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Logan’s Ecuador Trip Report
2/5/07-Today in Fayetteville, WV the high temperature is going to be seven degrees, the sun will start setting around 4:30, and I am on the road working, selling rafting trips. Two weeks ago I was sitting on the equator where the weather was warm, the women were beautiful, and the sun did not set until eight. Last December I set out by myself with my kayak, kayaking gear, and one pair of clothes to Ecuador for a month and a half.
Being that this was my first time in South America, having very little money, very little beta, and speaking virtually no Spanish, things looked a little rough to start, yet with only a couple of possessions to keep track of and seeing new places and paddling as my motivation traveling became easy. As I found out, Ecuador is very conducive to paddling. There are tons of rivers and creeks that have already been “established” and the surface is just beginning to be scratched for runs more off the beaten path. Logistics are simple in the main paddling towns; bus routes go by many of the put-ins and take-outs and if the bus doesn’t work out taxi drivers know the river access points. I met other kayakers right when I arrived in Tena. Added to shuttle being simple every paddling town has a hostal that caters to kayakers, making it easy to hook up with other paddlers. For that first part of the trip I got to paddle a great new class 4 run every day. Most of these runs are granite boulder gardens with average gradients around 130-150 fpm; very similar to the Upper Yough in difficulty.
That first part of the trip was great, but I still wasn’t getting to do some of the runs I wanted to do (Upper Jondachi) because I couldn’t find anyone to go with me. This all changed when I met Adam Hunter. Adam, who was also down there by himself, is from Sylva, NC and had spent his previous winter break in Ecuador. We started off by going down the Upper Jondachi at a pretty fast pace during high water. One kayaking magazine had related the Jondachi to the Green Narrows minus Gorilla and Sunshine. Everything was going great until I took a swim and swam through the next rapid which turned out to be the only portage of the day. From that day on Adam and I paddled together for the remainder of his trip. It is amazing how quickly you can form a deep bond with someone when you are kayaking in some deep remote gorge in another country, where if anything were to go wrong you have to rely soley on this other person to help you. It’s a really cool thing and I now consider Adam one of my really good friends. Anyhow, the Jondachi became our main run but we got to do many other runs, including a big water Dries style run and many other low volume rivers. Baeza was another paddling town in Ecuador that we spent a good amount of time at. The Quijos river in Baeza has over 60km of whitewater, changing in characteristic from creeky to big water the further downstream you go. I really liked Baeza, it is a smaller town with the best whitewater and has a really nice paddler hostal, La Casa de Rodrigo. Rodrigo, the guy who owns and runs the hostal, is super cool, he speaks English well, knows the rivers around Baeza better than any local, and was definitely one of my better friends in Ecuador. We had high aspirations for some epic rivers in Banos, but got shot down from high water. The one river we attempted (the high water option) we had to hike 2.5 miles upstream, half of which was through shin deep mud, only to sneak everything for the first half of the river and then walk of because of high water. One of the trip’s highlights was hiking to the San Rafael waterfall, a 200’ then 300’ waterfall back to back with about 8,000 cfs going off of it. Once Adam left I had ten days before my flight so I headed to the coast to hang out at the surf towns and sleep on the beach for a couple of days. My last weekend in Ecuador I attended the Rio Napo Festival outside of Tena. The Napo Festival is put on by the Ecuadorian Rivers Institute, a nonprofit organization run by Matt Terry to help Ecuador’s watersheds, definitely support these guys. During this festival I compete in a kayak race and took first place. I won a couple of prizes, but definitely the coolest was the whole chicken meal from Pollo Sin Rival (Chicken Without Rival)(it is actually a whole chicken they cook for you). After the race I sold my Pyranha Burn and headed back to Quito to fly home. If you are thinking of heading to Ecuador here are some tips:
-Logan |
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