Winter in South America.: January 2008

What we thought would be 2 or 3 weeks of kayaking in Ecuador quickly turned into 2.5 months. We ended up getting a lot more work with Small World Adventures than expected, but we also had plenty of time between work to go kayaking on our own. We got in around 50 days of boating on about 25 different runs. We had a blast getting to know a lot of the classic runs as well as some more obscure ones. It´s just amazing the variety of whitewater in such a small area. Sorry, no kayaking photos here, but you can check out Chris´ post on http://www.bellinghamwhitewater.org/

The holidays definitely didn´t feel like the holidays, but we had a nice time. We spent Christmas at Laguna Quilotoa, a beautiful Crater Lake at about 12,000 ft. in the Andes. I spent Christmas eve at church for the first time in my life. I was interested in seeing how people in this tiny remote village celebrate the holiday, but I don´t imagine it was much different than any other Catholic mass. Then on Christmas day, after morning mass, most people were out in the fields working just like any other day. The landscape up there is really amazing. It´s very rugged and steep and every square inch of land has been cultivated. The entire landscape is a patchwork of different colored crops. You see people (often women with babies on their backs) farming on hillsides so steep I can hardly imagine walking up them, let alone working on them. It also super cold and there´s almost no escape from the wind- makes for some incredibly tough people!

For New Years we were back at the lodge in Borja. I really like the tradition they have down here of making dummies which represent the old year (año viejo). Sometime´s they represent something specific like a politician or a smoker, and at midnight everyone burns their dummies, and of course drinks massive quantities of alcohol.

We finished up our last week of work in early January and headed down to Tena for the Napo River Festival, a three day event which is primarily aimed at educating local people about the importance of preserving and restoring their watershed resources. It was a lot of fun, they had a kayak rodeo (Chris got 2nd place) and races for every craft from inner tubes to handmade balsa wood rafts. By far the most popular activity for kids was paddling around in whitewater kayaks. It seemed like a successful event, at least in terms of turnout. It´s harder to say if it was successful in terms of raising awareness, but hopefully it makes some difference.

After the festival, and a few final days of kayaking, we went back to Borja and dropped off all our boating gear and headed out with just our backpacks. Our first stop was Baños where we soaked in hot springs and watched Volcan Tungurahua spew lava (not quite at the same time). Baños is right at the base of the highly active volcano. It´s been active for the last 8 years, but just in the last few weeks things have really ramped up. When we were watching it there were mini eruptions at least every 5 minutes. There´s almost no question that the town will be wiped out if/when there´s a major eruption, but the locals don´t seem too concerned about it.

Rio Pastaza, Baños

Volcan Tungurahua

Baños & Volcan Tungurahua

From there we went to Riobamba and did the "Nariz del Diablo" (devil´s nose) train ride, a super touristy thing to do, but it had been recommended by enough people that it seemed like something worth doing. The main appeal was that you could ride on top of a train on some super steep terrain. Unfortunately we found out too late that they´re no longer allowing people to ride on the roof because somebody was killed recently. It ended up being a pretty miserable day. We sat in the train for 8 hours and couldn´t see the best of the scenery because our seats were on the wrong side. We got stopped by a landslide for 1.5 hr and the train derailed twice. By the time we got off the train we had missed the last bus to Cuenca and ended up having to stay in the little town of Alausi, where we had one of the weirdest and worst nights of sleep ever thanks to a family of seriously mentally ill and angry Ecuadorians who stayed up all night fighting right outside our door.

We did get some nice views from the train....Volcan Chimborozo, Ecuador´s highest peak and the furthest point from the center of the earth.

Digging out the tracks

Re-railing the train

Amateur bull fight in Alausi

Waiting to get the hell out of Alausi

We caught the first bus out of there in the morning and slept for most of the 4.5 hr ride to Cuenca, which is where we are now. We found a really great place to stay here and immediately fell in love with the city. It´s got a really nice, relaxed feel and it´s full of beautiful colonial architecture. We´ve spent hours each day just wandering the streets, trying to absorb as much of the city as possible. Tomorrow we´re heading to Vilcababma for a few days and by the end of the month we´ll be in Peru.