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Published: July 13th 2010
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Puente San Francisco
The is the bridge that we jumped off! We have been absolutely non-stop since the last time that we posted on here. After we left Vilcabamba, we took an extremely uncomfortable overnight bus to Baños. We were both cold on the bus and didn't get any sleep so we got to Baños feeling less than spectacular. We heard that there were places to rent mountain bikes here, so we found a place and rented some decent mountain bikes for the day. While we were there, the guy told us that there was a road that we could take that followed a river canyon all the way from the cloud forests of Baños for 50km down into the Amazon basin in Puyo. The best part about the ride is that it is mostly all downhill.
However, before beginning our ride, we wanted to try our luck at puenting, which Baños is known for. 'Puente' is Spanish for 'bridge' and puenting is essentially a mix between bungee jumping and extreme swinging off of a very large bridge. We chose the highest bridge in the area, Puente San Francisco. We were told that it stands 120 meters over the river below. That's almost 400 feet! The guy who rented us the
bikes came with us to the bridge to watch us. I'm terrified of heights and so I wanted to go first. I knew that the longer I waited, the less likely I was to jump. I got into the harness, received about 10 seconds of instruction and then it was time to climp up onto the jumping platform. The platform was about 2 feet wide and 18 inches long and connected to the top of the railing of the bridge so that there was nowhere to hold on to. Just a tiny platform and a river 400 feet below. Being absolutely terrified of heights, I have to say that when I was standing on that platform with my arms outstretched I was probably more scared than I've ever been. Since the rope is attached to your chest, you have to dive off the bridge and end up doing a front flip off the edge of the bridge. Either way, both of us mustered up the courage to jump and we got great HD video of each jump. It was definitely one of my best experiences of the trip, thus far.
After our puenting experience, we got back on our
bikes and headed down the mountain. It was mostly all paved so it wasn't really mountain biking, but the scenery was spectacular. We rode along the ridge of a massive canyon with a huge river at the bottom of it. The canyon walls were sheer with literally dozens of separate rivers plunging down the canyon walls as waterfalls into the river below. We rode quickly since it was mainly downhill. However, at one point, the main river went over a huge waterfall and at this point there was a cable car that crossed the canyon right above the river. The car was basically just a metal basket and I was scared the whole ride across, but it was amazing. We got back on the bikes and continued riding. However, since we didn't sleep at all the night before, about halfway into the ride I started feeling sick. I felt weak and had the chills even though we were exercising in the jungle. We decided to call the ride off before getting to Puyo and hitch a ride back with a local truck. We didn't make it the full way but we still made it at least 2/3rds of the way.
We got back to Baños, I popped some Tylenols, we ate, and then hopped on an afternoon bus to Tena.
We got to Tena, Ecuador's white water rafting capital, late in the afternoon and booked a rafting trip for the following morning. We were both so exhaused that we got a hotel room and passed out by 8:30 and got a full 11 hours of sleep. It was what we needed though, since we both woke up feeling good and ready to go. We trucked up to the river we were to raft on that day. The hike to the river was incredibly muddy and slippery and half of the group was brown by the time we got to the river. Both guides were nice, but it soon became clear that they may not have been the best rafting guides in the world. Within the first 15 minutes of being on the river, the other boat flipped and 7 people on the other boat went rushing down the river, through the rapids. About 10 minutes after that, our boat went highside against a rock, tons of water poured in over the side and we were trapped against the rock.
The guide didn't know what to do so he told all 6 of us to climb out of the raft and on to the rock. The rock was slippery, covered in moss, about 3 feet across and in the middle of the rapids. Of course, all of us couldn't fit. Once about 4 people were on the rock, the boat started to move downstream again. Hesam and I both dove off the rock, back into the boat, but pretty much everyone else just fell off the rock and down into the river. Nobody was really hurt, just a little shaken up. I ended up making 2 rescues that trip. The rest of the trip went smoother though, and the guide was a really nice guy. In the slow spots we would swim or jump off rocks into the river. The scenery, was straght out of an adventure movie. The river went through deep canyons covered in lush jungle with dozens of smaller streams and rivers cascading down into the main river. We saw tons of birds as well as snakes and huge spiders along the way. It was spectacular.
After rafting, we spent one more day in Tena since
Part of the ride
There were so many waterfalls that some were literally coming down right onto the road. we had a pretty nice hotel room. We did laundry that night, and the following day, began making our way to Quilotoa. Quilotoa is a small village high in the Andes that borders a volcano. The volcano is dormant and has a perfectly circular crater with incredibly steep walls on all sides and a picturesque lake at the bottom of the crater. It was somewhat of an all day mission to get there. We ended up showing up in the neighboring village at nightfall and had to hire a driver. The driver barely knew how to drive a manual, stalled the truck at least 30 times, and got lost along the way, but we eventually made it. We got to a cozy little hostel that had included meals in a comfortable community setting. We met a handful of nice foreign travellers and made a fire in our room's fireplace that night. (It was freezing since we were at almost 13,000 feet elevation). The following day, we hiked partway around the rim of the crater before we got bored of the same scenery, just from different angles, so decided to make our own trail down into the crater. We hiked down
to the lake, hung out for a while and then hiked back. We caught a bus the two and a half hours back to the main city of Latacunga before I realized that I left my daypack back at the hostel in Quilotoa. It had all of my valuables including my passport, so we had to go back. Of course, the ride back was the most terrible bus ride of either of our lives. There were 3 times too many people on the bus, we had to stand the full 2.5 hours with some local lady trying to sit on my legs the entire time, terrible Ecuadorian music blasting. To top it all off, some little girl puked inside the bus right in front of us. It started snowing during the bus ride so Hesam and I were glad that we bought some silly alpaca beanies while at Quilotoa earlier that day. We eventually got my backpack but had no way back into the larger town that night and got stuck in a terrible hostel that night and ended up going to bed dinnerless that night since all the resturaunts in that tiny village were closed when we got there
at 8PM.
The next morning we escaped and made it to Quito, where we are now. We hung out in town today, climbed to the top of a cool old church in the middle of a lightning and thunder storm, and found a great place to sleep. Tomorrow we are off to Manaus, Brazil to begin our (hopefully) hardcore Amazon adventure!
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Lisa
non-member comment
OMG
Reading your blogs is better than reading a novel. For your cousins it's the only reading they will do all summer, so thank you for making it so exciting and educational. Max wishes he could take his EB test on your blogs. I have to say I read the blog with my eyes half open hoping to get to the end with you in one piece and your passport in your possession. I also laugh out loud and joke with Mike about wanting to reserve you a room at the closest Four Seasons. The jump from the bridge and your two rescues during the rafting trip are pretty incredible stories. So glad your on the adventure of your life...it doesn't get any better than this. Love you.... Aunt Lisa