Oh Yeah, the Kayaking Part

Now this is how to start a kayaking trip. We are the only gringos in a lovely hot springs resort atop some 11,000’ pass about an hour from Quito Ecuador. The water is ‘boil-your-back’ hot and the seven students are bonding with the instructors (Phil and Mary DeReimer of DeReimer Adventure Kayaking (www.adventurekayaking.com). We students are all wondering what a 7-day Class III/IV whitewater trip will include.

In some ways it’s odd to be joining a guided tour. Kayaking for me and my friends is usually a do-it-yourself affair, but I am thrilled, THRILLED to be guided around in this gorgeous, yet daunting country. With my three weeks of internet Spanish lessons I can barely buy a Coke! That is pathetic as this country runs on the good ol’ US dollar. You say “Una coca por favor” and they said, “una dollar…. Dude”! Actually they smile and are so polite. The country is clean and outside of Quito, safe. Stuff is cheap if you are willing to go a bit native, 70 cents an hour for internet, $1 for breakfast and $3 to ride the bus all afternoon in the mountains. But the scale and diversity of the country is amazing. Imagine finding the jungle, complete with howling monkeys and riotous-looking orchids, just 100 miles away from A-Basin! Of course, traveling that far in Ecuador is a two-day affair, but it is worth the journey!

When our trip finally begins, I am just happy to be with some other folks! I traveled alone through the volcano district around Quito looking for some mountain biking (which I found) and some views of the 20,000’ peaks, which I did not, due to low clouds. But I was also kinda lonely and a bit scared as everyone keep saying, “Be Safe, Be Careful” and well, Quito looks like an city under siege to some degree. All shops and inns are protected by armored bars and locked gates. Solo gringo girls like me are warned to not wander around at night alone – that kinda crimps my style.

Am looking forward to the food on the tour. I figured out breakfast though I will learn soon how to say scrambled (eggs). But dinner is another matter. In a daring (stupid?) moment I downed an Ecuadorian shish-kabob off the street and was in heaven. Yum! My biking guide, a local guy (educated at Tulane), about flipped and scolded me for being reckless.

So I am happy when we arrive at our farm-house home base and get served a wonderful dinner family style. We find some volcanoes peeking over the clouds in this gorgeous fertile river valley located at 6,000’. We get in kayaks and do a section of the Rio Quijos. The gateway to this run features walls formed of arhcing columnar basalt, Lava Falls style. So pretty. Rapids come a little more often and on number three I ask myself Is this Class III?? We banged into a small eddy after some miracle move that involved a 180° around some rock/pillow thingey, and I worry about making the ferry across a strong jet of water. I paddle WAY, WAY up the eddy to get a better run at this ferry and peel out. I make the line just fine and am kinda snoozing through the bottom of the rapid when I see another student rolling his way down the rapid, never quite coming up. But he ain’t swimming either and I wake up and give him a bow rescue! Duh. Way to hang in there! The rest of the run is truly Class III/III+ and Phil and Mary do a great job of ‘splaining the rapid and the lines.

For the next day we head towards the hot, stinking jungle and they take away my playboat. Waaaa? I’ve been in an EZ and feel kinda hobbled by the larger volume Piranha and pout until we hit the creek. I tumble through a bit of a drop and am glad to have some extra volume and a tail that will not stick. This creek, the Upper Misahualli supposedly drops 100’ per mile and is a beauty! Very narrow and lined with black granite boulders. We running a section that is manageable for our group (though Dereimers do offer trips that are IV- and up to IV +). Because these rivers are rain-fed and Ecuador wrote the book on microclimates, the conditions can go from “What fun!” to OMIGOD overnight. Or over lunch! We’ll get to run this creek again and it will have dropped from about 600cfs to 400cfs, making it much slower, but more of a workout. I am impressed with how the Dereimers stage these drops to get some newer boaters down this run safely. Nobody is in over their heads and everyone comes away with a big ego boost – now that’s teaching! As this stretch gets easier, my Ecuadorian big brother Steve and I get kicked loose to lead the drops on our own. Like most girl paddlers I usually follow some guy and seldom lead a drop. My home boys have tried to break me of this by forcing me to lead, but mostly I think they do it to watch me pick wild lines and laugh at the carnage. Ecu-bro Steve and I stay out of most trouble until the last day when I find some ledge hole for some acrobatics!!!

Shamans and Schnauzers

Never been so happy to shut the door to a hotel room in my life! And hotel is a bit of an exaggeration. Today we kayaked on a river about half the size of the Amazon and ended at the Jardin de Aleman, a rustic lodge deep in the hot, stinking Amazon jungle. Animal noises large and small rage outside my door, not the least of which is the deadly Fer-de-Lance (snake). He is out there somewhere with the yummy taste of Schnauzer on his fangs. You might recognize the Fer de Lance by his other name, the Step-and-a-Half. Mucho poisonoso and I would have been mucho deado had Bill the Veterinarian (another kayaker) been scanning the paved trail we were on for tree frogs. Bill saw the snake right as he coiled and lined up to strike my right foot. Sadly the mini-schnauzer (lodge pet) was not so lucky. He was bit in the snout, but maybe was not injected with the full lethal dose, as he lived through the night.

After dinner the entertainment was a visit from the local healer to talk about jungle shamanism and if desired, perform a cleansing. After the doggy trauma no one wanted to dis the spirit world so we chipped in to buy a cleansing or two.
Interesting ritual – mostly relied on smoke from a Marlboro (yeah cigarette), but fascinating none the less.

By morning we learned a general strike was being called by the proletariat (most of Ecuador) and unless we high-tailed it out of the jungle we would be there until Easter.

Oh damn, no more jungle? We drive back up to the fertile Quijos river valley for some more creeking and a few runs on other sections of a pretty Quijos.
And stay here:


Seems maybe we did push our luck in the karma department a bit as the next day the brakes gave out on our rental van (luckily in the driveway of the farm, NOT on the hard side of the pass), and well, ummmm, it took me 3 days to fly home. But more on those stories later!!!!
Gorgeous country, friendly people, nice rivers. Oh and good hot sauce, what’s not to like!!!!

The Mountain Biking Part

What a day! This is what travel should be: At times you are scared, sometimes you are tired and sometimes you wish you could be 3 feet tall and Quechuan, and not the only gringo at the market! Three nights ago I got to Quito, slept a bit and mostly wondered what I was gonna do in all this rain. As it pounded down I realized my plans to ride mountain bikes around the foot hills of the big volcanoes were dashed. I got up and walked hungrily around a section of Quito that looked sort of like Beirut -- security fences were pulled over store fronts and the liveliest thing was some macho Rottweiler (EC version of pit bull, mucho popular.) I dove into some Gringo cafe and was at home. Four people sat in silence pounding away on laptops in WiFi oblivion. FInally I asked for help and got good advice --"Get your scaredy-cat ass on the Bus and go to Riobamba" (Chimborazo volcano-land.)
The 4 hour bus ride was not too bad and the landscape opened into incredible terraced fields and green, green hills. My guide (Galo from Probici , probici.com) met me at the train station, he is the biking company owner, wow, that is service. After he fitted my bike and found me a hotel, he took me shopping for lunch meat. All of this and the next day´s tour (with a follow vehicle) for $55. The 4 hour bus ride was $4.
Our first stop was the ´Indigenious market´in Guamote. Wow! For two hours we walked among the local folks selling cows, pigs, chickens and of course, guinea pigs that look like cocker spaniels. I loved it. The highlight was potato shopping. No kidding. They have a section of the market big as a football field for selling potatoes. My guide (a local boy educated at the fine Jesuit schools of Bellarmine and Tulane), transformed from guide to shopper as he haggled for their version of Yukon gold potatoes. Cracked me up. I shot lots of pictures from my waist, they are a bit hinky about getting photographed. So I have lots of colorful photos, with no heads. !! Or heads turned.


I loved every minute of it. The bike ride was gorgeous, endless hills of green, marked with splashes of yellow from mustard flowers and of course, lined with little Quechua ladies with 50 pounds of green onions on their backs, slowly trudging home.

We rode about 25 miles, luckily 2/3 of which were downhill! The volcanoes (Chimbo and Cotopaxi) are still obscured by clouds. But the little volcanic valley town of Banos where I stayed last night was stunning. Hot springs everywhere. I soaked to my heart’s content and today rode back to Quito on the bus under a pile of litle ´Quechua' ladies heading back north. They are simply stunning with their mahogany faces, and bright green shawls, black panama hats and shocking pink necklaces.
Anyway, kayaking starts on Sunday, am excited. Water looks high, we´ll see how it affects the tour. Am living on scrambled eggs and potato chips, have yet to figure out the food thing and no, haven’t tried the roasted guinea pig yet!