5-Day / 4-Night Amazon Nature Experience
Five Days. The Forest Clay Lick. The Fuller Version of the Same Remote Experience.
Everything the 4-day trip offers, plus one more day — and that extra day matters. It’s what opens up the Forest Clay Lick, a location deep in the rainforest where tapirs, macaws, peccaries, deer, and pigeon guans gather to drink mineral-rich water and clay. It’s one of the most reliable wildlife-viewing spots in the entire reserve, and it’s only reachable with the extra time this itinerary allows.
Like the 4-day trip, this is a genuinely remote experience — long trail hikes, river exploration, and night walks into a rainforest that hasn’t been shaped around visitors’ convenience.
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- Shiripuno Lodge -Meals
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- Shiripuno Lodge – Our main lodging facilities with very little impact in the environment.
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- Shiripuno Lodge – Hammocks Lounge to relax after forest activities.
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- Shiripuno Lodge – Dinning Room lighted with candles to keep an armony with the forest creatures.
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- The colors and shapes of insects in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve would blow your mind.
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- Shiripuno Lodge – Peccary Pit Hole in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve.
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- The Smooth-fronted Caiman likes to eat catfish.
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- Shiripuno Lodge – View from the Hammocks Lounge
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- Shiripuno Lodge – Light Gap is great place to stop
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- Shiripuno Lodge – Among the best predators of the forest, look for them at light gaps.
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- Shiripuno Lodge – Nature Photography in the most biodiverse place on Earth.
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- Mirador Trail. Shiripuno’s best trail to watch the forest of the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve in Ecuador.
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- Shiripuno Lodge – Frugivores very important in the forest, they play a dispesing seed for many trees, liana, epifitas and other plants use Common Woolly Monkey.
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- The Waorani Guides explain the use of plants for daily use items such as hammocks, string bags, fishing lines. The forest provided everything people needed.
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- Shiripuno Lodge – Navigation along the Shiripuno River is a great opportunity to find monkeys, toucans, macaws and other riverside wildlife.
Price: $180 per person, per day · $900 total
5-Day Itinerary:
DAY 01: Quito-Coca by airplane. From Coca, we’ll travel 90 km south into the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve and Waorani Ethnic Reserve by small bus “Chiva” to the Shiripuno Bridge (approx. 2:30 hrs). Box lunch will be served on site.
Afterwards, we’ll navigate 65 km downstream with a motorized canoe to reach the Shiripuno Lodge; the canoe journey will take approximately 4 hours depending on water levels. It will be your first experience with the wide diversity of wildlife of the Amazonian Rainforest. Dinner and lodging at the Shiripuno Lodge.
DAY 02: Breakfast. We’ll navigate to start our morning hike (3-4 hrs.) into pristine Rainforest along the Mirador Trail; this trail aims to share with you scenic views of the Amazon Basin and show you millions of reasons to preserve the Rainforest
for future generations.
Shiripuno Lodge – “One hectare of forest close to Yasuni was found to contain 87 species of amphibians, almost half the number in the United States and three times as many in Western Europe. (Yasuni as a whole contains 50% more frog species than the entire United States and Canada combined). This particular one-hectare patch of forest is now gone.”
The Waorani and the Naturalist guides will provide you with information and explanations about the biodiversity of the rainforest and the medicinal plants used by indigenous people. This hike requires good physical condition. Lunch.
In the afternoon, catch-and-release Piranha Fishing along the Shiripuno River. Dinner and lodging at the Shiripuno Lodge.
DAY 03: Before breakfast. We’ll descend the Shiripuno River and listen to the Rainforest waking up!!! Birds and mammals getting up!! Breakfast. Then we’ll go to a back-door trail to explore different types of forest and increase our chance of finding more animals. Lunch.
Forest Explorers
In the afternoon, we will take the motor canoe and make an excursion into one of the small oxbow lakes, where it is possible to see different kinds of plants and animals such as the bizarre bird Hoatzins. We will explore the Rainforest at night, searching for nocturnal fauna. Dinner and lodging at the Shiripuno Lodge.
Costus Ginger _ A magnet for a special group of Hummingbirds
DAY 04: Breakfast. We are going to spend an entire day in the Rainforest. We’ll hike on the El Saladero Trail; at the end of this trail there is a Forest Clay Lick. It is a location where mammals and birds with vegetable diet-base come to lick minerals
all year round. We’ll have lunch in the middle of the rainforest. Dinner and lodging at the Shiripuno Lodge.
DAY 05: After breakfast, navigate upstream to the Waorani Community; early canoe rides are great to spot animals crossing the river such as Capybaras, tapirs, or resting Caimans; birds such as Macaws and Toucans also can be seen from the canoe. At the Waorani Community, you will see the effects of cultural exposure, as well as the different indigenous groups living in the Amazon.
The Waorani People’s Handcraft. Shiripuno Lodge, Yasuni Biosphere Reserve in Ecuador.
The Waorani People still keep most of their traditions alive, such as hunting with blowguns and poisoned darts, their unique language, Wao Terero, the knowledge of the rainforest, and oral traditions. Responsible tourism brings revenues to all the families at different levels by selling handicrafts, canoe drivers, native guides, housekeeping, kitchen assistants, and other activities. Lunch.
We’ll continue the navigation upstream to the bridge, where we are going to take the bus back to Coca (arrival at 16:30 approx.).
What is included in the cost:
- Transportation Coca-Shiripuno Lodge-Coca
- Lodging in double rooms with bathroom
- Set Meals
- Naturalist Guides
- Native Guide
- Excursions in the forest
- Rubber boots up to size 43
What is not included:
- Transportation Quito – Coca – Quito
- Entrance fee $ 20
- Raincoat
- Soft & alcoholic drinks
- Tips