Amazon Adventures

For the last two weeks we have been enjoying ourselves in Ecuador. Eric and Chris, our friends from the US flew down to join us for a couple of weeks boating in the jungle.

After arriving in Quito, the capital, we headed out to Tena, one of the jungle towns that we based ourselves at. Our group swelled to six when we were joined by Alan and Emily. Logistically Ecuador is a great kayaking destination.

Each day, our taxi driver Oswaldo, would arrive at the hotel, and load up with boats and people. He’d drop us at the put in, and then pick us up hours later at the take out. Having door to door service really made things easy.

Eric was very disappointed that the rental boats promised all turned out to be broken, and the only alternative was for him to paddle a pink Dragorossi boat.

We paddled all the established rivers in the area, as well as a newly discovered run, the Piatua, which is becoming very justifiably popular.

One river of note that has got much worse is the Lower Misualhi, which now has a grueling 2 hour portage around a waterfall, that used to be a simple scamper along the rocks!!

In addition to the fantastic rivers in the area, we marveled at the wildlife. At our Hotel we were frequently visited by pygmy monkeys, and we took in some of the more exotic species at a wildlife park, where a monkey took a great liking to Cheryl.

After more than a week in Tena, we moved to Baeza, where we paddled many great sections of the Quihos river, and its sidestreams.

The paddling in Ecuador may not be as hard as some other locations, but it more than makes up for it in sheer consistency. Miles and miles of class 4 boulder gardens. We paddled six different sections on the Quihos river, covering about 30 miles. There’s plenty more that we didn’t have time for.

More Pictures are posted up on Webshots, Use the Our Picture link to the right to get there.