Been a little while since I wrote about the first part of our celebration of Carnaval, sorry for the delay - had a pretty busy week in school writing an 8 pg paper and a 10 min presentation about the evolution of Darwin's finches on the Galapagos islands, pretty exciting stuff... Back to carnaval where I left off.
The morning after our exciting day of jumping off bridges and partying in the streets, we woke up bright and early (around 7:30am, which for those of you that know me well enough is pretty early for me), ate a quick breakfast, and took off to meet up with our guide for the day. Once there we loaded up the van, threw the giant raft on top of it, and set off on a beautiful drive about one hour into the Amazon. I still cannot get over how incredibly green and beautiful this country is - every time I leave the cramped, enormous, somewhat polluted city of Quito I am blown away by the scenery. We eventually arrived at the river where we started our rafting adventure and I was awakened (awoke?) from a little nap by a loud thump which turned out was our driver running into a concrete post. Was this little mishap a sign of things to come...? We laughed for a bit about the little dent in the bumper and proceeded to unload the gear and begin our rafting lesson. First our guide, a really good, funny guy who was 24 and lives in Baños, asked for 2 captains to sit in the front of the raft and guide the stroking. No one was to eager to accept this duty as none of us had ever rafted before so finally Kraig and I agreed we´d do it, and it turned out that we had no real duties except sitting in the front anyway. Once we all had our assigned positions in the boat our guide taught us how to stroke forwards and backwards, jump in the boat if need be, react if we fall out, help others back in the boat, and celebrate making it through a rapid with a cheer and a high five of the paddles over our heads. Eager and ready to take on the river, we finally got our boat in the water and took off and, to be honest, I was pretty nervous at first. For the first few little rapids I noticed myself involuntarily sinking in towards the middle of the raft each time, but my nerves shortly turned into excitement and I began to look forward to each rapid as another opportunity to get soaked or lose my balance. At certain points throughout the excursion our guide told us we could/should jump out of the boat and just ride the current in the water (it wasn´t till after I was told there were probably pirahnas in the water, though I guess they´re not as aggressive as many people think). The first time he did so, we all kind of looked at each as if to question if he was serious, but after he pushed some of the girls sitting near him overboard I quickly jumped in. I purposedly made a point to stay near the boat, but others were not so wise. After most of us had got back in the boat 2 of our friends, Katy and Leah, found themselves a good 25ft from the boat and not moving nearly as quickly as the current was carrying our boat. Somehow Katy made her way back to the boat but Leah wasn´t moving at all and wasn´t starting to get a little nervous to say the least. Nevertheless, we found a way to paddle towards and after a few minutes of confusion we managed to get her back in the boat, though some people now doubted our guide´s advice to just jump in the water (I still thought it was fun and proceeded to jump out a few more times down the river). Shortly after our first little mishap we were making our way through a rapid when we hit a big wave and a few people fell inside the raft, no real harm done. Or so we thought. We soon realized that the rubber coating surrounding the intertube that kept all the air in had come undone and that the boat was undeniably beginning to lose its form. This was pretty obvious when those people sitting in the middle of the boat were sitting closer and closer to the water by the minute. At first we thought we were losing air and that we´d never make it down the river in the raft, but our guide eventually brought it to our attention that the boat was simply becoming deformed and all the air was being pushed to the front and back of the raft. After about 10-15 min of continuing with our damaged boat, we stopped along some extremely rocky shore to make some adjustments. First, the guide flagged down a few other passing-by rafts and advised all the girls to join other rafts and that us guys would try to fix the boat and meet them at the end. It was getting later in the day by this point and I was beginning to wonder if we ever actually would see the end of this journey. We spent about half an hour twisting ropes in and out of varios places around the boat, attempting to restore some shape to the deformed tube. Finally our guide was satisfied that the boat would work so we flipped it back over, eased our way back in, and once again set off the to face the river, just the 4 of us, me, Adam, Kraig, and our guide. We spent a good few minutes joking around that we were better off without the girls and that it was probably them who broke the raft anyhow, and our spirits were once again restored as everything seemed to be going smoothly. In fact, there were no problems from there on out, despite the fact that our poor raft was still far from in perfect condition. The only part of this whole adventure more amazing than the actual tackling of the rapids was our surroundings. Not only were we paddling down an awesome river in Ecuador in absolutely perfect weather, but we were in the Amazon forest surrounded by breathtaking cliffs, waterfalls, mountains, birds, trees, flowers, sounds, skies...the list could really go on forever. The trip certainly enhanced my desire to get back to the jungle, soon and even deeper in it. We must have been making pretty good time down the river (post-accident) because we reached the finishing point only minutes after the other rafts carrying our female castaway counterparts had. The entire experience was such a thrill that I´ll never forget, and the little problems only make my story and memory that much better! My only regret is that none of us brought a camera and so there´s no pictures of all those amazing scenes we saw along the way. The ride back to Baños was very relaxing after the vigorous few hours on the raft, despite the constant aqua-attacks of those along the road who kept up with the Carnaval tradition of trying to drench passerby´s.
Immediately upon getting back to our hostel most of us settled down for a nap. After we all woke up we had dinner at a super delicious and fun restaurant next to our hostel where we thoroughly enjoyed our food and were treated to a short but really nice concert by an indiginous, very talented band with an array of interesting string, wind, and percussion instruments. After dinner we found a chiva (party-like bus that you can ride on the roof of, which is of course where we sat) that took us to the top of the volcano that nearly covered Baños in lava in 1998 (i think). Once at the top, we were treated to various performances by fire dancers and jugglers and a spectacular view of the city down below. Photo of the fire dancer:
We descended the mountain again in our chiva (ducking along the way to avoid branches and cables) and unanimously decided we were too tired to attempt to spend another night out amongst the Carnaval craziness. We woke up, said our goodbyes to Baños and took the sobering busride back to realiy and the end of our incredible Carnaval vacation.
Fortunately, however, we only had 3 days of class left that week. What´s more on Thursday after class I discovered a group of people, mostly gringos who once lived in the U.S., who play ultimate frisbee (my favorite sport to play, unbeknownst to practically every Ecuadorian) every Tuesday and Thursday in the enormous Parque La Carolina pretty close to my house. It was sooo nice to be able to play frisbee and get some exercise again and the people were all extremely nice. In fact, the group of people have been playing at the same time and place for about 10 years now and many have lived in Quito for even longer than that. A few people that I talked to came to Ecuador as part of the Peace Corps and never left. Needless to say, I´m pretty excited to have found this group of people and to play some frisbee with them as much as I can.
When our short week of class ended we spent Friday night in Quito, but on Saturday 4 of us took off to Papallacta, or Papallama as I sometimes jokingly refer to it. This small village is located about 2 hours from Quito, in the central/northern Andean highlands of Ecuador and is famous for its natural volcanic spring baths. The drive there is slightly frightening and a good portion of it takes place high up in the mountains where the roads are thin, winding, and adjacent to steep dropoffs with only a poor excuse of a wire fence separating the road and the giant drops. Fortunately these bus drivers are pretty good at what they do and we got there with no problem. That weekend it was extremely cloudly, breezy, and fairly chilly up in the mountains but the minute we dipped ourselves in the super hot, relaxing springs there were no worries. It was a very relaxing day and a half, spent almost entirely in the many baths surrounded countless tree and cloud covered gorgeous mountains.
I got a few pictures that I´m trying to put right here that aren´t working right now, maybe if I leave some random space here I´ll remember to go back and add them...
We made sure to leave Papallacta with enough time to make it back to Quito before the Badger game against Ohio St. I hadn´t seen a game yet in Ecuador and I was more than excited to the 1 vs. 2 matchup. Unfortunately the one game I was able to catch had to be the most tragic I have probably ever watched. At least at the sports bar we were at the majority of people were Liga fans (Quito´s soccer team) and they also lost a close game at the same time, so we werent the only ones upset. Though I´m pretty sure we did make our grief a little more noticeable.
Following the weekend and Wisco´s tragic defeat (and Butch had to go and hurt himself!) I had my busiest week of school yet, researching and writng all about a bunch of Finches. This weekend has been a nice release though, we decided to stay in Quito and I spent a lot of the time with my bro and some of his cousins and friends who are in town for a while and a lot of fun. That bout wraps up the last 2 weeks, we have off school on Wednesday for a teachers´ conference so I think some of us are going to a town called Mindo, about 2 hours from Quito, well known for its wide variety of eco-touristy opportunities and activities, cloud forests, great scenery, etc...should be a nice getaway.
I made a little video montage of some of my adventures from the first two months here and put it on the internet, you should be able to access it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trmfSbv1rW8
Take care and keep in touch!!
Brett
1 comment:
wow, no offense, but you know me, and there is no way I am reading this entire post - Less is more bud
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