Three weeks in Ecuador

What makes a trip successful? I'm not so sure anymore -- the elements of cheating death, bumming around, sleeping in bus stations, communicating in other languages, they all used do it... but as I'm sitting at home now, with a 102F fever, possibly caused by malaria or by dengue, I'm not quite so sure anymore :)

The trip was good, though, malaria or not. Initially I thought that kayaking would be the highlight of our stay in Ecuador, but in fact it was the travelling around that I enjoyed the most. The majority of the rivers we ran were very steep, and it seemed that everything was Class IV or harder. So our paddling worked out OK, but I was always on my toes -- I felt like I was close to the edge of my ability. And then Brian's near-drowning didn't help matters either... so that's why we returned the boats early and headed for the beach. Now that I look at the pictures I remember all the fun parts too -- rather than being left with the Quijos Bridge-to-Bridge incident as the defining event.

The team

There were three of us: Brian Geske, Chris Lau, and myself. Chris was our most experienced paddler and he led us through most of the rapids. He could only get away for two weeks, so after paddling in Tena and Baeza, then visiting Banos, he flew out. At that time Brian and I headed towards the coast to spend a week on the beaches, and eventually returned to Quito through Guaranda and Latacunga.

The boats

Flying with boats is always a pain. And travelling with them is even more of a pain. Since we wanted to paddle a lot, but also to do some bumming around, we decided to rent boats from Small World Adventures -- with their discount for week+ rentals we'd end up paying only slightly over what we'd pay the airlines in extra fees. And... best of all, we got the exact boats we wanted -- a regular, a Big, and a Super EZ. Now I'm guessing we got them because nobody else wanted to paddle a playboat down there :) Either way, renting turned out to be the best choice -- we ended up returning them a bit early, and travelling around more than planned.

The trip

WEEK 1	WEEK 2	WEEK 3
Getting to Quito Quito Getting to Tena kayak: Lower Misahualli kayak: Lower Jondachi kayak: Jatunyacu Cascadas Latas Puerto Misahualli kayak: Upper Misahualli	Baeza kayak: Quijos, "Bridge to Bridge", Brian's big day kayak: Quijos, Baeza to Sardinas Grande Baeza, town day Market at Saquisili Banos, Ruta de las Cascadas	Coast To the coast Atacames Mompiche Surfing Mompiche Canoa Canoa to Guaranda, 14hrs on buses Guaranda to Quito Leaving Quito

Print version

To get the report in a single file, at least easier for printing, click here.
WARNING: It's a slow download because of the nearly 100 pictures...