Gap Tour Ecuador

---

Gap Tour (28th January -14 February)

Ecuador is where my journey really began. I arrived in the capital Quito two nights and one day before I started my GAP tour of the country. The Gap tour lasted two weeks. My tour group consisted of 11 people from all different parts of the world. There were two groups, 7 of us where in our mid twenties to early thirties and the other group consisted of two couples in their 60’s and our tour guide Carlos. The Younger Group Sam (English), Ena (Peruvian) Sam’s partner, Tracy (English), Pia (Finish), Michele (Danish), Scott (American), Maude (Swiss) and myself. One of the older couples came from Canada and the other Denmark. Sam and Ena we just married, they met when Sam spent a summer teaching English in Peru. Their relationship lasted 8 years before they got married although most of the time they were in other parts of the world Sam England and Ena Peru. The last two years when Ena move to England was when they really got to know each other properly. Tracy and Pia where friends from England, both girls were full of life and loved mountain biking. Tracy had shoulder length brown hair and huge smile on her face. Pia being of Scandinavian decent had a much fair complexion and blond hair. Michele was a quiet fellow but would come up with some great one liners every now and then. He was quite tall and lanky person who also had an interesting beard at the time that looked like and elf’s beard. Scott was very tall guy who had a hundred and one stories that he kept everyone entertained with. He seemed to have his hands is lot of pies. Maude was from Switzerland she had long Reddish/Brown hair and lots of freckles on her face with a very cute smile. She was quite a handy person to have in our group because she had a large Spanish vocabulary add to this she was always the life of the party. Having the two older couple also in our group added variety they were far from boring they had a lot of life and world experience, during the day they would participate in all of the activities whether it be horse riding, hiking or whatever. We would all go out to dinner together after the day of travel and adventure then the younger group would go off and visit the local bar.

In the tour we visited many different towns and also many different environments of Ecuador. Ecuador is a very mountainous country so the major towns and cities are at attitudes exceeding 200m and some as high as 4000m above sea level. This means if you go for a run or do any light exercise you certainly feel it. One of the highlights of the two week tour was our visit to the Amazon rainforest. We visited an area known to the locals as Pimpilla. There we had a home stay with a family who lives in the forest. The Father Delfin was our guide for 4 days while we were in the forest. Defin and Estela has 5 kids all ranging in ages the oldest was 15 and the youngest Stephanie was only four months old. We stayed in cabins each night. There was no electricity there at all so once it was dark we would light candles to eat dinner and after dinner we would play cards with the kids. While in the forest we went for many walks with Delfin, during these walks he would point out various plants that could be used for medicine, perfume, food, building houses, making musical instruments and the making weapons. One of these walks involved us climbing up a fast flowing water fall. Climbing down however was much harder. The trick was to allow the rope to take the weight of your body and then lean right back and to hold the rope close to your body. The mother also ran a small school were all the kids and their cousins, who lived over the hill went. The school only had 15 students. One day during our visit we visited the school helped with the classes and played soccer with the kids during the lunch break. We also helped out with the building of the kitchen at the school which was under construction. In Ecuador it is compulsory to go to school until you are 12 years old so there are small primary schools scattered all over the country. Unfortunately after the age of 12 schooling is not compulsory and not funded by the government so the number of high schools is very small especially in country areas. The majority of people are unable to afford to send their children to high school. So after the age of 12 children are forced find work. The majority will work for their family or friends. We also visited many other towns in Ecuador. One of the adventures that sticks in my mind was when Scott, Sam, Ena and I hired Quad bikes in Banyos and went off Exploring up a mountain. The Carlos, Tracey and Pia all hired mountain bikes and got a lift up to the top of hill on the back of a truck and rode back down the same mountain we were exploring with our quad bikes. We flew up the mountain at a great on knots and really felt free like a bird. Half way up we bumped into the mountain bike gang coming down the mountain so we all stopped for some photos and exchanged notes of the mountain. We then proceed up to the top of the mountain. Up the top views of the surrounding mountains and the volcano on the other side were beautiful. Coming down is the mountain we had several problems with our bikes. Problem 1) Sam’s chain kept coming off his bike so we had to stop and wait several times for him to put it back on. One time as he was putting it back on he burnt himself on the exhaust pipe in the process. The chain continued to do this all the way down the mountain. Problem 2) Some where down the mountain we came across a fork in the road and took a wrong turn. We didn’t realize this until we came across a stream that we differently didn’t pass on the way up. So we rode through the steam a couple of times wetting each other as much as possible. We then continued on down the mountain till we came across a local. Luckily Sam speaks fluent Spanish so he was able to ask the local where we were and how far away we were from Banyoes. The local informed us that Banyos was we where 15 km away the only problem was the road remained very bumpy so we couldn’t go very fast. This posed quite a problem as it was 12:30 and at 1 I had to be back in town to go rafting with Maude and Tracey. So we put the gas to the metal and rode down as fast as we could. Problem 3) As we flew down the mountain Scott was showing off and taking corners very fast. He took one corner too fast and ended up breaking his transmission. This meant that he could not go up hill or travel on the flats without being towed. While we were headed down there were some flat bits were I had to tow Scott. Coming down the mountain should have only taken us 30 minutes it ended up taking us two hours. When we go near the bottom Scotts mobile began to work so we phoned Carlos our tour leader and managed to arrange for the rafting group to pick me up on the highway on their way to the river. Carlos also met is there and he rode my bike back to town. The rafting trip wasn’t quite as eventful but still a lot of fun. Maude acted as a translator for the trip down the rapids as the guide spoke only a little English. We all managed to get ourselves very wet. Only one person fell out when they weren’t supposed to. The guide did capsize the raft on purpose one time. By the end of that very long day I was totally buggered so I was the first person to retire after dinner. Other adventures involved horse riding which I hadn’t done for ten years. So when my horse got up to a gallop I was quite scared and couldn’t control it so I just held on for life. Eventually the guide caught up with me and stopped the horse. However this didn’t put me of horse riding during my 11 month trip I went riding about half a dozen times. We also climbed a few mountains, which is quite hard since you are already at altitude most of the time when you start. Every 5-10 minutes you have to stop and catch your breath and let your heart rate come down. We also visited a number of small museums that explained the history of Ecuador. We also had quite a few big party nights one of them involved several bottles Tequila. The night started off tame bit quickly turned nasty once the Tequila came out. I vomited a couple of time in toilet and we had to carry Maude and Ena home. I am sure other things happened on that night, but I unfortunately or fortunately whichever way you look at it don’t remember much of the night.

I really enjoyed the two weeks of the Gap tour. We all developed special bonds due to the fun and adventures we enjoyed together over the trip. Later on during my journey I managed to catch up with Ena, Sam and Maude in Switzerland we they all live. Our tour finished in Quito where it started.

---