Ecuador time

I quickly noticed that in both volunteer groups in Ecuador and the one in Italy it was always the Americans that would interrupt the enjoyment of dinner, walking down a street, relaxing in the sun, with the question of "what's our schedule for tonight" or "when are we starting work" or "what else are we doing later" you get the point. Everyone else was able to just enjoy the moment, but not us USA'ers, nope, we had to get moving, get organized, talk about the time tables, the work for the next day, and all the logistics. Not that I am any better while at home, but I was able to transcend my native roots and join the rest of the world and relax. With this adoption of relaxed time tables I decided that I would take 4 days to travel between the Jatun Sacha reserve in Tena and the La Hesperia reserve in the Cloud forest instead of the previously arranged 1.5 days. Certainly this would reduce my volunteer time from 10 days to 7 but you know, I didn't think they would care much. So I joined Sakshi, Leigh, and Natalia, who were staying a while longer in Jatun Sacha for a long weekend in the town of Banos. Banos sits beneath an active (and recently very active) volcano which has created some hot springs and is a major touristic town. Its located south of Quito by about 3 or 4 hours and I think it is still considered to be in the Highlands. Within an hour of arriving we had found our hostel (Plantas y Blanco) or something like that, arranged for a morning of cascading (repelling down waterfalls) and found a great place for dinner called Casa Hood. If i knew what i know now, i probably could have set up a volunteer program for my self at the local library and enjoyed the town of Banos for an entire month and lived for around 8 dollars a day on very good food and a nice clean hostel. In contrast to Quito, I found the people very friendly and the streets safe. Almost each night we were there we walked around by ourselves down deserted streets between 1 and 3 am feeling completely safe. Such a nice change from the streets of Quito where anytime after 4pm its better to take a taxi.

The cascading excursion consisted of 5 waterfalls. 12 meter 18 m, 25m, 35m, and a 12m that we more or less slid down with some assistance from our belayors. One of these guys (excuse my french) was a total bastard. On the last waterall he asked if I wanted to go slow or fast. I said fast of course and he really let me go, until about 6 inches before splashing into the pool at the bottom he slammed the brakes on the harness which basically required me to go through puberty again to get my balls out of my chest cavity. I could have killed him if he weren't hold my life in his hands. The other four were great. Even with some climbing experience the adreniline started to pump each time I stepped over the ledge of the waterfall and began to decend through the water and mossy rocks. On the 3rd fall they set up a zip line which we were attached to in addition to our main rope. Second only to Ecuador public transportation, this was the most dangerous thing I did in South America. A large section of this second rope had completely lost its sheething and the the core of the rope was exposed. Oh this reminds me, before we left they handed me harness with my safety rope (the one used to attach yourself to the cliff while tieing into the repelling rope) tied to it was a glorified overhand knot. real nice. I found one with a double figure eight before we left.

That evening we got some dinner at a mexican resturaunt then toured the town a bit. We headed backto Casa Hood from happy hour and a band came in off the street and played for a while . We talked with them a bit and they told us that later that night they would be playing at a bar on the other side of town. After listening to them we headed back to the hostel and hung out for while on the terrace until it started to rain a bit.

Next day we rented bikes and traveled down a highway to look at waterfalls. below are some pictures from that trip.
All in all banos and the surrounding little friendly towns was one of my favorite places so far. Very friendly people and beautiful landscape.


Looking down on "El Diablo" on the road between Banos and Puyo



A nice town on our bike ride from Banos



Another waterfall on the bike ride

Crazy scary trash cans that are found throughout Ecuador

A band that we met at dinner and found later at a bar

On the way to repelling down some water falls. Here we have Leigh, Sakshi, and Natalia

The large church in Banos by night

Last days in the jungle

Me under the water fall at Misahualli

The waterfall at Misahualli


Cheeto Monkey

A little bug and me playin at the remote cabin

Water break on the way to the remote cabin

A view of jungle to the left and clear cut to the right.

Embarking on our inner tube adventure down the Rio Napo from Misahualli

Giant grasshopper drinkin some coffee

Tree boa on the gutter. this guy was easily 9 feet long

A Christmas day eve tarantula

Another view from the tower. lovely.

The Beach on the Napo river where I pulled the girls to safety.

A view from the bird tower looking down the shaft we climbed up

At a cultural event Gillian and I stumbled across

A view from The Basillica from one of the churches in Old Town, Quito

The Ecuador north of Quito

Even though the Jatun Sacha station here near Tena, Ecuador has had its major disapointments (for example, only working 3 days out of 17, in my opinion a very poorly managed volunteer program, and a lot of lazy hammock time reading steven king) its been an experience I want to last for months more on end. My first few nights here I probably didn't sleep a wink because of the volume of the jungle sounds. Insects, frogs, birds, RAIN, lizards, its crazy out here. Everynight i would wake up and groggily think "i should record this" and then realize my camera was on the otherside of my mosquito net and realize the effort to untuck the thing, find the camera in the pitch dark (i could not even see my hand if it were about to jab my eye), get back in the net, re-seal it....ok it wouldn't be that much effort, but i never did record a thing, but believe me, the sound at night is awesome. For 3 days straight we had rain. normally it only rained in the weeee hours of morning (probably what woke me up to remind me to record some sounds) but after new years it just started to pour.

The other day (January 1st or 2nd) before lunch it really began to come down hard. big fat grape sided drops. So hard your vision was distorted by the water and if you were inside you couldn't hear yourself think. just when the noise had escalated to a point where you thought something would pop and silence would begin it (thats mother nature) just notched up the volume another six clicks. This was the perfect time to go run without out your clothes on. well i kept my knickers on but not much else and after about 4 bounds out from under the thatched roof i was drenched. wow! this was exhilirating! nothing like being in the raw force of nature. no one cared to join me so i just plodded through the trails then out to the highway to see the river that had formed and then thought twice about being out in a large open area and returned to the shelter. shower for the day...check!

Another lazy day after some previous rains had subsided (this would be the weekend before New Year and the day before we go to the remote station) we grabbed some inner tubes, hailed a pickup/taxi, stuffed ourselves and our tubes in teh hback with the other families traveling down the highway and headed up river. We were back in the town of Misawalli (spelling is not correcet but phonetically it sounds meeesawhalyee) the town with the cheeto monkeys (similar to cheeto deer at Willowa Lake) and the waterfall where the staff party was on dec. 23 (i'll have to post a picture of that). We had to walk about 40 minutes from the highway down the riverrock road, accross the standard Ecuadorian cement supension bridge and to the docks. Because of the rain the river was super high and looked like chocolate milk.

The ride was so great. I went with Sakshi, Simon, Natalia, and Leigh. The river had a few nice class 3 rapids which i don't know if they were larger or smaller because of the rain, but going face first down on a little innertube and into swell about 4 feet tall was alot of fun. I was also able to be a super cool guy on this trip. After the last set of rapid you are required to paddle hard to get out of the current and make your way to the beach that had the trail which took us back to our home. If you misssed it of course, you would be swept down river and deeper than you want to be taken into the jungle. So i see the red rocks and paddle over and onto the beach. Sakshi barely makes it out of the current (after a lot of yelling and persuation on my part...see what I'm getting at....) and Leigh and Natalia just sail by. I realize my shore-side coaching isn't going to work this time and without hesitation and in the nick of time I do an awesome bay watch move and dive back into the river, swim out into the current, grab their inner tubes, and swim them back to the ass end of the beach. I know what your thinking; I'm a hero. well i wouldn't go that far but pretty darned close. pretty darn close.

The next day after saving the girls we headed to the remote station which was a 3 hour hike into the jungle. A few note worthy portions of this trip: eating lovely raw and ripened plantanes off the bunch! so good and sweet. Bathing in the river for 3 days instead of the freezing showers back at the main station. Finding a tree snake at night and letting him climb all over me. watching the crazy swiss guy Mike sting himself with a conga ant. almost touching a deadly viper known as the 5 hour snake. trying to swing on a vine that was rotten and it toppling ontop of me. swinging on a good vine like tarzan. listening to Don " " play the harmonica in the little village we visited and drinking veinte cinco from a water bottle. the stars at night and the smiling and extremely slender crecent moon. the gigantic trees.

We returned intime for New Years in Tena.

I leave tomorrow or the next day from the Ecuadorian Oriente and will first head south for 3 days to a town called Banos for some vacation (haha) before moving north to the Cloud Forest on the western slope of the Andes Mountains. I heard today that the volcanoe near Banos is rumbling enough to make the windows shake in town so if i'm extremely lucky, as i have been, the thing will probably explode while i'm there. if it does, no worries, i have my camera.

Video heading to the remote station.