Big Water in Baeza

I am back in Quito for a day after an awesome few days of boating in Baeza. There was a lot of rain there leaving the rivers at some high, but still runnable levels. Along with Jake and Keta, a french paddler named Antoine joined me on the trip.

We arrived in town on Thursday afternoon and headed up for a quick run of the bridge to bridge section of the Quijos. I was quite surprised when we arrived at the river to find it at a much higher level than I had seen it before. The last time I ran this section the gauge read 2, and it was 8 that day! The water was big, but not super technical. The main theme for the day, and the week for that matter, was don't swim. A swim would have resulted in lots and lots of swimming and lost gear.

The following morning Keta, Antoine and I headed to the Lower Cosonga. From the road, it looked slightly lower than it turned out to be. Usually I think it is a kind of creeky run, but last Friday is was definitely big water. Lots of big holes and long ferries. After about a mile of paddling, we crossed a swinging bridge which would be our last chance of civilization for a while. Keta decided to get off there and hike back to the road, while Antoine and I continued on.

We eventually made it to the confluence with the Quijos, and paddled the rest of it to Borja, where our taxi was picking us up. The extra flow of the Cosonga added to an already big Quijos left us with a pretty exciting paddle out.

We spent the morning on Saturday hitching a ride into the town of El Chaco to take care of a few things, as well as check the level of a local creek, the Sardinas Grande.

It was a beautiful day and a very enjoyable ride into town in the back of a truck.

Later that afternoon Antoine and I decided to head to the Rio Sardinas Grande for a short little creeking session. The run is only two miles long, but its two miles of continuous class 3 plus creeking, and was just what I needed after a few days of paddling high volume rivers.

On Sunday, Keta Antoine and I went back up to the Cosonga to do the upper section. The level had dropped a fair bit, and it turned out to be a very relaxing day of class 3-4 water. It was another sunny day and the scenery of the river made it all the better. That evening we headed back to our hostel and did the only American thing to do, watch the super bowl.

Monday was our last day of boating, and we finally felt that the Quijos had dropped enough for us to do the section of river I'd been dying to do, El Chaco Canyon. I had heard great things about the scenery in this section of river. Everything I heard about it turned out to be very much true. It had multiple sections of beautiful walled in canyons, as well as lots of wildlife and waterfalls. The level however, was not as low as we´d have liked, which helped add to the excitement of the day. The holes that I saw that day were some of the biggest holes I've seen in my life. Most of them were decently easy to avoid, while others were not so easy.

The day ended as exciting as it started when we realized that we had missed our take-out. The guidebook we were using was as little off on its mileage and we were probably a little off on our estimations. This left us floating down the river in the middle of mountains and jungle, with no idea where it would lead. We did know one thing though, which was that eventually the river dropped over 500 foot San Rafael Falls. After an hour or so of paddling, discussing the option of hiking out or sleeping by the river, we saw an oil pipe and eventually a road. We hiked our boats across a field of rocks and made it out. After speaking to some locals by the river we learned that we were only a few miles away from the waterfall!

Our plan was to leave for the hot springs of Papallacta the following morning. We loaded all of the boats and bags onto the bus and were on our way. About 3 minutes into the ride the bus stopped and was forced to turn around due to a riot type event taking place on the bridge we needed to cross. Apparently some people from a nearby province were upset about something and decided stopping traffic was the best way to settle the issue. We spent the afternoon drinking beer and playing cards, hoping the road would be opened the next morning, which in fact, it was. Wednesday morning we were finally off to Papallacta.

A few hours later we were all doing some much needed relaxing in the hot springs. The place was very nice, with 10 or so different hot springs to choose from. We found ourselves an awesome one, with a nice view of the mountains, a creek, humming birds, and most importantly, an old Russian man in his underwear.

Thursday morning we were off again, this time for Quito, to get Jake and Antoine back for their flights. We spent the night hanging out in a bar with Emma, an English friend of ours that we met in Tena.

Today has been spent doing some much needed errands and relaxing around in Quito, enjoying a city that serves more than just chicken and rice. Later this afternoon Keta and I will leave for Banos to start language school, while Jake and Antoine will prepare to fly back to the states and France tomorrow.