South America

After the last post I decided to leave my friends and head to the Jungle town of Tena solo. The bus ride was only about 2.5 hours and I met a guy on the bus who walked around with me for awhile and ended up showing me a good hostal (which also runs trips deeper into the jungle as well as white water rafting trips). The next day I decided at the last minute (1 hour before departure) to go on the Class 3 white water rafting trip. We had 2 boats and the trip turned out really great, far above my expectations. I was in the boat with the more interesting guide. He was always pulling stunts like jumping out of the boat onto a rock in the middle of the river while we looked around wondering how he was going to catch up with us before the next set of rapids. However, he was able to catch up in plenty of time. Sometimes he would have people sit on the very front of the boat with their legs hanging over the front for the smaller class 2 rapids. One of the girls on the boat got tossed too many times and she was scared so the guide sent her to the other boat where the little kids were riding. The whole trip took about 8 hours....5 of which were on the water.

I stayed in Tena for another night and met up with a German guy and we went out to the bars. It turned out that he was headed back to his volunteer post in the Jungle the next day and it sounded very interesting. I managed to arrange a very cheap one night stay in the Jungle near where he was staying. I didnt pay for the whole guided tour so I just wandered around a few of the paths solo in the morning. When I returned to the ¨Cabana¨ one of the guides told me that I had to hurry back to the main road if I wanted to get back to town. It turns out there were 2 problems. 1) The local public transportation system was not running because of a strike. 2) The long distance bus from Tena back north to Quito was not running due to a large landslide that blocked the road. I hurried back to the main road and the owner of the hostal picked me up in his truck just as the jungle guide had promised. After that I had to catch a bus back to Quito via an alternate route that was about 3 hours longer than I had planned.

Lago Quilotoa

After the Lago Quilotoa hike with friends from Spain

Spanish friends and local kids at Lago Quilotoa

Riding rented 4-wheelers near Banos

Local kids in the Jungle community of Serena

Same Kids

Checking out the Napo River before heading back to Tena

Jungle Cabanas