Advertisement
Published: March 16th 2011
So there I am on the fringe of the great Amazon, riding in a beat up Toyota Hilux, my bloody wound wrapped in a baby's diaper, held together by a rafting strap, speeding towards the local hospital.
Let's back up first. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure. (Yes, I'm listening to the
Conan the Barbarian soundtrack.)
Day trips to Cajas and Ingapirca and the start of Carnival had fed my desire to get out of Cuenca and adventure around the country a bit. So, after confirming a spot on a rafting trip up in Tena (which is on the edge of the Amazon and known for its quality rafting), I made the decision to figure out the long distance buses and head up to Banos and Tena for the week.
Early Monday morning I haul myself out of bed and to the bus terminal, figuring out the idiosyncrasies of their system (including the 10 cent fee to actually enter the bus loading zone after ticket purchase). Buses cost $1 per hour. The trip north to Ambato is eight hours and an additional hour west to Banos. The first five hours or so are gorgeous, traveling through the windy roads of the Andes, sometimes seemingly above cloud level as you look down on lazy puffs of cumulous clouds. I'm heavily in favor of landscapes sporting endless green hills and mountains with horses, sheep, pigs, dogs spotting every new corner of the scenery. Vendors get on frequently to hawk empanadas, bread, chips, drinks and the such. Then we run into a traffic jam that has us moving about two miles during the next 60 to 90 minutes. It's hot and bright and the buses are like city buses - they don't just fill up to seat capacity. People line the single aisle, holding babies, sipping their 3 liter bottles of Coke. Luckily it's Carnival everywhere. Pickups loaded with people in the flatbed still carry water balloons or buckets of water. People walking down the side of the highway have their spray cans. And occasionally we still get hit. The windows are open due to the heat and just when you've forgotten about the Carnival threat, just drowning in the heat, someone shoots a foam spray through an open window and everyone on the bus laughs. The guy next to me leaves our window open and we get a bucket of water thrown on us. Other than babies and the elderly, no one is exempted from Carnival. Eventually we get through the jam and travel the remaining hours to Ambato. An Idaho couple asks if I'm headed to Banos and we agree to cab over to the other bus terminal together. The remaining hour is nothing compared to the first eight.
Banos is something of a resort town tucked away in the mountains right next to the only active volcano in the south, Tungurahua. It's perfect. Tightly craddled in even-more-green mountains, people come here to either bathe in the hot springs or go adventuring (including canyoning, which is essentially swinging you between two ropes over a great gap below). It's 6pm, dark has just fallen and even the bus terminal is vibrantly alive. Rows of candy stands, offering taffy and sugarcane, line both sides of the street. I take a quick taxi to the hostel, check in and decide to wander and grab some food. Little did I know that Banos during Carnival is the best place ever. There's tons of people out and about, endless huts selling goods, the purple spires of the church in the main square (the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Agua Santa, which I think translates to "Church of Mrs. Santa Water") stand out against the whispy fogged volcano behind. People drive rented dune buggies around. Lit up trains for kids careen around corners. And the best part? Everyone is armed. With spray foam cans. I get one block before getting blasted by a local. I quickly purchase my own can from a little girl and continue past the central square ready for retaliation. After a quick stop for food (tasty churasco steak and the best onion soup I've had), I stop at a bar with sidewalk stools, order a couple of jack and cokes and dip into the foam wars. Five year old looking the other way? Blast him with the foam. Couple out on Carnival date night? Foam to the face. And I'm getting as good as I give. Every five minutes I'm having to wipe away a head full of foam. At one point a bunch of kids gets me so good the entire bar is covered, I'm blind and the two guys next to me are howling at the soapy man next to them. After the bar, I go mobile and spend the next three hours doing this. A car of women think they've got me but I surprise them by sticking the can inside the open window and nailing them. Down the street I see one guy coming to get me and blast him first. Other times I get blindsided. One kid I chase down the street and cover his head in foam while his family laughs, until they decide to retaliate en masse against me. I'm wiping off foam for five straight minutes. It's glorious. I think everyone owes it to themselves to spend Carnival in Banos once in their lives, if at all possible. If you've got kids over the age of four, even more so. Pure magic. In the end I go back to the hostel and pass out happy.
Next morning I grab a decent ham and cheese omelette, dodge a few kids still armed with their foam cans and grab a bus to Tena. It's about a four and a half hour trip, the scenery more flat, the towns looking more and more remote. We pass Mera where I'll be doing the volunteer work at the animal preserve and it's a five block piece of nothingness...a few buildings, one hostel, an ice-cream stand. A heavy rain sets in as we pass Puyo but lifts before making it in to Tena. I will say, in Ecuador as a whole, there are an uncountable number of unfinished structures, homes and otherwise.
My first impression of Tena is that we're way more backwoods out here. It's dusty and desolate, just heat and stone. It ends up being that Tena has more, shall we say, conveniences than probably most of the towns out this way, but coming from Cuenca and Banos, it's a stark change. It feels like the edge of the jungle, probably because it is. After a day I feel fully comfortable there, but it's not as if I'd wander off the main streets at night. The Limon Cocha hostel is on a gravel road a few blocks from the station. It looks ok in the daylight, with hammocks strung up and plastic chairs lining the outside of each room. As I go to check in, I see a sizable roach on the stairs and quickly remind myself this is just what you accept in this kind of environment and after all it's just a bug. The German owner pretty much just hands me a key. It's a dank little room with a TV in a locked box, a few tiny bugs running up the wall in the bathroom and a reasonable bed. Fine for a few days. I pop a Malarone pill just in case any malaria carrying mosquitos are about (this turns out to be unnecessary...the area is technically in the malaria zone but I don't see a mosquito the entire time). Walk down to the main drag, take $1 taxi to a cafe and gobble up a chicken and cheese sandwich. The Malecon (main drag next to the central river) isn't beautiful or striking but after a day I end up feeling the utter ease here, the relaxed quality, what I end up thinking of as the molasses life. If you're bothered by buses arriving late, by menu items being unavailable frequently, or having to request a check instead of it just coming, this country isn't for you. If you want to enjoy it, you have to just accept and give in to the rhythms of the place. Which I have completely since I got here and I have to admit I'm really enjoying it (especially since I'm typically the opposite back in the world - annoyed by bad drivers, offended by the tardy, etc). After dinner I sit in the cheap plastic chair in front of my room, listening to the Stones, watching the bugs gather at the nearby streetlamp.
Wednesday is rafting day. The Rios Ecuador office sends me over to Cafe Tortuga (on the way there I see a tarantula being devoured by ants) for pickup and I meet the other participants over a breakfast included with the trip. There's British Columbia Wayne, a late 40s plane engine repair guy, who's out here having his mid-life crisis on a motorcycle away from his wife and two kids. He's a good guy but drops the phrase "on my motorcycle" a little too often. There's Scottish Grant (odds of two Grants ending up in Ecuador together?) and his girlfriend Carol, an IBM employee, and they're 50-something Canadians as well. Four Ecuadorians from Guayaquil are there - all mid-20s, gorgeous and excellent with their English. The guys are Nico and Juan and the girlfriends have names longer than my memory so we'll call them Hot and Hotter. There's another Ecuadorian couple that never speaks. There's also a kayaker coming along, 30 year old Frenchman Alex, who it turns out was an Olympic kayaker in the 2004 games, though he competed for Greece. Now he just travels the world kayaking. Must be a good life. Our tour guide is Torquino, a brilliantly funny and engaging guy, who does a lot of rafting in Canada and had the honor of giving the current Ecuadorian president his first rafting adventure while in office. We climb into the back of a truck with two wooden benches and make the 30 minute drive into the jungle towards the Jatunyacu class III river. It's a great group, with gregarious Scottish Grant leading the chatter parade. When one of the gringos asks about the bus schedule I say "it comes when it comes" and Hotter gets wide-eyed and nods her head aggressively, in effect saying "Yes, that's it, he's got it." I'm liking the molasses life.
After we go through safety procedures (Rios is very good), apply our last bucket of sun block and bug spray, we had down a step and rocky path to the river. One boat is the locals and another the gringos, though we're lucky to get Torquino on our boat. Feels great to be on the water, though I quickly ditch the sunglasses since they fog up. The initial rapids don't seem so bad...I'm thinking that if this is class III, maybe you have to go up a level or two to get real excitement. We pass kids fishing and frequent gold hunters ($35/once here). We have 25 kilometers to cover today. The rapids are fun but not scary. The calm waters are just relaxing. I watch the landscape and the birds darting about. Half way through we stop for an Ecuadorian burrito lunch. After lunch we're back at it and the first rapids we come to Torquino says that if we want to float through these rapids out of the boat, that's fine.
Here begins lesson the first. Never get out of the boat. Feeling my adventurous oats I volunteer and leap out of the boat. Scottish Grant follows. The other boat is ahead of us and some of the guys are making the same decision. From when we get out of the raft, there's only about six seconds before you hit the rapids. Supposedly the way to float downstream is to put your feet up ahead of you and let your head go back. Right. The second a wave hits you, wanting to push your head back and under the water, your natural "I want to keep breathing" instinct is to bring your head forward and legs down. This is not a great idea though. After the first wave, I look at Scottish Grant and there's this look of absolute terror on his face...the "what have we gotten ourselves into" look. There's nothing I can do for him so I figure I better concentrate on keeping myself alive. Close my eyes when the rapids come, let the water quickly rush over my head, disorienting but tolerable. Slam! Legs into a rock below. Ug. There was probably a part of my brain that assumed when they said this rapid was ok to float through that it was probably rock-free. Oh no. I end up hitting three or four rocks, nailing the middle toe on my right foot something fierce. I also start to feel my Teva sandals being torn off of my feet. I quickly debate on whether to let them go and try and save them, opting for save. So I'm reaching down and holding on to the sandals, trying to scoop them up, all the while acting as a pinball for the rocks. But I make it through. Once I'm back in the boat, I look at my toe and sure enough there's a dark purple ring around it. Nothing to be done so I just hope it's badly bruised and not broken. Scottish Grant also makes it through looking like he shaved a few years off his lifespan. Never get out of the boat.
That being said, some of the looseness that comes with rafting down here is part of the fun. The rapids are picking up and during one big slide over a boulder we lose Carol from the boat. She's fine and the excitement is getting higher and higher. Alex is doing all kinds of kayaking tricks off the rocks. Then Torquino tells us we're going to do some rodeo rafting. He has Scottish Grant and Carol sit on the front of the boat, legs over the side, only holding on to the rope as we hit the rapids. Grant gets thrown back into the boat three or four times and Carol gets bragging rights. Next up is me and Wayne. We both handle it like champs (and admittedly, it's great) and we're about to trumpet our greatness after we're through the rapid when Torquino charges up and pushed us into the water. Good times. Anaconda jokes fly, lots of good-natured horsing around, tons of fun slides into rocks. Just cost me a discolored toe and a watch now with water in the face (but still ticking). If you're interested in pictures from our trip you can see them here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=48470&id=129547057098150&saved
Thrilled to be on the water and not anxious to leave the relaxed feel of the town for a another long bus ride, I sign up for a two day kayak instruction course. That night I grab a really tasty hawaiian pizza dinner with Wayne, talking trips, marriage, family, etc. Another hour or two listening to music at the hostel, listening to the roosters and roof dogs, before I get some early sleep.
Thursday morning I meet my instructor, this local guy Danielle. We get the gear packed away, grab a chicken sandwich for a latter lunch and have his girl drive us out to the class I Napo river. We'll only be going a few kilometers today, since I'm new to the kayak. It's tougher than I thought. Keeping a straight path isn't elementary and I end up using a backstroke to correct my sloppy driving frequently. The tremendously small rapids are fine, they're actually the easiest part. It's the still water, with the endless paddling that wears you (or at least me) out after many hours. Also, you have to hold yourself forward in the action position, requiring abdominal muscles I don't have after six or seven hours. It's a hot day out there and coating the sun screen. But it's also relaxing in the slow parts. Two red-headed vultures on the nearby cliff wall see us and tail our boats for a while. We break for lunch and I learn he's lived in Tel Aviv and been to Egypt, Jordan and Germany. A giant yellow butterfly lopes around our lunch setting. After lunch, we practice rolls, which involves Danielle dumping me upside down to teach me how not to drown should this happen in the open water. Turning yourself is mostly power in your hips, which I'm apparently pretty good at, but my paddle work in the flips needs a lot of work. In a half hour of getting dunked I only do three he's perfectly happy with. After half an hour my contacts are fucked up by the water and I'm anxious to just move on down the river. By the way, if you're not familiar with kayaks, you have a skirt around your body which hooks to the kayak. If you're not able to flip yourself, you have to pull the handle on the skirt, get yourself out of the boat and find the air. Anyway, the rest of the trip down river is fine, easy rapids and arm wearying paddles through slow moving water. I'm just about done when we're near the end. One last rapids, actually at the same spot we ended at yesterday, so these are a bit larger.
Here begins lesson the second. Never get out of the boat. Even when you have no choice. I follow Danielle's path through the last rapids, but where he easily dodges the eight foot rock sticking out of the water, I quickly realize I'm going to hit it. Ok, I saw Alex do this, I'll probably just bounce off and continue. I'm going to hit it sideways and I think that I lean back too far, trying to protect my body from the rock. I flip the damn kayak in the rapids. Upside down, I take one second and tell myself not to panic. I'm not going to drown. Admittedly, I don't even consider trying to flip the kayak upright. I reach out, find the handle for the skirt and rip it loose, swimmingly quickly out and finding air. I've managed to hold on to the paddle and the kayak is still there so I grab it, figuring I'll let it lead me down river, shielding me from any obstacles. Wrong. Forgot about them damn rocks under the surface. I slam into a big one with both my legs and holy fuck it hurts. I hold on to the kayak and paddle and luckily I'm through the rapids. Danielle asks "what happened" and I want to punch him a little bit. He tows the kayak while I hold on and swim, about the length of two football fields (we were on the opposite side of the river) back to shore. He's got his kayak already out and is scampering up the stairs. I'm a bit woozy and I have to empty my kayak of about 40 tons of water. Plus, the rocks are really slippery and I'm barefoot with a bad toe, so add it all up and carrying that kayak out of the shore and up the stairs is pain in the ass. As I head up I look down and it's not a pretty sight. My legs look like like a fought a badger and lost. Badly. There's a chunk missing from the top of my right foot and I'm bleeding healthily into the river. Ug. But I heft the kayak and climb the stairs.
Danielle's girl is there with their little kid and they're the first to notice I'm bleeding all over the steps. Danielle gives it a look, says "Holy Shit" and decides we're heading to the hospital for stitches. I say I'll be fine but he insists (luckily). He gets water and cleans off the wound. His girl grabs one of the kid's paper diapers and wraps my foot in it while Danielle secures it with a rafting strap. And we're off to the hospital. I figure I'll get to see what local medical care is like.
And it's pretty damn good! We go to a public hospital (I think Danielle's sister worked there), I get seen inside of 15 minutes with only minimal information needed for the form. At first I'm thrown by all the iodine and disinfectants being housed in used gatorade bottles, but I figure they're sterilizers for a reason. The doc cleans the wounds, stitches me up and hands me antibiotics and pain meds. We're out in 25 minutes. Total cost for all of it? $5. That rocks. Plus since they needed my weight, I learned I'm down eight pounds since coming here three weeks ago. Half way towards the trip goal in just three weeks. I'm probably most excited about this part. Anyway, understanding discretion is the better part of valor, I decide to opt out of day two of the kayak lessons (it really wouldn't have been possible) and easily get a refund and a ride home from Danielle. As I sit outside at the hostel I get a lot of stares and "what happened" questions from a group returning from a jungle trip.
This entry has gone on way too long so I'll leave the trips back to Banos and Cuenca, my chat with the sweetest perfume worker/prostitute ever, the fears of infection, how my right foot is now borrowed from the Baron Harkonnen and my days of exciting convalescence for the next entry. Cheers!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.117s; Tpl: 0.028s; cc: 6; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0523s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Summer
non-member comment
Sounds like you're having a blast! Hope the foot is healing quickly. Keep up the great writing, especially the meal descriptions--YUM!