Jungle Jane

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I am now in the little town of Banos in Ecuador. As you would imagine, Ecuador is extremely lush and green and beautiful (and wet!). As soon as we crossed the border from Peru, the scenery changed from dry barren sand dunes to lush banana plantations by the coast, and cloud forest when we climbed in altitude. A couple of days ago we did a famous railway trip called the "Devil's Nose Railway", so-called because of the way it winds and double backs, and hangs precariously on the edge of a mountain. The best part is that you get to ride on top of the roof!

The last two days have been pretty eventful as we went on a trip to the Amazon rainforest. It took about 5 hours to drive there, and on the way we stopped at several waterfalls and scenic views. At one there was what can only be described as a wooden box on a rope, suspended 200 metres above the river. For some silly reason I decided to ride in it across the river. It is dubbed to be the longest (and probably the highest) "cable car" in Ecuador, but I am not sure whether it deserves that title. Pretty scary, and it has made me even more determined to avoid bungee jumps at all costs!

In the afternoon we went for a walk and our guide showed us lots of medicinal plants and a rubber tree, which he gouged a big hole in for us - I thought this was supposed to be an "ecotour". The walk finished with a refreshing dip in a waterfall plunge pool, and a canopy walkway.

The next days walk in the forest was much more eventful, however. It didn't help the fact that we were all hung over. The night before, our tour guides had produced a big jug of fruit juice punch, containing some kind of local alcohol. We all ended up playing a kind of reverse-Jenga game with the melted wax from the candles, and got really drunk. It was probably a good thing as we were scared we wouldn't sleep due to all the huge insects that had been flying around earlier in the night. As it was, we slept like babies!

Everyone (including the two tour guides) was feeling a bit ill the next morning, but we set off on the hike anyway. It had rained heavily the night before so all the paths were covered in deep mud (and I mean DEEP), so we were glad that they had provided us all with wellies! The trail crossed several rivers, and we were being careful not to let the water spill over the top of our wellies - we needn't have bothered. We were happily wandering along, with one tour guide at the front, then Helen, and then me. The others were somewhere behind us. Suddenly, our tour guide totally freaked out and urgently screamed at us in Spanish to go back. We imagined the worse (pumas, alligators...) and scrambled back the way we had come faster that we have ever moved in our entire lives! Our guide then revealed that it was a snake. We were pretty relieved; at least a snake wouldn't chase us! He seemed pretty freaked out though, so we wondered if it was a deadly poisonous one, but he wouldn't say. When he had calmed down, he took us to see it. It was pretty freaky to see a huge green and yellow snake in the wild I have to say! The guides didn't seem to want to go past it though, so we had to instead go along the river.

It was fine at first, but we went round a corner to find it suddenly went really deep. It was all dark from the overhanging vegetation and the water was a murky grey colour - the perfect home for alligators, anacondas, piranhas and God knows what other horrors! Basically, though, we had no choice. The guide went first, and then I followed. The water came up to my waist, soaking my shorts with grose dirty Amazonian water! I was more concerned with what might be lurking at the bottom though!

Luckily after about 10 yards, we went round a bend to find the river went shallow again - phew! Eventually, we came to the head of the river and they told us the waterfall we had come all this way to see was behind the cliff, we had to swim to see it. We were totally wet anyway, so changed into our bikinis and swam around. It was really nice, but pretty scary as the water was sooo murky that your feet kept touching trees and rocks etc at the bottom, but you just couldn't see anything. They assured us that there was nothing evil lurking, but I was not convinced! After the swim, we put our soggy clothes back on and headed back, and then spent a relaxing afternoon on a little wooden canoe cruising down the river.

On the return trip to the town of Banos, we were supposed to be met by someone from the tour office, but they didn't show up for some reason. Instead, we all got the local bus. The guides bought the tickets, and said the bus left at 6.15pm. We had a while to wait, so put the wellies and his bag of equipment in the bottom of the bus, then all went for coffee. We sat looking out of the window and at 5.45pm, the bus set off! The guides raced down and found that they had been misinformed - the bus left half an hour earlier than they had thought! Luckily, someone from the bus station piled us all in his car and we sped off the catch up with the bus. The roads are just rough gravel, and they wind up the valley with a series of sharp turns. Our driver obviously wanted to catch up with the bus a.s.a.p. and so drove like a maniac at break-neck speed, overtaking everything on blind bends. I would have rather fancied my chances with the snake any day! After about 10 minutes of gripping the seat, the bus came into sight - phew! The problem by then was that it was crammed with people, so six more almost burst it at the seams! Oh well, at least we would get home in one piece!

Today and tomorrow are going to be relaxing days. Our hostel has a steam bath, which is something like a Turkish bath or a sauna, but better apparently. We are going to try that tomorrow! We only have one more week in South America (eeek!) so we are just going to head up to Quito and see the Equator, and then go to the mountain village of Otavalo, famous for its Saturday morning market. After that, we are heading to the beaches of Mexico for two weeks for a bit of well deserved R 'n R.

Keep me up to date on news from home - how is the foot and mouth crisis going? Anything else happening in the news?

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Photos

Hold on Tight!
Precarious cable car across the gorge