Hautaracu Overnighter

I am back in Tena today after spending the past two days doing an overnighter on the Hautaracu river. The Hautaracu is about 18 miles of creeky whitewater ranging from flatwater to class 5, winding its way through an extremely dense and beautiful jungle. Scout, Ryan and I all decided last minute on Wednesday night that this was something we all wanted to before they left and got on the 6:30am bus out of Tena Thursday morning. The bus ride took about 3 hours and around 9:30 in the morning we were dropped off at a little jungle town on the way to Coca. None of us really knew much about the river, or its exact location for that matter. However, after a couple quick conversations with some locals, we were on our way down to the river. The hike in was pretty hard on me and involved climbing up and down many hills, through mud and finally down into an extremely steep and slippery gorge. It took me just under two hours to finish up the hike and I was very excited to finally see the river. It had been raining on the bus ride over and we had no idea what the water level would be, so there was definitely a risk of hiking in and finding the river too high or too low too paddle. I honestly do not think I would have been physically capable of hiking my boat back out the trail, so it was definitely a relief to see the river was at a runnable level. The river started our pretty steep, with a decently sized class 4 rapid within the first few minutes. The first 4 miles or so included the steepest and most technical part of the river, with many class 4-5 rapids back to back. Since none of us had ever been on the river before, we were moving pretty slow through the first few miles, doing lots of boating scouting. Somewhere in those first few miles I had my second swim in Ecuador. Due to the fact that this is a family read blog, and they are nervous enough about me as it is, I am going to leave out the details of the swim. I would however like to give a special thanks to Scout for being there and doing what he had to do to get me out of the situation. I owe you one. After a while the river began to let up, and turned into nice class 3 boogie. Because of the large quantities of trees and undercuts in the river, we were still very careful making our way downstream. The greatest thing about this run though was the scenery. We were literally in the middle of dense jungle vegetation scaling the walls on all sides. There were multiple spots where the river gorged up really tight, giving the illusion that the tops of the walls were touching. As we paddled through the first gorge we saw a hawk-like bird flying around overhead. Then all of the sudden about 15 of these birds came out of the trees and began going crazy. We assumed that they must have had nests up there and quickly paddled through making sure to avoid having too much closer of an encounter with them. We stopped and had lunch at a beautiful cascading waterfall. That was another great thing about the river. Around just about every corner there was a huge waterfall dumping in. Because my boat spent about 15 minutes under the water during my swim, some water had gotten into my drybag and destroyed most of my food. Luckily Ryan and Scout brought extra and were kind enough to share. After paddling what I would guess to be about 13 miles of river , we found a nice spot to camp. It was a great location, with a wide beach, swimming area and some trees for Ryan and Scout to hang their hammocks. I set up my bivy sack partially under the Scout's tarp, keeping me head covered so that it would not get rained on. We then had a nice little dinner, mine consisting mostly of tuna, since that was one of the few things in my food bag that survived. We built a campfire and had a nice evening of sitting around the fire, reflecting on the day, and of course taking shots of the tequilla that Scout packed in. After a few hours of hanging out we finally all decided to retreat to our cozy ¨beds.¨ About an hour after laying down, and pretty violent rain storm came through and it poured on us for the next few hours. Around 1am I awoke to the sound of Ryan yelling on the beach. Scout and I both ran out there to see that the river had flooded and had come all the way up to our boats, which were sitting about 15 feet away from the rivers edge when we went to sleep. We quickly dragged the boats to higher ground, took a moment to take in the sight, then headed back to sleep, or at least I did. Ryan and Scout were not exactly as comfortable in their hammocks as I was in my nice bivy. Ryan had gotten soaked by the rain, since he had not hung his tarp, and they both complained of bugs and back aches from hammock sleeping. I had one of my best nights of sleep yet, dozing off to jungle sounds and falling rain. That bivy was definitely a nice purchase! Early the next morning we got up and began our paddle out. The rest of the river was mostly flatwater and easy class 2 stuff, so the extra flow from the previous night´s rain was definitely to our advantage. The whitewater was definitely easier, but the scenery was just as amazing. We saw lots of beautiful birds, including a flock of about 30 green parrots and and another flock of red, blue and green Macaws. After only about 2 hours of paddling we arrived at our take-out bridge. We waited about 30 minutes until a bus came along and quickly loaded our boats up on top and were off back to Tena. Overall it was definitely one of the coolest experiences and places I have seen since arriving in here. It was also my first overnighter, and has definitely got me excited to do more, hopefully a couple more here in Ecuador. Ryan and Scout both left Tena today back to Quito, and fly home to the States over the next few days. I decided to spend the day letting my body rest, considering tomorrow the plan is to knock out all 18 miles of the lower Jondachi.