Tena

So I traveled west to Tena, the gateway to the Amazon, this past weekend. It was a brief but beautiful adventure. After a hilariously disgusting (odd adjective combo but it really is the perfect description) bus ride, we made to Tena, which was nothing like the grass huts that I had envisioned. Near the end of the long bus ride after alternating who gets the floor and who gets our one seat, Kristen and I discovered a mysterious goo all over our backpacks and my shoe and my thigh after putting my backpack on it. Our first thought was, is there really poo all over our stuff? But after laughing until our sides hurt, it was confirmed after the sniff check that it was in fact vomit. How wonderful right? After some cleaning up at the hostel we went to a great restaurant owned by a chipper old German where the rest of the bunch met up with us.

Bright and early on Saturday morning we began our whitewater rafting adventure, one of my greatest Ecua-experiences to date. River People, the rafting company, was run by two Irish brothers (not really what I was expecting in the Amazon) that had lived in Ecuador since they were kids. The all day trip was absolutely incredible, packed with class 4 rapids, lots of splashing and swimming, a homemade lunch made by their mom, and even a jungle hike. One of the rapids was too big to raft so we hiked up one of the steep sides of the river and then repelled back down once we got past the rapid. It was the jungliest of all jungle hikes for me. And no jungle experience is complete without tripping and falling on a poisonous plant from the Amazon. The stinging went away after a couple hours though, no worries. The untouched rainforest that surrounded us was out of this world: lots of little waterfalls, vines, green parrots, and tropical foliage. We didn’t get many pictures after Mateo’s camera got too cold from the water or something, but here’s a few!