Relaxing in the Jungle

Well, the last fews days have been just as wonderful as the last few weeks. On Saturday we paddled the lower Rio Misahualli down to Puerto Misahualli for more festival activites. We put on the Tena river right in town and paddled down to the confluence with the Misahualli. It was a beautiful day with lots of big water and big waves. It felt like we were paddling out in the middle of the jungle (which we pretty much were) and saw lots of beautiful plants and birds, including some parrots. The town of Puerto Misahualli is interesting do to the fact that it is overrun by monkeys. The batteries on my camera died so I do not have any pictures, but I am sure to go back and get some later. While it was very exciting to see thousands of monkeys hanging in the trees, they also scared me a little because they were not at all afraid of people and liked to try and climb on you and steal your stuff! After a few hours of hanging out at the festival and dodging the monkeys, we headed back to Tena for the night.

Sunday was a day of relaxing and hanging out in the hammocks, followed by another day of boating on Monday. We all went back to Upper Misahualli, which is much more creeky than the lower. This time Keta and Jeremy were with us, making it an awesome day of boating. Everyone had great lines and while it was a little low, we still had decent water.

Yesterday some of us headed over to the Rio Jondachi, which is by far my favorite river I have paddled in Ecuador. It is continuous class 4 water, with a couple bigger rapids thrown in the mix as well. Big boulders and crystal clear water made it one of the most beautiful places I've seen since arriving in the country. Everyone was having pretty solid lines and we were moving at a decent pace. The highlight of the day was probably when we reached a group of French paddlers who had put on the river about 4 hours earlier than us! They were all portaging one of the big rapids that our entire group fired up and had great lines on. As we paddled on by, Freakystick could be heard chanting ¨USA, USA!¨ When we arrived at the take-out the cab driver who had been waiting for the past 8 hours for the French guys was not too happy...

Looks like today will be another day off, figuring out some plans for the future including heading to the coast, attending a language school, and maybe a little swimming and laying in hammocks...