Andy: Arrival in Ecuador! We arrived last night - our flight was perfectly smooth and arrived on time. Phil (one of the two guides) was there to meet us at the gate and we quickly grabbed a taxi to a small, quiet hotel in Quito (the capital of Ecuador). There are four guests today, with a fifth (our friend Mary from Flagstaff) arriving tomorrow. In the morning, we all piled into a van and headed over the 13,000 foot pass to the east side of the Andes mountains and our first destination - the Quijos river valley. These roads will definitely take some getting used to! They tease you with 100 yards of pavement between 10 miles of dirt.
Phil and Mary have a storage "garage" in the small town of Baeza where they store their kayaks. We stopped off there to select and outfit our kayaks. My choice - an EZ, Wendy's choice - Inazone 230. Next stop was our lodging for the next two days - a quaint farm house owned by Ramon and Carman. After dropping off our luggage, we hit the river for an afternoon session.
Today's run was a very short (<1 hour) warm-up run. It was mostly big water class III, with one III+ rapid thrown in for good measure at the end. The water is very high from the recent rains - all the more fun for big water play! Ecuador has two seasons - a wet season and a dry season. In the dry season, it rains every day. In the wet season, it rains ALL day. We're here in the dry season. But you can't tell from all the moisture.
Ramon and Carman cooked our group a wonderful meal of Ecuadorian soup and lasagna (yes, lasagna!), with a tree tomato desert. I don't know what a tree tomato is, but it was yellow and tasty.
Wendy: Wow, we're in a whole new country! Land of smiling and relaxed people, bottled water, cows, dirt streets, and remote kayaking runs! It's green and lush, with incredibly steep canyons and mountains all around. We drove over the pass into the cloudy slopes of the northern Andes mountains, and then down to a very beautiful river valley. Sometimes I think Andy was named for these beautiful mountains, as they have the excitement and intrigue I frequently see in him.
As we hung out outfitting our boats (putting in padding, adjusting foot braces and seats, etc.), two young girls came by to watch. It was fascinating to me that I could play peek-a-boo with a little 2 year old Ecuadorian girl. We communicated only through smiles and bright eyes, yet she totally understood the game and engaged in it easily. Her older sister eyed me suspiciously, but her face lit up when I said "hola, que pasa?" They were both seeking contact with us as outsiders, and how easy it was to understand each other! Covered in dirt, with huge dark eyes, they were the prettiest things around.
The run was fun, big and fast water but not particularly hard. Mary and Phil are so awesome, they make you believe you can really do anything! As we drove back from the take out to Ramon and Carman's house, Phil noticed a huge plume in the sky. A cloud? Smoke? No, an erupting volcano! El Reventador (aka "the exploder") has erupted again. We don't yet know which direction the ash will go...2 weeks ago it blew and blanketed the town of Quito, shutting down the airport and causing chaos for several days; last week it blew again and this time ash blew to the north, not really affecting the boaters. As Mary likes to say, this is not just "adventure boating", it's "adventure traveling!" We may wake up to find ash in the streets, but as far as I can tell it can only make this amazing place look more exotic.
Looking upriver on the Quijos
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Morlee, getting in a quick read at our farmhouse lodging
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At the takeout... what you can't see is the "chicken tree". That tree behind us had over 50 chickens in the branches! And oh my god, we're starting to dress alike!
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Mary, hard at work loading the kayaks in the jungle |