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Finally made it over the mountains and to the beautiful land of trees and rivers! Lauren and I arrived in Puyo last Tuesday in mid afternoon. We were welcomed by a total and complete downpour, which made finding our host's house all the more interesting. Lauren had found a couple we could stay with on couchsurfing.com and this was our first experience trying it out. Hugo and Carolina were a very nice middle aged couple that welcomed us warmly into their home. Hugo has traveled to quite a few countries (I think he said 70) and speaks English pretty well, while Carolina speaks far less English but has also done a bit of traveling. We spent the first afternoon chatting with them and getting to know them a bit, and we learned that the next day was actually Carolina's birthday. There was to be a fiesta the next night with a lot of their friends who work at the same university as them, where Hugo is a professor/ecological researcher and Carolina is his assistant. When we learned it was Carolina's birthday we ventured to the mercado where we picked up a couple bottles of wine and a cake for her. We weren't expecting them to feed us so we also picked up a few more provisions but that night we were treated to arepas (delicious corn bread patties) and some beef. We didn't want to be rude so we ate some of the meat, which wasn't bad, but it felt strange to be eating meat after not partaking for almost 4 years.
The next day we awoke early to go to an ethnobotanical garden called Omaere next to Hotel Jardín. We arrived at 9am when they open, which is the best time to get a guide, and the entrance fee was only $3. Our guide was Chris, an ex-pat from Salinas, California who has been living in Ecuador for over 20 years and is married to a woman from the Shuar indigenous group. His wife had opened the garden a few years previous after reforesting the area with the native plants that had been cut down to make pasture lands for grazing cattle. After walking through the botanical garden, which seemed to me a patch of pristine primary rainforest, one would never guess that the entire 15 hectares has been recovered from cattle grazed grasslands. Chris walked us through the garden, where we learned about 2 different Amazonian tribes still intact today, the Waorani and the Shuar. There were 2 huts built that we could sit in and learn some of their history and way of life, one hut for each group. We also learned about the different medicinal uses of various plants and I saw walking palms for the first time. They are really cool trees that send out new roots from the trunk, which take a few weeks to reach the soil and each helps to move the tree a few centimeters. Over the course of its life a walking palm can move up to a couple of meters in order to find more sunlight. Nature rocks! We also saw some really cool insects, including tons of butterflies, a massive green caterpillar and 2 large grasshoppers with neon yellow and green stripes. Everything is so vibrant in the jungle, it's awesome. We had a great time at the ethnobotanical garden, and Chris turned the 'hour-long' tour into 3 hours for us, probably because he could tell we were so interested in everything he was telling us. We also lucked out that we had an English-speaking guide; we had started early and I didn't get any coffee that morning, so I'm not sure I would've understood too much of the tour in Spanish.
After our tour we went to the monkey reservation just outside Puyo called Paseo de los Monos. We caught a taxi out there for $4 and the ride took about 15 minutes. Chris had actually warned us about this place, saying it wasn't actually a good reserve for the animals because they are confined to small cages and apparently they aren't fed too well. He also told us that the monkeys are little thieves, so they steal things from people and then those people get bitten when they try to retrieve their belongings. I was in no mood to get bitten by a monkey so I made sure to zip everything up in my jacket, which I carried under my arm in a ball. The entrance fee to the reserve was $3, and I was immediately struck by the beautiful area it was in. They built it in a couple hectares of pristine rainforest next to a river, and there were a decent number of monkeys that swung around free in the treetops. While that was really cool to see, the majority of the inhabitants were unfortunately locked in cages, some of them quite small with nothing to do or climb on. I'm hoping the animals in the really small enclosures aren't in there permanently. And maybe it was just my imagination, but a lot of them had sad faces that said to me 'help me be free.' All the animals that are in the reserve were once owned as pets by people, or have otherwise been confiscated from various people by the government, who needed a place to put them. Most of them wouldn't know how to feed or defend themselves in the wild since they have never actually been wild animals, so I guess the reserve is kind of bittersweet; while it's not an ideal place it's ultimately all they could do for the animals. We saw about 5 or 6 species of native monkeys, and we were able to get really close to a few of the ones with the freedom to wander the reserve. There was a mother and child pair of white capuchins who were adorable to watch, and while it would have been cool to play with them I think it also would've been a little freaky. They really do have sharp little teeth. My favorite monkeys of all were the tiny little squirrel monkeys, so cute! I think I could watch those little guys all day, they were so entertaining. We walked the loop around the reserve twice and after spending a decent amount of time watching the monkeys, we moved on to the task of finding a way back to town. Again, we had arrived in a taxi and there weren't a whole lot of taxis or other people all the way out near the reserve. Luckily one of the employees happened to be heading into town in his truck at the exact time we were leaving and he offered us a free ride in the back. It's always nice when things just work out.
It was about 4pm when we returned to Puyo, so after grabbing a quick coffee we headed back to the house to relax before the party. All the guests started showing up about 8 and neither of us were much in the mood for socializing so for the first hour or so we sat in the corner, letting everyone else speculate on who the random white girls were. After a while Hugo started coming around with a huge bowl of meat, which we took politely at first. Then he kept making the rounds and basically started forcing us to eat more meat because there was so much. Again, it wasn't bad but I didn't really appreciate the fact that he refused to accept a polite 'no thank you' for an answer. He was a nice guy and a very generous host, but we had told him we were vegetarians the night before so I found it kind of disrespectful that he kept putting more and more meat on our plates. After all it wasn't our fault they had bought and cooked too much of the stuff. After a while we moved outside where everyone else was sitting around talking, and we chatted a bit with the couple that lived upstairs. They were very nice and had an adorable little boy who was a nice distraction for us from all the other people we didn't feel much like talking to. We had cake and drinks and after a few hours everyone gave us a traditional goodbye kiss on the cheek and went on their merry way, leaving us the chance to slip off to bed. It wasn't a bad party, I was just in one of those antisocial moods.
The next day we caught a 10am bus to Tena; the ride was a relatively painless 2 hours and cost $2.50. In Tena we planned to do some more rafting, since we had heard it was supposed to be some of the best in the world. After checking into our hostel called A Welcome Break we spent a lot of the afternoon wandering around trying to find all the different tour agencies that offered rafting trips. When we did find them they were all closed for some reason, even though it was 2 o'clock on a Friday afternoon. We kept wandering then checked in a couple hours later and finally they were all open. The lowest price we could find was $60 but we were told if we got more people the price would go down. We waited a few more hours and then checked back in with River People, one of the best known companies in Tena. They had 4 other people signed up so I was able to talk the girl down to $55, not much of a difference but $5 can be a meal down here. When we arrived the next morning we saw to our slight disappointment a family of 4 with 2 young kids preparing to go rafting. Just our luck. When there are kids in the group the guide has to tone it down a bit, meaning we wouldn't be able to go through the craziest rapids like we wanted. On the bright side they were a really cool family and the kids were happy and positive and overall great kids, so I didn't mind sharing the experience with them. The family was from South Carolina but they had moved to Quito the year before because Kim teaches at a school there. David owns a business back in S.C. so he is able to work from home. Andrew is 11 and Sarah is 9 and they are learning Spanish in school and seemed really enthusiastic about living in Ecuador. We all chatted for the 45 minute ride and I was pleased to see that the kids weren't whiny or obnoxious or anything you'd expect from American children. The kids were a bit nervous because they had never gone rafting before but Lauren and I took turns assuring them how much fun it was going to be.
Santiago was our raft guide and Abby rode in an inflatable kayak, called a ducky, to act as emergency rescue. Santiago was a gorgeous Ecuadorian-born German guy who spoke fluent English, Spanish and German and he was really funny. Abby was an Irish girl whose family had moved here to do missionary work 15 years earlier, so she stuck around and has been rafting since she was 14. She became a certified guide at 16, and is obviously fluent in Spanish. She was spunky and full of energy and really great with the kids. Both of our guides were awesome and we hit it off right away with the family so I knew it was going to be a good day, even if it wasn't exactly as we hoped. These past few months in the jungle have been considered the dry season, so the river was only at a Level 8. The level refer to the amount of water in the river, which has an influence on how big the rapids are; the highest level is something like 20 or 30, so basically the river was really low at the time and the rapids were relatively mild. We got all geared up and got into the river, where Lauren and I got to be 'captains' again. That just means we got to sit in the front and get hit by the biggest waves. I think we make great captains because we are good at synchronizing with each other, which is what the front 2 people need to do. We went through a couple of mild rapids (Class II) before coming to our first big challenge. In the water there are things called 'holes,' where a large rock causes a change in the current and creates a bit of a whirlpool with a strong undercurrent. Santiago tried to have us avoid a giant hole on the 3rd rapid, but I guess we didn't give the raft enough speed so we got sucked right into it. Our raft got pushed up into a near vertical position, with Lauren's side on top and my side on the bottom. Since she couldn't see the humongous wave that was about to bear down on us, she said she knew it was coming because of the look of horror and shock on Kim's and my face. I definitely had an 'oh s***' moment before all 4 people on my side of the raft, including Santiago, fell backwards into the giant swirling vortex. When I fell in I immediately grabbed the side of the raft, and had a slight moment of panic when a massive wave washed over me and held me under for a few seconds. Even though it all happened so fast, moments like that seem to pass by in slow motion; one of the strange phenomenons of life. Santiago had warned us before we left not to panic and that if we go under we will only be down for a couple seconds, so with his words in my head I remember counting to 2 and then reemerging at the surface. During those couple seconds that I was holding the raft, I felt 11-year old Andrew moving past me under the surface of the water. I tried to make a grab for him so I could pull him to the raft, but with all the turmoil of the water I couldn't get to him. Without thinking I pushed off from the raft and held on to him, and the 2 of us rode out the rest of the rapids together. It's important in that situation to lie back in the water with your feet up to avoid hitting any of the rocks. He probably would have been fine because we were all wearing life jackets, and Abby was waiting a few meters away with her rescue ducky, but when I saw him go by me my brain just clicked into child rescue mode and the decision was made. Abby pulled him into the kayak and he was coughing and sputtering and probably in a bit of shock, as was I. After I climbed into the kayak I looked back and was surprised to see the raft pretty far behind us. The powerful current had carried us farther than I thought. The raft reached us and everyone was laughing about the craziness we had all just endured, and I come to find out that the only 2 people who didn't fall out in the hole were Lauren and 9-year old Sarah. It would seem having a low center of gravity worked well for these 2. After that first crazy rapid, the rest of the hours spent on the river were calm and easy. We stopped for lunch midday and at one point we saw tons of beautifully colored butterflies everywhere. After lunch we continued down the river in a lazy fashion, and we each got to try out the inflatable kayak. I went through some huge rapids and fell out again like a dunce; apparently I need to work on my balancing skills. At the end of the day Abby let the both of us ride in the kayak together, so that was entertaining. It was more difficult than we thought it would be to steer and sometimes it's hard to read the current of the river. These are all things I plan to work on for my future gig as rafting guide :D. All in all the day was really fun, and we got a total of about 4 hours in the water, which was great. That night we got a bus to Quito, where we arrived around midnight at the hostel someone recommended to us called Casa Bambu. Quito should be great, we plan to spend a couple days here before heading into the Amazon. More time in a big city, wish us luck!
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