Blogs from East, Ecuador, South America - page 30

After a trip into the depth of the Amazon Daylin and I headed to another town in the Amazon called Tena. Tena is known to be the number one spot in Ecuador for white water rafting, because of its proximity to the Napo River. Out hostal duena put us in touch with her nephew who ran a rafting agency and we met up with the rest of the rafters early Friday morning. Luckily, only two other girls were on our trip, making our first experience rafting very intimate. I was raining that morning, and we were riding in the back of a pick-up truck to the river all four of us shivering. When we got to the river, we helped with the set up and got to know our crazy guide Tarquino. We did a few ... read more

Que dire sur se magnifique bout de terre la... maudit que c;est dense!! Sa resemble un peu a nos forest: en beaucoup plus dense, pas les memes arbres, pas les memes plantes, pas les memes insectes, plus chaud, plus humide, ta aucune chance de marcher si tu suis pas le sentier, aucune plaine, beaucoup de colines et ya des fourmies qui goute le citron! Dans le fond, sa resemble pas a nos forest mais pas du tout. C;est tres trippant de voir la diversite que nous avons pas au quebec. Gabriel et moi avons essayer les ;;corde a Tarzan;;, wow, sa tiens pour vrai, c;est surprend de voir des ;;cordes;; en bois qui supporte ton poid. Le guide nous a fait manger des fourmies qui goutaient le citron. T:en prennais une ou deux et sa goutait ... read more

I love Ecuador... We´ve gone from the Beach... 8 hours and we were in Quito... then another 8 hours and we were in Lago Agrio - a jumping off point to the Primary rainforest of Cuyabeno nature reserve! Well it was another 4 hours on the this rickety bus and it was very bouncy to the bridge where we got on a motorised canoe for a 3 hour boat ride to our jungle lodge! We arrived in Lago Agrio at 5am after going on the night bus, so we were pretty knackered. We met the rest of our group - 3 couples (2 french, 1 french-canadian) and a spanish girl. It turns out that everyone speaks French better than English - except Cam and I. I can follow the French but every word I try and ... read more

I made it to my volunteer station safely. No bus issues. Getting accustomed to life in Ecuador. It is so nice to be able to stay put for a while. My home base is an hour bus ride from Tena, where you can get an omlette for $.50!! (the bus has to cross a stream sans bridge on the way here). I live in a wood cabin with one other girl from the US. Most of the people here, not surpisingly, are in college. Yes, I am twice as old as some of them. (sigh). I feel it too, when we go hiking through the jungle, sinking into mud piles, crossing streams by delicately traversing fallen logs, (lost my balance and fell in once), ascending and descending earthen stairs formed by tree roots and ducking under ... read more

As if one session of mud climbing was not enough we went on Ali´s waterfall walk! Basically, he owns a huge plot of land and has 3 waterfalls all of his very own and it´s about a 3ish hour round trip to see all of them. Feeling that we had more than recovered from the Rum and Coke hangover 4 of us (Hannah, Andrea, Ren and me) decided to do the waterfall round trip. We took a bit of a map with us and had a great time walking up the river (those of you who have done Prevelli gorge in Crete know exactly what I´m talking about here) and traversing vertical mud slopes. Got a bit lost but that´s what happens when you put an American in charge of map reading Ren! Still we managed ... read more