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I have just returned from a great weekend in atown called baños in the middle of the Andes. I will try and keep this short so as not to bore anyone too much!
On Thursday I started a new job which involvs community development such as promoting education, building and doing solo medical brigades without a doctor. We went to a place called Playa de Macumas which was in the middle of the rainforest, as per usual, and we went with Tony´s new bosses called Marcelo and Milton (what a name). After several hours on a bus we arrived at a shed guarded by a horrific looking turkey. I was fairly disturbed by this creature as it had no beak, just loose flesh. To make matters worse it rapidly changed colour between bright red and sky blue. Whilst sitting in an hour long meeting mostly in Shuar (the local language) this turkey was constantly a threat. Before long Tony and I couldn´t take it anymore and went for a walk down to the river. After a 15 minute muddy walk we arrived at the river to be greeted by a man who a slightly odd look about him. In broken English he explained how he had spent 3 months in jail in the US, having been a cook in New Haven (I believe Yale University is there?), been deported and now lived in the jungle making 100% pure cocaine. He has no Ecuadorian papers and invited us to his house next Thursday...probably won´t be taking him up on that offer.
After a slightly surreal Thursday, I spent Friday researching burns and how to treat them. A boy came in with a completely burnt face because he ahd pured petrol over his face and set it alight. One might think this intentional but sadly it is jsut down to a lack of education. He simply didn´t understand or even know about the idea of flammability.
On Friday afternoon we headed off to Baños with banana cake in pocket. 5 hours later we arrived, booked into a really nice Hostal called Eden, and went to eat a beautiful chicken curry. At 9 a dodgy lorry with benches, called a chiva, picked us up and took us up to a viewing point where one could supposedly see the lava spewing crater of a volcano called Tungurahua. As I expected, no volcano was to be seen (due to the clouds). Instead I got to watch 2 men playing around with fire for half an hour and I got harassed by a 10 yr old boy for money. On the way up Boney M was playing at full volume just to add to the atmosphere. When we had left the city the bus stopped and we were told to climb onto the roof where benches had been nailed down. It was really fun being up there but I almost lost my head to a telephone, more than once. There were hundreds of people at this viewing spot and the 10yr old who harassed me was pretending to be a guide. After his 5th attempt at extracting money from me I became furious and gave him a piece of my mind. Needless to sya he moved on to someone else unperturbed. However, what did make the evening worthwhile was a fantastic view of Baños at night.
The following day we went rafting in the morning. We set off from Baños in alittle mini bus thing. 5 minutes into the journey the police stopped us and impounded the vehicle-a good start to the morning. Luckily another one was ordered in by the rafting agency (with the legal papers) and we set off. We stopped at the River Pastaza and got into wetsuits before being instructed on how to raft. We soon set off and for safety had two kayakers along side the raft in case anyone fell in. They were veyr good at kayaking and were somehow doing forward flips in their kayaks. Tony and I led at the front, steamng ahead. We rafted through deep rainforest and went over 3/4 rapids, 5+/6 being the hardest. The rapids were really good fun but at one junction it got pretty hairy. The raft crashed into a huge rock and a girl in the raft went flying out and got dragged under the boat. Luckily she was ok and wasn´t bleeding too much. Our guide let out a large cackle and we set off again. Two minutes later we hit another huge rock sending the raft flying but somehow we all stayed in. He made Mel sit on the front of the raft and the in the middle of the rapids asked me to push her in, which I did. I think he was ever so slighly sadistic but we had a really really good time and everyone came out laughing in the end. I spoke to him about the possibility of doing some tougher rapids so we will see!
The next activity was canyoning. We abseiled down 2 6 metre waterfalls,a 4m and then finally a 45 metre. Having done abseiling alot before the first few were very easy and very calm but enjoyable. The last one however was pretty scary. Two metres of it was rock and then the rest was air. As I started to descend the guy shouted ´´knees´´. I didn´t have a clue what he was on about and swung under the overhang and started to abseil down. It turns out that I was meant to put my knees against the rock so I didn´t swing! The abseil was really fun and the waterfall was cascading down on top of me. We did this one twice and the second time round he told me to jump and let go of the rope when I got to the edge of the rock. He told me he would brake the rope once I had fallen a little way. When at the edge he said to lower my body lower than my legs but forgot to inform me that I should not bend my knees. Before I knew what was happening I was hanging upside down 45 metres up above rocks watching the water turn inot spray. This was of course much to the amusement of the guides.
I got back alive and that night we went out. Anna lost her wallet again, I couldn´t believe it! She now has no cash and no access to money. I have never met anyone so relaxed and casual about things. So far, the thiefs of Ecuador have managed to get an mp3 player, a 1000 pound camera, $160 cash and 3 credit cards of Anna, nevermind keys, earrings and several other more trivial items. How she does it I do not know.
Anyway, Sunday was jsut as good as Saturday. On Sunday morning Anna and I decided to go and do a trek up the side of the volcano. The first 1/2 hour involved wlaking up loads of steps to a statue of the Virgin (which was horrible). It was pretty tiring and I was certainly out of breath by the time we got there. little did I know what was to come next. The plan was, or what a guy told us to do, was to reach a viewing point for the volcano about 3000m up. We found the sign to it but then saw 2 paths. Which one to take? One was straight and looked like a path and the other was incredibly steep disappearing into the clouds and was covered in vegetation. Any normal person would have taken the former but I as convinced that he said it was steep so off we set. The next hour definately goes in the books as on of the hardest things I have ever done. We did 4km of 75/80 degree climb through dense prehistoric vegetation and I almost died. it ended up that I would power up 200 metres or so and then wait for Anna at a suitable resting point. At the end of each 200 metres it took me a good 3 minutes to bring my breathing rate back down and I would wait for Anna for 10 minutes or so. She was an absolute trooper and I was really impressed (for someone who has never done anything like this before). We later found out that the route we had taken is not on the map and is only for really experienced ´´hikers´´- I hate that word. It is meant to take 2 hours to complete, but we did it in under an hour as psycologically I didn´t think it was meant to be hard so I really pushed it. At the top, the beautiful views disappeared behind thick cloud and we were in cloud rainforest. At the top we were completely lost as you could see further than 50 metres. In the mist I saw a little shack and heard music coming out of it. I went over and shouted to see if anyone was there but no answer came. A few minutes later someone started whistling from within a patch of vegetables. We went over and an old man was there hacking away at the corn. He turned out to be lovely and showed us the way down but it was fairly eerie at the beginning. On the way down I suddenly heard this electronic sound and it really startled me. It turned out to be a special type of Andean bird, but it couldn´t have sounded less natural. Anna and I jogged the last 1.2km down when we got to a lower point.
I was absolutely nackered but the activities for that day weren´t over. In the afternoon we went paragliding or parapenting as they call it. We drove away from baños and up to 3000m. The guys were really nice and as we were about to go the clouds cleared and you could see the volcano in all it´s glory with water vapour pouring out. He strapped me to him and we ran a few metres before the wind picked us up. We were in the air for 25 minutes and the landing went really smoothly. We went to about 400m above our take of point and had a brilliant view of the valley and volcano. Whilst we were paragliding, the very volcano that we had been on that morning erupted and huge columns of ash came spewing out.
A really good weekend all round!
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