Noah's Travel Journal - South America, Second Entry

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Quilotoa & Beyond

The sickness kept its distance as we dawned every bit of warm clothing we possessed to catch a 4 a.m. bus. We climbed aboard and listened to the motor grind with every key twist. It took seven of us to maneuver the stalled bus 180 degrees, so it could point downhill to gather momentum for a clutch popping. We still paid the full price even though we were airborn and thus occupying our seats for only half of the ride. Just as we came in for a landing on a paved road, the bus halted in the oh-so-complete darkness. Some locals wished us luck in surviving the cold as we exited the bus. We were still under the impression that it was a common bus ride for tourists to take.

When we could no longer see the bus tailights, we realized we really had no chance of escaping the icy, gale-force winds whipping across an indistinguishable landscape. We double-timed it towards a flickering light that marked the village of Quilotoa, just shy of 13,000 feet above sea level. It seemed unlikely that the owner of a hostel could sleep through the sound of his corrugated roof being mercilessly beaten up and down by the wind, but maybe it was just loud enough to drown out our fists pounding on his door. In any event, we found an open door to an adjoining building and let ourselves in.

We hung out in the dung-covered chicken coop contemplating the possibility of a fire until common sense chimed in. The door to another cinderblock house led to a bunkroom void of excrement. Zan and Wes crawled into bed while I remained seated on a bed close to the entrance, paranoid and ready to beg forgiveness of any poor soul that I might frighten to death. After a half hour of running worst-case scenarios through my head, we snuck out with the first baby-blue hue of dawn.

A shawl bundle with the legs of an old woman met us on the road and uttered the sweetest word I'd ever heard: "café?" She led us to a two room hostel and roused her friend who served us bread, coffee and tea, while cradling her sleeping infant. Hustling work is an around-the-clock affair in tourist towns. Everyone has something to sell, regardless of time of day or actual usefullness. We packed some supplies into a small day-pack and left our three large mobile homes leaning against the wall inside the hostel.

We took full advantage of the new-found ability to run, having left the cumbersome backpacks behind. We flew down the steep sand banks to an expansive lake at the bottom of the Quilotoa volcano's caldera. We snuck through a trench that flanked the only building in the caldera and made haste to a couple of rafts docked on shore. After much deliberation, we decided that renting a boat was the only way to get to the sunny side of the lake opposite our beach. We were immediately below the cloud level, so patches of clear sky change to clouds in a few seconds, accompanied by a 15 degree drop in temperature (we're not in the land of farenheit either).

The ease with which we haggled down the boat's rental price should have set off some alarms. In fact there were a number of elements that, in retrospect, had provided ample warning. The boat was normaly powered by foot pedals in two front seats, but at the time, only one seat's pedals were still intact. The savy business man insisted that this minor obstacle could be overcome by supplying us with three home-made, wooden paddles, perfectly sized for any of the Lolli-pop kids. When we pointed out how far down the yellow brick road we were planning on going, some feeling of liability surfaced and our new friend insisted on strapping lifejackets on all of us. There was another seat back-to-back with the front two, so we shoved off to escape the cloud cover.

After much experimentation with maneuvering tactics, we had reached the opposite shore and compiled a substancial list of things that would prevent us from ever making the return crossing over more than a mile of water.

1. The steering mechanism was broken and changed directions on its own schedule.
2a. The wind was whipping up waves that not only kept us pinned in our cove, but also spilled water into the boat.
2b. We were bailing the water out with a leather glove.
3. The wind was only increasing and had been solely responsible for our initial crossing, not our physical prowess.
4. It was 9:30 a.m. and we had already put out a day's worth exertion.

After lounging with grazing cows, we saw the sun mocking us and dancing around on the original beach. We set out into a voyage of sopping-wet desperation that tried all of us mentally and physically. Recalling the feeling with words is impossible, but the action of breaking delicate porcelin would come close. By the time we finally reached solid ground we had perfected the art of paddling, pedaling and ruddering in perfect time with each other. I greedily wolfed down simple sugars and promptly fell asleep in the sand. The little boat's pimp said it had never seen so much action.

We soaked up Vitamin D with blatant disregard for melanoma. On our mid-afternoon ascent we stopped to watch our friend diligently zig-zag towards a cove to a fresh-water spring. The climb up the 900 foot sand dune left me strugling to breathe and in the clutches of sickness and over-exertion. We got a bargain on a truck ride to Zumbawa where we watched wine-feuled festivities and hopped a bus back to Latacunga. I ate three bites of rice for dinner and nursed a bottle of Gatorade all night. We parted ways with Wes, our companion, bodyguard, and partner in mischief, so he could get back to Quito to jump on a plane to cultureshockville, USA (that strange town that appears anywhere and everywhere after returning from abroad).

With our health returning, Zan and I bussed our way to the city of Baños, famous for its thermal baths. It is one of the only cities I've seen where the number of adventure travel agencies outnumber mini-supermarkets, about ten to one. The hard-sellers' tourist season had just begun and the migration patterns were well known. The sickly, weak and unexperienced were quickly picked off by every flier-waving little boy at the bus terminal. We ventured away from the trodden path to a hostel where we struck a $4 person/night deal that included our own room, hot showers, and an open air balcony with a pool table. As a fellow daibetic and mentor of mine has always told me, you make your own good luck. We celebrated our find by wandering the streets like minstrels, belting out Grateful Dead songs.

The next morning we printed a resumé of our whitewater navigation experience and marched up the street to one of the more professional looking adventure outfitters. We were shown the equipment for the rafting trips and given honorary guest spots on the Class III expedition they had booked for the next day. The manager was excited to be able to help us achieve our dream of running as many rivers as possible. People really enjoy helping a cause when there's no hidden agenda.

Our only obligation the following morning was collecting all the necessary safety gear and helping to load the van with rafts haphazardly lashed to the roof. As we neared the put-in after an hour of bone-jarring pot hole navigation, I did some quick mental math as a theory came to me. 1 kayak for Zan + 1 van for Jaime our shuttle driver + 1 raft for our guide friend Patricio and five passengers = 1 raft left for me and five Germans. As I drilled my passengers in two languages on paddling, I wondered what the agency would have done had we not arrived when we did.

The river was relatively tame compared to most in Oregon's backyard, that we'd been running since about age five. The part of the Pastaza River that we ran is composed of a maze of waterways snaking through dense jungle. The route changes dramatically with the unpredictable rainfall and multiple tributaries. Drifting down the wrong channel would set a boatman up for the long haul to the back-door to Brazil.

It was my crew’s first time on a river and they wanted a good scare. The tactics we used in the paddle rafts were fundamentally different from most of the big river tactics I'd been raised on. Instead of avoiding the holes that made a meal out of under-sized inflatibles, we went out of our way to hit them all. With no mishaps and high spirits we wolfed down our traditional, restaurant-supplied lunch of soup, rice, meat, and vegetables tainted with bacteria. After a hard look around the van, we eventually located bliss on the roof, so we climbed into the rafts to bask in it on the drive home.

We spent the next couple of days rafting, hiking surrounding hills and entertaining the manager's family. They got a kick out of Zan's lightning-fast guitar and my passion for breakdancing, skateboarding and other pastimes that don't involve a team. The manager's son Santiago, insisted that we both had to teach him music and dance in a combined effort. No matter how much we insisted, our audience said sleep wasn’t necessary for our river trip at 8 a.m. the following morning.

The rain had poured torrentially for days before our raft trip. The dam which customarily opened one floodgate, was roaring down three with a backed-up, swollen pool begging for a fourth. All the tributaries ran as brown as milk chocolate, but looked a little less edible. As good as facing my fears had initially sounded, I had picked the wrong day to re-enter a hardshell kayak after a seven year absence. The river grabbed my boat as soon as I scooted into the flood. Without time to practice my roll, I was going on muscle memory to right my boat when I eventually flipped. My time to shine through the murky water came just 100 yards downstream. I missed my first roll in a wave trough and proceeded to commit the number one river crime: giving in to panic...