Enjoying a spectacular setting on the inland lake of Pilchecocha (Laguna El Pilche), a short hike and canoe ride from the Río Napo, Sacha Lodge is one of Ecuador’s best jungle lodges. Opened in 1992, this Swiss-run place has never rested on its laurels and offers one of the most luxurious rainforest experiences possible.
As well as employing and training indigenous people to work in the tourism industry, Sacha has been steadily purchasing plots from Ecuadorian smallholders who were using it to farm, and allowing the rainforest to reclaim the land purchased. The lodge sits on 5000 acres of reclaimed land now fully protected for forestation, and is the largest private reserve in Ecuador.
Guests are welcomed to the open-air, lakeside dining terrace, which serves as the main restaurant. The lodge's boardwalks tentacle out to 26 cabins, each with a spacious, modern bathroom, dry box for cameras, 24-hour hot water and electricity, and a hammock deck for shady siestas and wildlife-watching. Older units are built deeper into the jungle – but as a result present better wildlife-watching opportunities. All rooms have safes and are very well screened – mosquito nets aren’t used because the threat is small. Food is superb, and there’s a pleasant upstairs bar in a central palapa, popular in the evenings.
Hikes and canoe trips typically consist of about five tourists, with a bilingual naturalist and local guide. The terrain includes flat and hilly rainforest, various lakes, coiling rivers and swamps. The 5000 acres are visited by six kinds of monkey, toucans, poison dart frogs, peccaries, sloths, anacondas, caiman and black agoutis.
The lodge’s showpiece is a massive metal canopy walkway that stretches between three platforms, 60m off the ground. Birdwatchers covet the early morning experience of standing on the creaking giant to watch the fog lift on an array of avian and primate life. A separate 45m-high wooden observation deck atop a huge ceiba tree is another way to get high up.
Getting here is an adventure – a two-hour motorized canoe ride from Coca is followed by a leisurely walk through the forest on an elevated boardwalk. You’re then taken on a 15-minute paddle up a blackwater canal and across a lake in a dugout canoe.