Tena, Ecuador

From Quito, we took a late night bus down to Tena, arriving around 1am. The hostel we planned to stay at was supposedly only a few hundred meters from the bus terminal, but in the dark we had no idea where it was. Fortunately, Tena is a tiny town and all the taxi drivers seemed to know all the hostels. One driver offered to take us for a a dollar. Obviously, we thought that was a fair deal.

As I alluded to in the last blog post, we were mostly coming to Tena to do some white water rafting because it supposedly has the best rivers in Ecuador. Thus, first thing in the morning we hit the town to book our rafting trip. We had done some research online, and the company with the best reviews was called River People and was owned and operated by an adorable family from Ireland. Normally I think its best to do tours with local people, but when it comes to rafting down rapids, their reputation trumps my principles. At first we were bummed because, since it is low tourist season, there weren´t enough people to organize a rafting trip (they said we needed at least four.) This turned out to be great though because instead we got to do a ducky tour (duckies are just inflatable kayaks, they are easier to use than kayaks so you don´t have to do any training beforehand.) This was awesome becaus, for one duckys are a lot cheaper, and for two, Keegan and I got to be in charge of our own vessel and our guide led us in a small separate kayak. Since the water is low this time of year, duckys were more fun than a raft would have been anyway because you are so much closer to the water, making every rapid seem huge. Our guide was named Abby and she was awesome. Abby called our ducky The Break-Up Ducky, because apparently people usually argue and end up mad at each other by the end (only one person can be the leader.) We got down a-okay and we only flipped once! (Not to point fingers, but lets just say I was not the leader when we flipped...)

We pulled off into an indigenous village that work with River People. This bridge was built for them by the Red Cross. 

We switched back and forth who was the guide (in the front) and who was the power (in the back) 

By the end of the river, I was thoroughly glad we went with River People and not any other company. For one, they do a ton of work to protect the river from illegal mining. The whole way down Abby was taking pictures of the illegal mining operations to give to the authorities. She also told us a lot of terrifying stories of having to save people from other rafts during the high season because they went with companies that were unlicensed and ill-trained. YIKES. 

One thing that made our trip extra exciting was that it started pouring rain. We pulled over for lunch in the shelter of some trees and scarfed down some guacamole, plantain chips and these baked delicious chicken things. Luckily Abby had brought along some jackets just in case. The jackets kept us warm and smiling the whole time, despite the down pour.

Yum, lunch.

All the small rivers swelled immediately and dumped into our bigger river. 

This part was super cool because the water was two different colors. There was another point where we met up with a warm river and the water was two distinct temperatures: pleasantly warm on one side of the ducky and freezing on the other.

Abby thought it was funny to make us duck under the newly formed waterfalls since we were already soaking wet from the rain. I´m not sure why we kept agreeing!

Floating the river was awesome, but we are starting to feel the pressure of our December deadline so we didn´t stay too long in Tena. 

Next stop: Baños, the adventure capital of Ecuador.