Ecuador: Darwin's Family and Other Animals ; Joan Smith Was Intrigued by an Eco-Friendly Project with Indians, but Even More Impressed by the Islands' Wildlife

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The plane was waiting on the airstrip, a narrow clearing in the rainforest next to the fast-moving current of the Rio Pastaza, a tributary of the Amazon. "Who wants to be co-pilot?" asked a man with a demented grin; the plane was an eight-seater, even smaller than the single-engined Cessna that had brought us over the Andes a few days before. That earlier flight had been scary enough, but this aircraft looked even flimsier.

"Swiss, very safe," the pilot assured us. Soon we were revving up, churning up clouds of soil that almost obscured the Indian children who had come to watch the tiny plane take off. At first we were low enough to make out individual trees. As we …