Life on tour

It seems like such a lot has happened since I last wrote!
Last week I changed hotels in Quito and met the other guys from the tour that I'll be doing for the next 5 weeks for a briefing and a welcome meal - we are 7 Brits and one guy from New Zealand. 5 girls and 3 boys. Our driver and our tour leader are both from Australia. So far, everyone seems to be getting on very well! After an evening of many beers, an all-you-can-eat buffet and a few rounds of table football we took taxis back to the hotel, ready to start bright and early the next morning.

The following day we loaded all of our stuff onto the 'Oasis' overland truck - a huge beast of a yellow truck with plenty of space for tents, luggage, food etc - it can seat up to 24, but as we are only 7 at the moment its fairly spacious. Our first stop was Otavalo which is about 2 hour’s drive north of Quito. It is famous for its daily market on Plaza de los Ponchos which sells all manner of colorful jumpers, wall hangings and of course ponchos. I think it is safe to say I blew my budget on that day, buying all of the above, plus a fluffy llama ornament, a few pairs of earrings, bracelets, a bag and a painting ... just as well we have space on the truck to store it all. Anyway, I got some Spanish practice in whilst doing a bit of haggling with the stall holders. We ate as a group that the evening and headed back to the hostel (a nice hacienda style place. More of a hotel than a hostel. Best night´s sleep I'd had in weeks after having lived in central Quito!)

The following day we made our way to a bush camp, which is basically when we pull up to the side of the road and set up the tents for a night. That night we found a sort of semi campsite, near a river. Cooked dinner (we've been put into 4 cook groups so that we take it in turns to make meals) chatted for a bit and went to sleep.

Next day we carried on driving East. We made a stop first in Coca, an oil town on the North bank of the Rio Napo which is a tributary of the Amazon River. Here we picked up our jungle guide, Rodrigo, and went welly shopping or ‘willy’ shopping as Rodrigo pronounced it! After we'd managed to find boots in everyone's size (bit of a struggle) we headed back to the truck and carried on to a place called 'el puente' or 'the bridge' where we loaded our jungle stuff onto 2 very rickety looking boats and headed upstream to our jungle lodge. The journey was a little nerve racking to start with as the boat rocked about quite a lot, but it got better after a while and I was able to enjoy the view. It wasn't too hot at all on that first day which wasn't what I'd been expecting. The journey was made more exciting by the fact that we got stuck a few times because of trees that had fallen down into the river and blocked the route. The first few times our boat driver was able to whack away at the trees with his machete, but when we hit a massive tree trunk he had to whip out a chain saw! Very effective.

Anyway, we made it to out jungle lodge in about 2 and a half hours. We were told that the 'Wuarani' or 'Huaorani' people live in this territory and that the name of the river was the 'shittypuno' ... or at least that's how Rodrigo pronounced it! I've checked in my book and its actually called the Shiripuno, but I prefer the other version. Apparently if you travel 8 hours up the Shittypuno you reach a completely uncivilized jungle tribe who kill /eat any visitors, so I was glad we kept our distance! We stayed for 3 nights in an ecolodge (http://www.huaorani.com/) which is part of a sustainable tourism project which generates jobs for the locals and makes money from tourists which is in turn poured straight back into the community. We slept in our own tents, but they provided all meals for us and put on various activities for us. We visited some of the communities nearby - one was a 2 hour boat ride away and the other was a little closer. One was called 'Nenquipare' and the other was called 'Wa Pomini waipaka'. We saw them making their traditional crafts as well as making spears and blow darts. The first place we visited needed a roof making for one of their huts, so we helped them chop down a tree with a machete (!) gathered the palm leaves and the boys helped by shimmying up the house to secure these leaves to the roof. The older people in the village spoke only 'waow' - their indigenous language, but the younger ones spoke Spanish too. It was funny to see the types of clothes they were wearing. Some wore western clothing, others just a couple of bits of string and a skirt! One of the younger boys talked to us a bit about the petrol industry in that area, and also mentioned that his grandfather lives deeper into the jungle in one of the tribes that have no contact with the outside world at all - Apparently 40 years ago a group of American missionaries came to visit this tribe and his grandfather went a bit mental and killed them all bare handed!! It was a real insight to have a chat with him.

In the jungle we also went on a fair few walks, went to a waterfall, swam in the Shittypuno a couple of times and went on a night-time bug walk ... I was quite reassured by the fact that we had to look REALLY hard to find the bugs. I was expecting them to be two a dozen. We did see a couple of pretty big spiders (wolf spider and scorpion spider) as well as some crickets and grasshoppers. Our guide also pointed out every single daddy long legs to us – I don’t think he knew we have these in the UK too!

Anyway, all in all we had a fun packed, mud packed time in the jungle, but it was bloody nice to get out and have a shower at the end!! On our final day we said our goodbyes to the ecolodge staff and headed out the jungle same way we'd come in, making our way South. We stopped in Coca for a few hours for lunch – this time it was SCHORCHING and then slept the night in a bush camp.

For the past 2 nights we have been staying in a campsite / hostal called 'el Pequeño Paraiso' (little paradise) in a place called Rio Verde, 17k from Baños which is a popular spa town. The campsite is beautiful and has a really well stocked beer fridge! We had the chance to upgrade from tents into a room with a bed and en-suite bathroom for only $4 per night. After camping in the jungle without showering for 5 days, this was a really easy decision to make! Yesterday we all went grade 3 rafting on the river Pastaza. I've never done this before so was a bit apprehensive about the whole thing before we started. Our instructor gave us a quick safety briefing before we got into wetsuits then off we went. To me the river seemed to be flowing really fast, but once we got into the swing of things I really started to enjoy it. It turned out that our instructor was a bit of a nut-job and had us singing all sorts of songs as we rowed along, such as 'who let the dogs out' and 'we will rock you'. He also pushed one of the girls out of our boat deliberately as well as kidnapping a girl from a different boat! When she managed to crawl to the end of our boat in order to get into her own, he pushed her into the water as well! To cap it all, he deliberately capsized our boat and we had to haul each other back in before we hit some pretty big rapids! Anyway, all in all it was very fun and I'd like the chance to do it again some day.

Yesterday evening the 8 of us made our way into Baños from the campsite in a cattle truck (!) to go to the thermal baths. This was really relaxing, although I overheated at one point and had to sit on the side for a while until I felt less light-headed! We returned to the campsite on the cattle truck, had dinner and watched a film. Today some of the group are doing another activity but I decided to come into Baños to have a proper look around. It is a really beautiful place with stunning mountainous scenery all around, some nice little parks and artisanal shops. It is really sunny and warm with not a drop of rain which makes a nice change. I'm just off now to have a look at the basilica and have some lunch.

Tomorrow we get back in the truck and head South. We'll bush camp for one night before getting into Cuenca - Ecuador's 3rd most important city. After that we head into Peru and will camp on the beach for 3 nights which I'm looking forward to.
Anyway, sorry this is such a long one, bye for now.

Love Emma x