Just a reminder: please go back and read the first post in this series if you haven’t already – I’m selling prints of one of my photos and donating all profits to the Secoya people of Ecuador in order to help them raise money for their conservation fund and ecotourism business.
A typical ‘zinc house’ of the Secoya. All of the timber for the house is cut with chainsaws. The house is called a zinc house because of the metal sheeting on the roof, as opposed to the palm frond thatched roof of the traditional buildings of the Secoya. This PhD thesis by Gabriel Arboleda is an excellent exploration of Secoya building styles and how they have been affected by cultural change before and since colonisation.
These birds nests hang from many trees in the clearings around the village of San Pablo and elsewhere in the upper Amazon. We called them ‘droopy nest birds’, but the Secoya called them caciques, a Spanish word for ‘chief’.
Secoya children from the family we stayed with collecting papaya fruit from a tree in the rice paddy.
René, one of our hosts, harvesting rice from their dryland paddy.
Georgia along with René and Lidia Payaguaje threshing the rice that was harvested that day.
Every boat trip is an opportunity for some fishing in the Rio Aguarico.
René with a catfish he had just caught from the river.
A giant tree overhanging the river.
Part three of this series will focus on the biology of the rainforest – plenty of plants, animals, and weird fungi.