That’s how superior all the other bananas are here. Ecuadorians don’t like the ones they export and only feed them to livestock! You can buy a pile of about 200 leftover Cavendish bananas for a dollar. Yes, that’s two bananas for a penny. That’s how awful the bananas we eat at home are. The Cavendish banana is the Red Delicious Apple of the banana world–plentiful, cheap, and absolutely flavorless. But we all eat them anyways because that’s all there is at the grocery store.I could rant about bananas forever, but I think that is enough for one day. But I will tell you about guinea pigs instead. So, our guide says all Ecuadorian families have a guinea pig– or maybe just the ones in the countryside. He never mentioned raising them to eat– probably because we are Americans and can’t handle the thought of eating a cute, furry little guinea pig. Evidently, guinea pig poop is a superior fertilizer to that of chickens, cows and pigs. Guinea pig fertilizer lasts for a whole year! So, if you are a farmer, your guinea pigs can poop in your garden, so that you can grow organic bananas– that you don’t export and keep for yourself instead of sharing with thetwinsontour. See how I refused to give up the topic of bananas?!Six hours later we finally arrived at our destination, the Amazon! On a side note, it’s at 800 feet above sea level. It took our ears a while to adjust because it felt like there was water in our ears.Our hotel is basically on an island, so the only way to get there is by canoe. But don’t worry, we didn’t have to paddle because if that was the case we would still be out there, adrift on the Amazon river, waiting on a caiman to take pity on us and eat us for lunch. This is a large 10 passenger canoe with a motor with no rowing required.After a quick lunch in a torrential downpour with blowing winds that forced us to physically move the table farther inside the wall less restaurant, we were off to our next activity wearing our trusty Dollar store ponchos–a visit to a local home that was just a short canoe ride away. I’m not really big on the built in “cultural” activities, so I don’t have much to say. Basically our guide talked about life in the Amazon. We did learn one interesting fact: each house has a lime tree branch hanging up in the top of the rafters. The thorns on it keep the bats from hanging out in your house. This could be a very useful tip, so don’t forget about the power of a lime branch. I forgot to take a picture, but there was a lime branch in our hotel balcony too.The local lady showed us how easy it is to make chicha which is their homemade alcohol from cooked, mashed yucca and some shredded sweet potato. There’s no need for the women to chew and then spit the yucca anymore because of the shredded sweet potato helps with the fermentation rather than spit. Then you let it ferment for 5-7 days and then you have a strong alcoholic beverage. We didn’t get to try it because of our delicate first world stomachs.That’s all I got for now. Tomorrow we get to hike in the Amazon.Love,thetwinsontourPs. you may get this quite delayed (after we get home) because the email distribution list didn’t pull through to our new phones. Do you know how you can get more timely updates from thetwinsontour? That’s right! Like our page on Facebook! Just type thetwinsontour in the search bar to find us!We also have a new Instagram account, but someone stole our name! Look for the_twins_on_tour on Instagram.