Hostel Yutzos 2 Tena

The jungle; the kind of heat that makes you sweat from your ears and eyeballs and fills every crack with a clammy warm feeling, normally accustomed to peeing yourself. Only as far as i could remember I hadnīt dribbled in my pants. The monkey filled town of Misahualli was to be our entrance point. An hour downriver from Tena, the road stops here and the river continues. Nothing but jungle and the Amazon beyond.

Our guide effortlessly made his way through the dense ...

... distance!) - Just a hut and a covered eating area...simple and rustic, just what we wanted. They asked if we would be okay in a matrimonial bed, which we said yes to... it ended up meaning, "do you mind sleeping stuck together on the bottom bunk bed?"

However, we were so thirsty, we were starting to dream about drinking anything... visualising cold drinks all day - there wasnt much I wouldnt have done for a cold drink then!

We were eaten alive (as expected in ...

... I found this immensly funny whereas no one was laughing when I finally decided to exit. They are either very polite or just used to this happenning, I am not sure which one I would go with!

After Cali I had a bit of a trek to Tena but nothing else so hilarious happened.

So being in this amazing place called Tena, where I forgot completely to get my camera out, is a jungle town. I went rafting and eating. The rafting was ok but not ...

... The Grand Canyon in Tena that you could get to with a guide where there was a freshwater slot canyon with swimming and cliff jumping around. Sign me up! I said.

So that is exactly what I did, and the day after we arrived we were led by Ramiro, our guide, in a taxi to the edge of a village 20 minutes from Tena. We were dropped off the road and walked down a path to a thatched roof hut where a family lived. Ramiro dropped off some food with the ...

... the gasoline station so you can go to the toilet". Parked up next to the toilet, Renee sheepishly made her way out, watched intently by 40 sweating people. I pretended to read, as if unaware of what was occurring, or who the woman was that was now entering the stations toilet only a meter away.

Following the quickest pit stop I`ve ever seen Renee make we were once again on our way, driving along a dirt road into the jungle, picking people up and dropping them off as we went ...

... but delicious!).

The next day we had an uneventful journey to Quito and checked into the Secret Garden hostel, a cool place serving humungous dinners (lasagne bigger than my head) on a beautiful roof terrece overlooking Quito. It was a bit of a culture shock as there were more westerners there than we had seen for the rest of our trip combined. But it was great to get some travel tips and speak in English for a bit rather than our painful Spanish.

... some Spanish but I'd put money on him being asleep!

yesterday promised to be an easy day, 2000 metres down to 600, but then when you look at the map and realise there's 90 kms between those two heights you just know there's going to be some up as well as down. The first part of the day, 20 kms, was undulating and seemed to take an age, that plus the fact that I kept stopping to take photographs of plants and shrubs. I also tried to sneak up on a pair of interesting ...

... plant all red, yellow and spikey along with the other brightly coloured shrubs and flowers, the names of which I shall have to look up.

The road has clearly been cut through the jungle because as we're cycling along we feel as if we are IN the jungle. The rock walls, if there are any, are covered in all kinds of ferns, some of them enormous, grasses and the most beautiful moss the colour of chocolate, on which other, smaller plants grow. Then there's the ...

... colouring pens!

Anyway I digress. At the river there is a high bank on the far side with an overhanging tree branch from which the older boys were jumping off. Naturally I had to give this a go. From ground level it didn't seem too high, but once I was actually sitting in the tree looking down at the river it was a different story! The jump was over six metres high; I still did it though, and it wasn't *that* painful to hit the water from that height!

... we spun round and round, at quite a rate! The second trick he got us to attempt was to all stand up round the edge of the raft, holding hands, with the idea being that we would all be able to support each other. Well it didn't really work - almost instantly I fell backwards into the river, causing everyone else to either fall forwards into the raft or backwards into the river as well!