Adventure Anew

I'm not sure how I feel about leaving. I really enjoy the weather, people, boating options (duh). The food is great. And just the overall coolness of Ecuador makes me want to stay and keep exploring. Only so much time left and what I never saw I'll just have to see next time. I'm looking forward to something new. I've been thinking about all the snow back home. I've also been thinking about where I want to live. Decisions, decisions. Life's full of 'em.


I'm in Quito now, at The Magic Bean, a great hostal in the tourist area of town. I went with Abe and Carolina to the Papallacta Hot Springs on the way. What an awesome way to utilize a natural resource. Well done Ecuador.


On this adventure I saw the Upper Jondachi. What a world class run and a special place to see. I'll save the description. Go see it. It's worth it. I'm telling you. Come to Ecuador. It's worth it, I'm telling you. Hear are some highlights. Good times. Good people.

Also, the editor isn't working quite right. You might notice some pics are sideways. Alter your monitor for best viewing.

Local plays Sam's harmonica at the put in for the Piatua.

Jaime, Becky, and I wait for the taxi at yet another take out. sigh...

Thanks, Ecuador.

Cops take down another mouthy so-an-so... to spray stuff in his pants! Sucka, what?

Are you ready to rummmmblllllllllee??

More excitement in Columbia.

Look out!!

Cool stuff everywhere you are.

This is what it looks like when you're waiting for the bus.

Jeff says Ecuador will open your eyes. Wake up, fool!

Me takin' it at the hole in Birthday Cake on the Mishualli. Damn.

Montanita

Papallacta Hot Springs

One of the pools at Papallacta Hot Springs. Go. Don't dilly dally.

A view from the main road.

Montanita is the best!

They don't have moves like this in Montanita.

The bus station is a funny place. The buses are all run by private companies, so there are MANY 'salesman' walking the terminal shouting out the different names of cities. If you even think about looking at their schedule they make a B-line to you and start the hard sell. It's entertaining until you tell them where you're going, because they stand in front of you, look you dead in the eye and start repeating your destination over and over and over. If you leave they follow you. Then, looking back on it it's funny again. Good times.

We went to Cuenca for Christmas and Montanita for New Year's. Cuenca was fun. It is the third largest city in Ecuador and rather colonial. It's fun to walk around and look at the old buildings. Jeff, Sam, and Oli got reindeer hats, and I got a santa hat. Then we took lots of pictures with the locals. After Christmas we hopped a bus to Guayaquil, then to the coast.

The bus ride to Guayaquil was terrifying. We had one of the craziest bus drivers EVER. I think the trip took four hours and we were packed to the gills. The entire aisle from front to back was full of people and things. Becky and I were in the front seat with a bunch of leg room at the station. Mistake. When the bus loaded up we found ourselves with an indiginous mother and her three small children sitting in our 'leg room'. With all of those people on the bus the driver would scream through the turns as fast as he possibly could. We were all sitting up front so it was easy to bang on the window at him. He eventually slowed down, but for awhile there I was not in my happy place. The turns were so fast he would "lean in" as we made the turn. We were high in the mountains and in places (many places) there were no guard rails, just the edge of the cliff that fell away 2000 feet. Yikes! After telling the guy numerous times to chill, me and Team Yukon were ready to knock the dude out and throw him off the bus. People were literally crying behind us. He chilled. Thankfully. Only so many turns an overloaded bus can take before an axle breaks or a wheel comes off. Oh yeah, and halfway through the trip we pulled over so the driver could tighten something up under the bus. We were pulled over for maybe ten minutes. I bet he was just adjusting the suspension's toe and camber to 'race' mode.

Once we arrived in Monanita I think we all realized just how much fun it was going to be. All the roads in Montanita are sand. People drive on them, but why? The physical size of the town isn't even the size of Index, WA. There are three or four streets in town, but the whole place is set up to party. There are many hostels and good places to eat. You might wind up spending 5 or 6 bucks for breakfast. A bit more than Tena, but the food is so good here. I had one of the best hamburgers here with some ham, an egg and a lot of mayo. Watch out for the mayo it goes bad fast and they don't refridgerate. We were in Montanita for a week and I didn't think it would happen this way, but we were all a little glad to move on. That said, Montanita is someplace you have to go. Come to Ecuador for the boating, but hit Montanita at New Year's for the best party of your life. Take a look...

Dancing in Montanita is fun.

Jeff talks with Francine, one of the many Germans in town.

You make lots of friends in Monanita. It's fun here.

And when you run out of your own cool dance moves your friends teach you new ones.

Sam and Olivier like dancing and making friends.

Here's to good friends, tonight is kinda special.

This is our hostal, Los Palmeras.

Along the way.

Apparently all the churches have these spotlights. Five different colors.

Jeff gives his bottle of cheap booze to the bartender to throw around all crazy like.

If Hollywood ever remade the movie Cocktail, this guy would be a shoe-in.

I bet the bus driver just didn't realize there weren't any guard rails.

Sam had to pee REAL bad. So, he went to the back of the bus with a water bottle.


Whoopsie. Sam didn't realize the road was bumpy and that we had a crazy driver.

Or maybe the driver just wouldn't stop. Sam's a good sport, he let us take his picture!

Dec 17 Highlights since the Quijos

The thunder was so loud today it was setting off car alarms. Since the Quijos we've covered a lot of ground. Hiking in and out can wear on you! We finally have semi-reliable internet, and semi-reliable hot water. The weather here is pretty amazing especially by PNW standards. I could do with a few less sand flies, but even they seem to be waning off, at least the bites. I'm in a groove now down here. I think we all are. I speak better Spanish than I did when I got here, but my level of comprehension has room for improvement. The thunder is still awesome. It reminds me of the thunderstorms in Indiana during the summer. It was so loud there it would rattle the windows. A fresh group of boaters arrive about every week or so, and I'm remembering the runs more now, which is nice. Here are some highlights of things we’ve done, seen, bought, swam or thoroughly enjoyed since leaving the beautiful Quijos valley.










The first drop on the bamboo strtech of the Misualli. This was the first day I ran it.

The next day I was in the playboat and things didn't go so smoothly.

I blew the lead in and was too far right. Fighting to get back to the left side (which didn't work) I wound up dropping over this ledge on the right, dead sideways. Damn. The hole is backed up and boils back from 6 or 7 feet downstream. Double shoot. I started rodeoing and it didn't take long before I was upside down. The water was aerated too which didn't help for rolling. I wound up on my back deck at one point and just started paddling downstream out of the hole upside down. I think it was working, but I didn't wait long enough before I rolled and got sucked right back in.

Shee-yute! Hadn't had air in a while and gave rolling a couple more tries, then I pulled. Immediately I got sucked down and held in this little pocket that wasn't really moving anywhere, just kind of stopped between the pourover coming in and the upstream backwash meeting it. I managed to get to the surface for a second, got some air and a bit of water, then went back down again. By this time I'm wondering how this was going to play out. Team Yukon is on either side of the river and the river isn't very wide there. I'm wondering where the rope is, but I'm also wondering how this is gonna play out! I get a little push and try swimming into the green water coming in, I go down a ways and wind up surfacing about three feet from the pourover. I barely get a breath as I see Jeff (one half of Team Yukon) standing on shore in the 'ready' position. Right before I get sucked down again I yell at him, "C'MOOONN!" I want a rope! Then I'm under again. Soon enough I feel the rope and he pulls me out.

Sheeeeee-yute!! It takes a couple minutes for me to catch my breath and about 15 for us to get a line on the boat and pull it out. If you've ever run the Top Tye in WA it's a mini version of the hole in Paranoia, except the water doesn't seem to be flushing. The rest of the trip went pretty well, I led most of the way.

There are a few other groups of boaters in Tena and we all see each other about every day. I talked to one group later that night and said, "Dude, I swam today." He said, "I heard." I thought, who told you? I just got off the river 15 minutes ago. He then said,"I also heard you styled the rest of the run. You're the man! Except for that one drop." Snicker. On top of it, it was my birthday and that drop was the first of about a 15 mile stretch. The birthday tradition down here is to get whipped with a belt or switch for each year. I got my spanking from the river early. Humble pie for dessert.

Capt Fun keeps it real... fun

That's no playhole. Whatch out Capt Fun! That's El Toro at a stupid high level.

The ladies at the fiesta were great.
I don't know why they wore all black though.
Seems a bit too warm.

Jenny, Marco, and Chad love driving in the van to Tena!

Chris made a friend at the restaurant, Dona Cleo's.

The storms are beautiful, loud, and make the rivers go!

Sam likes it when kayaks go BOOF

One of the boofs on the El Reten section of the Misualli. Good stuff!

Can you find the small kayaker in Land of Giants? Lower Misualli at high water

This is the portage just above Land of Giants. LOG starts just out of frame.

Portage. Gynner and Chris look and talk about it.

The only beach on the Lower Mis.

I got a guitar

Some very cute kids at the putin for the Lower Mis.

Nov 23 The Lower Quijos

Nov 23 The Lower Quijos

So far I've run rivers almost every day. I've done five sections of the Quijos. Some of them were at enormous flows. The Borja to El Chaco section was the one we've done the most. It's a great big-water III+ run with a IV+ in the middle, El Toro. The Bombon section was great. Bigger water yet, and with Marco and Chris Ryman along it was sure to razzle Becky's nerves a bit. Those guys run some shit and love to step it up. Toward the end of the Bombon is a big Z turn rapid that didn't have a name. It did, however, have one of the biggest holes I've ever seen from the cockpit of my kayak. As Becky would say, "Holy Mother of God!" That's what I thought as I rounded the corner. I wish there were pictures for all of these holes. They are fucking enormous! Of course, pictures probably would not do these things justice.

Another neat thing about the Quijos is that the further downstream you go the more water there is. There are a ton of tributaries! From the top, which is a tight steep creek, tumbling 60 kilometers downstream to the 'Final' stretch of the Quijos, the river builds into a magnificent truly BIG water jungle run. We didn't make it to the 'Final' stretch, but Becky and I did the stretch above called the 'Lower'. This stretch, so Chris told Becky, was 'a chill relaxing day on the river with nothing to worry about.' The lower stretch was about 12 miles long and did have a chill stretch which happened to be the second half of the run. The book said it dropped about 32 feet per mile, which was low gradient for a III-IV run. Becky picked out the run because she wanted a 'chill' day and I didn't want to rattle her before we put on. I figured it would spill its guts in the first half or so of the run which would put the rapids closer together, And the way this river rolls down stream, it just gets bigger and louder as it goes. The Lower Quijos did just that.

There were about 20 rapids on this stretch, and they weren't necessarily bigger than the rapids on the other stretches, but there were HUGE holes in every rapid. At least one hole and maybe eight. Each rapid danced with 10-15 foot waves, house rocks that, at times, were 30 feet out of the water, and holes. Oh the holes. Holy Mother of God. We never got up close with any of them, but there was on rapid, "Gringos Revueltos", that the book said to be on the lookout for. Gringos Revueltos, in Spanish, means 'Scrambled White Boy' and we kind of found it by accident. I ran the lead-in and realized it was much bigger than the rest of the rapids, so I caught a small eddy before dropping over the first ledge. Becky was upstream and I was going to tell her to wait in the upstream eddy, but she was heading my way. I signaled for her to stop where I was, but for some reason her eddy-catching-prowess was turned down. She missed it and ran the first of two riverwide ledges backwards. Shit. I didn't want to have to run these blind if she swam. Don't swim, please. She got it turned around for the second ledge and almost caught the side-tractor-beam back into the gigantic hole in the center of the river. Then... she caught an eddy. Damn. I got out and looked at it for a minute and kind of, well, didn't want to run it. The holes up to this point had been larger than most, in every rapid, and my adrenaline glands were growing weary. However, Becky had just run this thing blind, and... backwards, and, (sigh) I don't consider myself a man of machismo or elevated levels of testosterone, BUT. I had to run it. So I did. And that was that.

Throughout the rest of the run we wondered if that had been the Scrambled Gringo. It was, but we had more rapids to run and more holes to dodge. We made it. Nobody swam. Nobody died. A good day was had, especially when we made it down into the lower part of the run. It was absolutely stunning. Jungle walls rising 3000 feet above the river. For miles. It was sunny and hot, no bugs, and because the river was so high we had plenty of time before our shuttle driver, Willow, showed up. It's so strange to me how we can seemingly get out of the river in the middle of nowhere and have a guy pick you up who you've only known for a week, who you've only seen a few times. Ecuador is an amazing place.

Nov 22 Chadwick and The Movies

Nov 22 Chadwick and The Movies

Becky and I decided to take a bus to El Chaco on a day off from boating. Our friend Chad from BC had been sick in bed for three days... in Borja! (heavy on the bore if you don't kayak) Even Chris R and Marco had been getting little pick-me-ups for him in hopes he would get better.

Chad is THE sweetest guy you'll ever meet. He's 27, has lived in the BC backwoods all his life, totally rips when he chooses a sport, but is absolutely the sweetest around. Everybody loves him. On our way back from the Quijos we stopped at a movie place and I went in and got a porno for Chad. Becky and I laughed about it on the way back wondering how everyone would react. Actually, we knew how everyone would react, the funniest part was how Chad would react.

We got back and it took a couple of hours for everyone to get back to the house. (Becky and I had been living with Marco, Chad, and Chris R at 'The Dirtbag House" while in Borja. If you get the chance I recommend experiencing it for the 'full immersion'.) After everyone had arrived I gathered everyone into the main room and announced I had a gift for Chad. It was perfect. The kid lit up. It was great. We played poker for a while and went to bed.

The next morning Becky had decided that she wanted to run the Lower Quijos. Chris J and Abe were in Quito teaching a Swiftwater Rescue class and Sam hadn't arrived yet, so it was just us. Becky, since arriving, had really been stepping up her kayaking game, out of necessity really, because the big water III+-IV runs we were doing were the easiest in the valley. I don't know if she knew that was the case, but she really wanted to do something easier. The morning started like usual. A fifteen minute walk through town to the best place around, Dona Cleo's. Dona Cleo (Don-ya Clay-oh) is a sweet woman who loved us and loved cooking for us. After breakfast we walked back and set up shuttle with Willow.

Eventually we got to the river and were getting dressed and I noticed Becky had something weird on her helmet. I told her to take it off and have a look. She took it off and low and behold... It was on of the women on the cover of Chad's porno. We both laughed about it pretty hard. The other thing was that when we had gotten up earlier other of these ladies were taped to everyone's bedroom door. So dirtbag... Pure comedy.

Well we got off the run and had some Ceviche (Sa-vee-chay), which is a little like soup, but not quite, and it's cold, at this place Willow, our main shuttle driver knew about. He also stopped for us in El Chaco for a sweet gift for the boys. I ran in to the video store. It was absolutely pouring out. I got 10 porno's, and the next morning Becky and I put them in every single one of their boats. If i haven't mentioned it before the boys were starting a kayak touring company, www.endlessadventures.com and had a number of boats in Borja, waiting for clients they were meeting to take down the river later. Each boat got it's own movie for the paddler's individual pleasure, or at least for the boys shock and disbelief. Becky and I were leaving that day and wouldn't see the boys for another week or so, so all we could do is laugh about every day and tell everyone we knew. It was funny.

Soon enough we met up with the boys at a pizza place in Tena. They had all their clients with them and after some conversation we gently asked if anything had been discovered in the boats. Everyone, except the two girls, thought it was hilarious. Some of the movies weren't found until halfway down the run. Awesome. It turns out Chad had been the mastermind behind the whole thing. Marco told us later he got up really early and did everything himself. It was still really funny.

Nov 14 Quijos valley to Tena

This guy can ferry.

It takes awhile and I'm still groggy from the plane, but we get a shuttle together and do the Jatunyacu. Awesome big water run with several really good play holes and waves with eddies. On the way to the put-in, there were two trucks worth of boats and boaters we were interrupted by a group of angry locals who were acting a bit like a militia. They were claiming they worked for the government building bridges, but the government wasn't paying them... so we had to. Immediately one of the local guys who was with us, Jamie (hi-may), jumped out of the truck and started yelling and arguing with the 'militia'. They had thrown a bunch of big rocks into the road so we couldn't drive through. The whole scene was a bit surreal and a little entertaining. They were barking real loud, so was Jamie, but neither side was going to do anything unless we tried to move the rocks. I didn't understand what anyone was saying so I just sat back and listened. Becky was sitting next to me and she was freaked. I tried to calm her down by telling her nothing was going to happen, but it didn't do much.

It was a tense situation, but we wound up turning around and going to a different put-in. Jamie was so mad at those guys. I found out later they are actually a family who live nearby and come to this particular spot to ransom money from people, especially kayakers. They say it is their road and we have to pay if we want to use it. Entertaining, but sad. These people were teaching their children that this is the way to live. There were probably 20 adults and 10-15 children under 10.

A cool slot canyon you can walk into, riverside.



After boating there are plenty of cervezas and dancing. The canucks have been partying a bit more than we had to this point and the next morning they are looking a bit worse for wear. Jenny has come down with a nasty stomach bug and is out for boating pretty much the whole trip.

At the end of the trip you might even see some doggies on top of a building.

Nov 26 A Little Help From My Friends

"I have a friend…" is what I hear many times from folks I meet in Ecuador. It seems it would be commonplace in all of Latin America, but Ecuador is the place I have been to. My friend, Daniel is over right now. He brought a movie back he borrowed and then started talking with Becky in the street in front of our house. They began singing the song from Desperado together and then Daniel told Becky he played a little guitar. Becky is learning and Sam, always a consumate student, was interested as well. Daniel came up, got on Becky's guitar and just started ripping. This kid is good!

His style is more flamenco which is fantastic to listen to. After about 10 minutes Becky asked him where he learned to play. Daniel (Dan-yell) said, "I have a friend who showed me..." Becky laughed loudly and said, "Give your friend my number!" Abe knows the song too so he sings it with Daniel as Daniel teaches them out on the balcony. Becky is writing down all the words to the song as Daniel sings them. Every night is so much fun. Something new. The adventure continues.

Daniel brings his guitar teacher over half an hour later. Sweet. Sam and I want to get guitars and he says there are some shops here in Tena, but it would be better to go to Quito. He will be there on the 4th and we will be there to find guitars. Good ones, he says, go for $180. We’ll be there for an annual festival that goes on for about 2 weeks, including bull fights. Everyone continues to play, sing and drink on into the night. It’s amazing how things work. It’s nice to have friends.