Welcome to the Jungle

For our last day in Baños last Wednesday we decided to go off in search for a jungle tour. Most of the tours we found came out to be about $45 or $50 per person per day until we came across one guide, Mario who offered us a 3 day tour for $90 each person. He told us he could bring our large backpacks on the last day so that we could go straight from Puyo to Quito, without having to go back to Baños and we could just carry our small bags while we hiked through the Amazon.

On Thursday morning we were joined by two Irish girls who had booked the tour with two others who were stuck back with food poisoning. Our first stop was to a trout farm to pick up fish that the guide that accompanied us, Sixto, would cook for us. Next, we went to a monkey rescue reserve, a non-profit that takes in monkeys and other animals that had been taken in captivity. 

After an hour drive past the monkey reserve we arrived to the Hola Vida Reserve, where we would sleep Thursday and Friday nights. We ate lunch and headed off for a four hour hike, with a swim at a waterfall in the middle of it. When we headed back it was already getting dark but we were able to climb to an old tower used for cable cars and zip lining to have an amazing view of the Andes. On our way back we ended up having to make a slight detour because a scared/angry horse was in our path and did not want to let us by.  After dinner Sixto brought us down the road to a community bar, which the owner gladly opened up and played pool with all of us.

view from our cabins

 

On Friday morning we had a big breakfast before setting off for a 5 hour hike. In the middle of this hike we had to swim a little to reach a hidden waterfall that can´t be reached by land. Sixto generously walked as far as he could against the rocks to get pictures of us but most of them ended up too blurry.  After our hike the two Irish guys were waiting because they had just arrived. We relaxed around the cabins for a bit before going off on a canoe ride to see a small Kichwa community´s dwellings and hiked up to an amazing viewpoint where we could see the river and the forest from high above. My camera had gotten temporarily damaged during the canoe ride so we weren´t able to get any pictures. We ended our night with the ayahuasca shamanic ritual and relaxed, with the sky remaining fairly well lit from the full moon--all through the night it appeared to be just dusk.

rafting tutorial

On Saturday morning we packed up and headed out to meet Mario so he could take us rafting through the Puyo River. The rapids ranged from Class II to Class IV, and after a three minute tutorial for the six of us (most of us who have never gone rafting before), we went off into the river. The first rapid was the most difficult and knocked 4 out of the 7 of us (including Mario) into the rapids. The two in the front--Dave and Seamus--were the only ones that had straps to keep their feet secure, so the rest of us were really just sitting atop a float. Those two and Connie were the only ones who managed to stay in. As Gary and Connie tried to pull me up, I just barely managed to escape getting smashed against the rocks on the side of the river and once I was back in we tried to steer back to get the the other two still out of the water--our guide and the other Irish girl, whose name I cannot for the life of me manage to spell (pronounced Kwee-vuh). We recovered Mario first and while we rafted toward the island in the middle, she was able to swim to a rock on the other side. She was clearly injured (I could see clearly blood running down her leg from across the river) but Mario saw no reason why she shouldn´t just swim across and continue. We eventually persuaded him to let us raft to her and once she was able to recover her breath, she got in and we continued rafting the rest of the way.

Because Mario had forgotten to bring our bags, we ended up having to go back to Baños for the night and since it was a holiday we ended up having to pay 20 dollars each for the night, instead of the 8 that we´ve grown accustomed to paying. It was the last room in town basically, so we were forced to accept. We arrived in Quito on Sunday, more to come about that later.