This is an example of our preferred hotel, though availability is not guaranteed. If a given hotel is not available for your tour date, we will reserve you a room at a hotel of similar appeal and quality in the same area.
La Selva Jungle Lodge
LA SELVA JUNGLE LODGE JUST MIGHT CHANGE YOUR LIFE!
Located in pristine Amazon jungle of Ecuador, La Selva is a very family friendly jungle lodge and singles can take an Ecuador tour alone without paying for two as most luxury resorts charge.
La Selva is convinced that the encounter it offers is a unique jungle experience. It has been refining its skills toward providing this ultimate experience, deep in the Amazon rainforest, in its friendly Amazon Jungle, since 1986, even before the dawn of ecotourism.
The lodge's friendly native staff will become like your own family in no time and join in your festival of marvel and wonder. Its motto says it all: “…in the jungle anything is possible…” A real Amazon adventure ecotourism at its finest: living and walking in the Amazon jungle lodge with the best naturalists and native trackers.
You are as far away from civilization as you can possibly be and a gourmet meal will arrive at your table with only the freshest ingredients. The food is another of La Selva Jungle Lodge's major attractions.
This Amazon jungle lodge will fill you with wildlife sightings. Its hammocks will fill you with a stolen siesta and its bar will fill you with tropical delights. Pepe, the barman will be patient and help you learn some Spanish phrases.
La Selva is the friendliest Amazon Jungle Lodge, a boutique, dedicated to fulfilling even the childhood fantasies of its far-flung guests.
Activities
La Selva is a study in adventure travel and ecotourism in the Amazon rain forest of Ecuador. Through more than 20 years of refinement, La Selva Ecolodge has achieved a oneness with the environment. Its exclusive jungle lodge comes of native design:rustic,authentic and comfortable. It’s a friendly haven of private bungalows that are cozy and immaculately clean.
The lodge generally accepts no more than 40 guests and divides them into groups of 8 per guide. It is the perfect spot for family vacations, student groups, and women traveling alone (who always get single bungalows at no extra charge).
This adventure travel and ecolodge destination has plenty of options for your activities for day and night (night excursions are among the most popular).
Swimming in the lake which borders the lodge is a popular anytime activity and you can fish in it too- for piranhas! (Not to worry the piranhas are very friendly to guests.)
The Native trackers and English–speaking Naturalists will guide you on both easy and challenging trails along an extensive trail system that is usually filled with wildlife in what many consider the most biodiverse lodge in all of the Amazon.
The lodge is kid-friendly and educational when you want it to be; luxurious in ways you can’t imagine and its Amazon Package fills out any Galapagos trip as the ultimate dynamic duo on the planet.
You will find great value at La Selva. Rustic by design but first class in service and amenities.
Excursions
La Selva has an expedition to suit every person. It knows that every guest has their own expectations when they come to take part in an adventure at an Amazon jungle lodge.
La Selva Eco Lodge brings you as close to nature as possible. You will find a lake, animal wildlife (monkeys, turtles, caiman, owls, etc.), virgin rainforest, a tower next to a giant tree, a butterfly farm, rivers and much more! As well, we have made trails suited specifically for your interests.
Depending on what you like, you will find, day adventures, night adventures, physical challenges, long walking, jungle adventures, science, ecotourism, or anthropological visits. Just let the lodge know and it will arrange a native or naturalist guide to accompany you on your jungle adventure.
Walk by a Native's House: Cross Garzacocha Lake. This adventure takes you on a two and a half to three hour walk on a purposely, underdeveloped trail which will offer some physical challenge
- Mandicocha Trail: You will find this trail not so physically challenging but close to the Lodge which is filled with wildlife, no matter what hour of the day you take the Mandicocha Trail expedition.
- Night Excursions: Every night, after dinner, guess can go on canoe or walking trips to view nocturnal animals such as caiman, monkeys, insects and owls. These are among some of the most popular excursions.
Free Birding
Bird Watching is a different kind of adventure travel and relished on a level the uninitiated can’t possibly imagine. We cater to these passionate, highly focused , avian sleuths.
This friendly Amazon jungle lodge offers birders the possibility of sleeping amidst their quarry with perhaps the highest bird species list in the neotropics, just waiting for them and providing wondrous sights and sounds for the average non-birder guest.
For those with that special passion, those who know no time, no hunger, no exhaustion in pursuit of that special passion, we offer something unique in the entire world: Free birding!
Simply make known your wishes in advance. Pay the regular guest fees then upon arrival be ready for the birding experience of a lifetime with native birding guides: The same ones who have lead the famous expensive birding Amazon jungle tours for, in some cases, twenty years.
Come to the place where the long-tailed potoo was first ever seen, the ochre striped ant-pitta and the cocha antshrike were first documented. The world capital of the zig-zag heron.
Butterfly Farm
La Selva's Butterfly Farm was designed to present an ecologically sound, sustainable alternative way to help preserve Ecuador's Amazon rainforest. It is another step in the Lodge's ongoing effort to find viable ways (besides ecotourism) to help save Ecuador's priceless Amazon Jungle.
Many of the people who visit these places (as many as 30,000 per day at Cypress Gardens) are inspired to visit the marvelous Amazon Basin. At the very least, La Selva knows that it makes people think about what they have got before it is gone. Even if it is only for an instant, we feel that it has accomplished something of great value: awareness.
There are more than 50 butterfly exhibition houses in Canada, the United States and Europe. As for the guests of La Selva, they have the opportunity to see this miracle of nature and with luck they may even witness the marvel of metamorphosis.
The Farm is perhaps the best photo opportunity that the lodge has to offer.
The Butterfly Farm was the first professional enterprise of its type in South America, the only one in the world located in the primary rainforest.
La Selva produces as many as 20,000 butterflies per year from egg to caterpillar to pupae for exportation.
The lodge sends pupae to such diverse locations as a zoo in Holland, a castle in France, and Cypress Gardens in Florida where they fly in enclosed botanical gardens, spreading the message of beauty and the importance of the Amazon jungle with every beat of their wings and providing another example of ecotourism for its guests.
Family
What’s it like to be a family at La Selva? It’s like coming with your very own tribe for a private backstage viewing of nature’s most secret performance. Bring the grandparents too. And, You get to take all this home together with everyone having a different story of who saw the monkeys first or who swung like Tarzan the farthest or who they met from another brood who just happened to like the same board games available in the bar during down time while mom and dad swung their way to oblivion in hammocks. And don’t forget fishing for piranha. And kayaking.
The rainforest is a place of marvel and wonder and as such it brings out the child in everyone: those incredibly deep longings you thought you lost about the newness of life.
You and your children become one in your search for more and more of these revelations which pop up just about everywhere you turn. And while the food is sophisticated gourmet for the adults, the chefs make the best Amazon pizza you’ll find and French fries that rival-dare we say it- the mighty mac himself. The chefs can usually find a second dessert for that needy child (of any age) who just can’t make it with one. And guides have been known between excursions to be found on glorious quests for cookies or play dough. Have as much togetherness or independence as your tribe wants.
Honeymooners
La Selva Jungle Lodge is the perfect place for honeymoon trips and romantic excursions deepen your love by bringing you in collective harmony with the web of life that surrounds us. A “Wild Style” honeymoon experience or anniversary is more than a romantic getaway. It provides solitude, fun and relaxation, but also create a space for introspection that fosters a shared vision where together you can rediscover a sense of belonging to something larger than yourselves.
La Selva, the friendly Amazon Jungle Lodge provides:
- Reception amenities may include flower petals decorating your room, a breakfast on top of the largest tree while the sun is rising, or a private sundowner cocktail.
- Secluded honeymoon bungalows in a spectacular natural environments.
- Opportunities to experience unforgettable adventures together based on your personal preferences and style of travel.
Upgrades
Enhance your stay at La Selva with one or more of the following inexpensive but thrilling,romantic or adventurous additions to our regular offerings:
1) THE CANOPY BREAKFAST
(Price: $25 per person / Maximum 6 People)
For a real thrill have your breakfast 45 meters (135 feet) high above the forest in our canopy tower at dawn. The tower is one of the most coveted spots at the lodge because of the wildlife sightings and perspectives from there. So bring your camera and the lodge's chefs will bring the delicious food and impeccable service.
2) CANDLELIGHT DOCKSIDE DINNER
(Price: $80 per couple)
This is an extremely romantic candlelit dockside dinner for two on our lake alone except for you private attentive waiter and a single table. La Selva will light up the entire dock with a trail of candles that leads to your table. Complimentary Cocktails and Wine.
3) THE CAMPOUT NIGHT
(Price: $100 per person / 4 couple limit (two person tents)
Leave the lodge after lunch with camera, change of clothes, everything you need for a one night camp out. Hike to a campsite about 1 hour or more where everything has been prepared, tents, latrine, cold water shower for your overnight stay. Settle in. Then return to madicocha lake and explore by canoe the upper mandiyacu stream. After dinner , a gourmet safari event, return to the lake for a nighttime exploration of Mandicocha lake, because of its distance from the lodge, rarely seen at night. Sleep with the jungle in full orchestration and arise to a hearty breakfast, early, to take full advantage of this depth in the forest to explore our most distant trail from the lodge. Return to the lodge for lunch.
