A Tena Adventure

Wow, time seems to be flying by and I am getting way behind on these posts. We had an awesome time in the jungle but it seems like that was months ago now. We went on a rafting trip with a company called the River People, run by a couple of Irish brothers who moved to Ecuador with their parents when they were 14 and started a rafting company. A great company and I would highly recommend them if you are ever visiting the area.

We met early in the morning and found that there were a bunch of Canadian who were doing volunteer work going rafting as well. We drove out to the end of the road were we had to hike half an hour down a mud hole of a trail to the river. Not an easy feat in flip flops, and I had to resort to bare feet several times. We arrived at the river and our guide Alex told us we were going to go hike up a canyon for a swim while they prepared the boats. It turned out to be one of the coolest swimming holes I have ever seen. It was located in a deep canyon, cutting through the jungle floor. We had to scramble along the sides until we got to a wide pool were the creek poured in from a cave in the side. You could sit under the small waterfall and watch the water pouring down in front of your face. You could also climb up into the cave, up another waterfall and get to a cliff above the pool were you could jump back in. The canyon was pretty dark, so the pictures didn´t turn out to well. You´ll just have to trust me that it was awesome.

After the swim we returned to the river and loaded up into the boats. The trip we did went down one very techincal river, to join up with another which had bigger rapids. (If i remeber the names I´ll post them.) The river quickly dove into a deep canyon, with the jungle rising up on both sides. At fairly regular intervals, waterfalls would pour from vast heights, blown into mist by the time they reach us at the river. Through out the entire trip we were constatly being buzzed by all sorts of birds and butterflies. No large animals though. There was lots of paddling in the first river to avoid all the rocks, but the rapids were not too crazy. Our boat was pretty good at working together by the time we pulled out for lunch. We had an amazing meal at the confluence of the two rivers and then set out to tackle the big rapids. They were crazy

but our boat paddled well and we made it through them all including the Wafflemaker. This rapid consited of several house sized boulders to dodge followed by a river wide hole that just swallowed our boat.We escaped with our flipping and contiuned down the river. There were also several waterfalls that you could swim under. The water was super warm as it was all rain fed. A great day, although I got a pretty bad sunburn.

The next day we headed out early to the Shangrila Jungle lodge for a jungle hike. The lodge was located high on a cliff above the Napo Rio, and had amazing views of the jungle below. After breakfest, we headed out with our guide to explore the jungle. He told us about all the different uses for the plants, climbed trees to pick fruit for us and showed all sort of crazy bugs. This yellow grenade looking fruit had a very slimey, sweet meat. It was really good but it grossed Katie out.One type was the lemon ant, which lives in a certain type of tree and tastes like lemons. They were indeed very sour but hard to eat as they kept crawling everywhere. There were all kinds of bugs and I got lots of pictures. Here is one of a crazy looking spider, they were pretty common. I did get to see one monkey in the wild. A small cappuchin, but he was too quick and I didn´t get a picture. I was happy to actually get to see a monkey, even if it was briefly. After a while we started hiking up a small creek and into a tiny slot canyon. It got very narrow in places, so much so that you could only fit sideways. Several sections involved a fair bit of climbing, but nothing too crazy. In one section the roof covered the top and it became very cave like. There were bats roosting on the roof and would swoop down over our heads as we passed. The whole hike took all morning and we arrived back at the lodge in time for a late lunch. After lunch we went inner tubing down the Napo Rio. I didn´t take my camera, so no pictures. It was nice to cruze down the river but after rafting it seemed a little dull at times. I had hoped that we´d see some more animals, but Tena is not deep enough into the jungle and most of the larger animals have been driven away. After tubing we returned to the lodge, were we hung out on the hammock deck, watched the sunset, and had an exellent dinner.I got some good pictures of some of the strange bugs that were also hanging out with us.

The next day we caught an early bus back to Quito, had lunch and then caught another bus to Mindo, a small town on the west side of the Andes in the Cloudforest. That will have to wait for the next post, as well as the details from the wedding.