A Bad Decision

Trip Start Apr 02, 2008
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40
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Trip End Jul 31, 2008


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Flag of Ecuador  ,
Thursday, July 10, 2008

Tena is north east of Banos and further towards the jungle, as evidenced by the beautiful scenary during our bus ride there. Our main aim of going to Tena was to go rafting again, and possible have another foray into the jungle. A guy from New Zealand who worked in the area as a translator gave us some recommendations and hooked us up with an agency who organised a taylor made tour for us to go rafting for one day, before spending a night in the jungle, and then having a second day on the river. Perfect... or so we thought!

We started to have doubts the next morning when the raft turned up, the worst raft we have EVER seen, covered in plasters and gaffer tape. But still the NZ guy reassured them this company was fine. We then had more doubts when we realised the guide spoke no English and did not cover all the commands we used before, but we thought this was because the river was only Grade 3, and not Grade 4 or 5 like in Peru En route to Tena
En route to Tena
 . So we started and almost immediatly a leak sprung in the raft, and past of it disconnected, but now it was too late to go back. It soon became apparent that the guide had no idea about the river, and the safety kayak had a leak!! Then within 5 mins we lost a person overboard who was scarily stuck in a swell underwater for about 20 secs - we seriously thought we may lose him. Then 5 mins later, the whole raft flipped.

At this point, Dave got stuck in a swell under the rock and nearly lost consciousness from being underwater for so long. Luckily someone saw his hand sticking out of the water and pulled him out, possibly saving his life. As for me, I was swept off down the river and into the rapids. The raft passed me by, and I managed to clamber onto a rock in the middle of the rapids, to await the safety kayak, only to find out that the kayaker had given up, ditched the kayak and walked off. So there I stayed on the rock for the next 20 mins, with this poor fisherman trying to save me, although the guide eventually came back for me, after Dave insisted they stop (otherwise he wanted to continue?!). Needless to say we were rather traumatised and flatly refused to continue. We than cancelled the whole trip and demanded our money back (which took about 1/2 hour and a fair bit of shouting from yours truly).

So moral of the story, donīt necessarly go by the recommendation of others and make a rushed decision after an exhausting day on a bus. After nearly drowning we decided we didnīt really like Tena (it also rained all the time), and moved on the next day.
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