Tuesday 14 June 2011

The Whale and the Amazon - Mitch's blog from Ecuador

Hola Everyone! And welcome back to the fortnightly Ecuadorian blog, issue numero quatro!

The past two weeks have been great, specifically last weekend when we travelled to the Amazon, but first I shall tell you about the weekend before....

Two weekends ago saw us travel back to the coast to our beloved town of Montañita. We departed Quito thursday night, and while Sam, Mich, and Kakelin (Kate´s nickname for the duration of the trip has been Kake, as our tour guide at the Rio Muchacho Organic Farm thought her name was Cake, which was hilarious and has been ever since) spent the day and night in Guyaquil, Asta and I continued onto Montañita with a nice French-Canadian lad named Julien whom we randomly met... Our day was spent chilling out on the beach and wondering the streets at night.

The following day the three musketeers met us in Montañita and we carried out pretty much the same actitivies as we did the previous day.

Sunday morning saw us arise bright and early, and hop on a bus to the Ecuadorian favourite town of Puerto Lopez - home to the, well not home, it is the nearest city to, Machalilla National Park, which is subsequently home to Isla de la Plata, which roughly translates to "The Backpackers Galapagos" in gringo tongue. Whilst Sam and Mich tried and failed to get a tour to the Isla de la Plata, Asta, Kate, Julien and myself jumped off the bus 15mins later at the entrance of a long dusty dirt road, which was said to take us to a beautiful beach. After 2 minutes of walking, a little motorbikequadbike sorta thingo with a compartment in the back drove by, we waved it down and the kind young man took us 30mins along the extremely bumpy road (asta and kate had the seat, me and julien gentlemanly manned it out on the ground feeling every single little bump on our backsides to the entrance to the beach.

If any of you reading have been to Australia´s Wineglass Bay, it is just like it, except a little bit worse. Hot and sweaty and craving to feel the refreshing touch of the pacific ocean on our skin, we resisted the temptation to drop our stuff and haul ourselves in to the clear blue water, and we walked to the rim of the glass chasing superfast crabs on the way. We applied sunscreen, and whilst we waited for it to sink in, we ventured around a bend where Jules and I climbed an 8metre peak which blessed us with a terrific view.

Nevertheless we didn´t think it through, and whilst i quite casually survived the much steeper-than-we-thought-descent down, Julien on the other hand foolishly obtained a thorn into his foot which bled profusely (well not really), but not to worry he´s all good. We all swam back around the bend taking pictures with Kate´s underwater and shockproof camera, snapping away, and relaxed in the ocean for a good 40minutes till we went back to the entrance of the beach, and caught the little transportation thingy back to Purto Lopez.

Lunch was had at a joint named "The Whale" (i think) owned by a nice American couple who have been living there for 23 years, we all had pizza (apart from Kate), which was without doubt the best pizza we have had in Ecuador thus far. Waiting to meet the other two for our 4pm bus trip to the godforsesaken town of Manta, we left our bags at the Whale, and took another transportation thingy (which i will now call PuertaPort - Puerto Lopez + Transport), well actually it was the same, this guy ferried us around all day, to a massive whale on the beach. The whale had been found on the beach and it took them over 20 years to assemble it. And we also saw a massive post with signs pointing to everywhere in the world along with the distance, Darwin and Sydney were on it.

On the way back to the Whale in the PuertaPort we passed Sam and Mich, and then met them at the Whale where we farewelled the American couple, jumped on a bus, arrived in Manta, had dinner, and got to Panamericana to wait for the bus to take us back home. However due to Sam, Kate, and Mich, there was some last minute panic due to the fact that they purchased a ticket from Quito to manta instead of Manta to Quito before we left for this weekend. So we hurriedly bought another ticket, got on the bus, and tried to get some sleep.

Twas around 12:30am-1:00am when i awoke with the bus at a stop. Thinking nothing of it, probably just getting petrol, i went back to sleep. Waking 30minutes later still we were stopped. After another 30mintues i decided to get off the bus and query what was going on. I approached a group of people standing on the road who were from the bus, speaking in Spanglish i was laughed at, but got my message across nonetheless and recieved an answer, with them all pointing at the bus and angrily shouting "Mal mal mal!!!", which means bad. So with a broken down bus we were stuck in a random town for 4 and a half hours in the middle of the night. After watching the brilliant movie that is Troy twice, the police finally arrived and had organised a replacement bus, which eventually arrived thirty minutes later and took us back home. We arrived in Quito at 11am, unfortunatley and annoyingly missing school.

Three days of teaching past, and it was 2pm, and we were on our way to the AMAZON!

With our favourite tour guide, Wilson, at the wheel, Asta, Kate, Sam, Mich, the random Canadian Julien and myself squashed ourselves into the seats of his four wheel drive. Two hours past and we arrived at a hot spring - lying at the base of an active volcano, locals swam and relaxed in the 8 or so natural hot springs. We spent a good hour and a half spring-hopping until we drove 45mins to where we were staying for the night.

The following morning we arose early and began our 5 hour drive to the Amazon. Arriving at Lago Agrio deep in the rainforest we threw our bags onto the canoe and motored down the river making many twists and turns until we reached our destination and calling point for the next 3 nights, Cuyabeno River Lodge. Situated right on the river, Cuyabeno river lodge had little huts spread out along the river. We were each assigned rooms which had no walls or doors and infested with insects. We were then introduced to the resident boa constricter in the lodge, and dead hairy tarantula the size of our hands, and continued on back into the canoe and were taken on a tour of the river, only stopping to fish for piranha´s, with no luck. Later that night following dinner, we donned our gumboots and covered ourselves in insect repellent, and ventured into the rainforest in search for "snakes, tarantula´s, bugs and what not". On numerous occasions Wilson stopped us and told us to stay where we were, but on no occasion was a snake seen, by us anyway. We saw numerous bugs and insects and many tarantula´s, and eventually we made it back to the lodge and slept.

Saturday morning after breaky, in the pouring rain, we again went into the rainforest. Trekking through we saw a little pig, one frog the size of a thumbnail, a freaky looking spider, and heard the whistle of a toucan. On our way back a mutiny arose within the group and numerous bodies were flung and pushed into a little river crossing, me and asta managed to escape dirt and soaked free. On our way back we all swang off a rope the lodge had set up which was tied to a tree 4metres high into the river infested with anacondas, caimans, and piranhas, which was heaps of fun.

After lunch we canoed down the river ourselves with oars. Before beginning our little trip, me and Julien opted to take a 3 metre canoe made out of a tree. We were warned by Wilson that it was extremely hard to manouvre and operate, and needless to say we were up for the challenge, in our big heads... We both sat down in the canoe, rowed straight into the bank, resulting in the back of the boat being flooded, and we quite quickly capsized and began to drift down the river thanks to the strong Amazonian current.

Wilson was shouting leave the boat as it was very heavy, we did not hear this due to everyone´s laughter so we rescued the boat, and ourselves. Anyways, after Julien and I´s mini fiasco, we all got in the one boat and thanks to Wilson´s steering at the back we were bashing into everything possible. Following yet another unsuccessful piranha fishing attempt, we rowed half the way back, and due to the plethora of spiders which now inhabited the canoe due to Wilson purposely crashing us into trees, bushes, and whatever you can think of, Kate jumped out of the boat and swam back to the lodge. That night before dinner, we all jumped back into the canoe and searched for caiman´s - a species of alligator which inhabit Amazonian waters that can reach up to 7metres in length. The largest one we saw was about 2-3 metres, and the smallest about just under a metre which our guide caught with his bare hands in pitch black.

Sunday marked our last day in the Amazon, and it was amazing. In the pouring rain, we jumped in the motorised canoe and spent 3 hours weaving around corners until finally reaching our destination - the great lake. A spectacle to see after spending three hours on a river, spanning as far as we could see. Within 10minutres of entering we saw pink dolphins, a species of dolphin only in the Amazon, and then searched for anacondas on the borders of the lake with no luck. We then visited the last indigenous village in the area, were greeted by the resident friendly monkey named "Nacho", and were shown how they make bread from yucca. The bread was delicious, however we were pestered by Nacho the whole time we were eating, which subsequently resulted in him getting hit by a spiky plant which really hurt him by the sounds of his scream. Kate and I also got hit by it on the leg by Wilson, needless to say we understood his pain. After this we began the journey home seeing three different species of monkeys hopping from branch to branch, numerous birds including a TOUCAN, and monkey thing with green dreadlocks hanging from a tree, and many insects and bugs.

An 11hours drive back home, including a stop at a massive spectacular waterfall on the way, we sadly farewelled Wilson. He had been our tour guide for three weekends.

And that´s what´s been goin on the past two weeks. I hope you enjoyed this edition of the ecuador blog and see you again in two weeks time!

Adios

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