Man, our first day stepping into the Ecuadorian Amazon was a DOOSEY! The weather was unbearably hot and Dave and I made the mistake of walking from the bus station about 20 minutes to our hostel with all of our luggage. I would say at least 90 degrees with a HIGH percentage of humidity. Wooooah, not ready for that. The one excellent thing about the jungle though is that just as it gets firey hot outside, it pours rain. Dave and I found ourselves waiting out thunderous downpours on a frequent basis under awnings and in ice cream stores (thanks to me). Our main focus in heading off to the jungle was to go rafting. In Ecuador, the country´s best whitewater is found in the jungle.
Unfortunately, out of ignorance, many of the rivers and ecosystems are rapidly changing in the Amazon area due to logging/deforestation, road development, and mining. On the flip side, there are some people fighting to keep this pristine place wild, but the protestors are few and the illegal miners and loggers are much more powerful. People simply go to the areas that they want to develop or mine - no permits, no protocol, no environmental studies, no hydrology experience, nada. For example, in Tena (the capitol of the Napo province) they mined and changed the riverbed to extract materials for building streets, etc. that they made the surrounding area unstable and Tena has had floods for the past two years. Not only is the flooding a problem, but it is so evident where the river bed has been altered and how the vegetation grown back after mining. Good for Tena that their tourism is booming currently, but the citizens need to figure out alternative ways to pave the roads and get materials other than pulling them out of the rivers and changing the paths of the water.
Needless to say, the rafting was fantastic in Tena. We were looking to go on a class IV or V section, but could not find anybody else to join on our trip the first day (two paddlers were not going to cut it for those sections apparently...). We ended up joining in with a British couple who had never been rafting before but haggled our way into an tandem inflatable kayak as an other option instead of being on the raft. This river was called the Rio Jatunyacu and it was a pool drop class III river. Super fun! It rained a ton the night before also so the water was a muddy brown color and a bit more omnious than the typical sea foam-greenish hue. Dave and I got the hang of the kayak and eventually took it out just the two of us. The river was wide open and we had one particular instance where we were getting into a big wave to try and surf it and were completely gobbled up and demolished in about 2 seconds. We both got spit out of the wave and were cracking up, scurried back onto the kayak, and set off down river. During the trip we headed off into what looked like a crack in a mountainside...a tiny canyon. 
Our river guide painted our face with Quichuan traditional clay and we looked like warriors. LoL...yes, ferocious gringos! After that awesome and long day on the river (25km) we headed back in the pickup truck with Pilsener in hand to Tena. Dave and I decided to take our chances (because they offered it to us) to go, just the two of us, the next day on the class IV. We had a tiny 12 ft blue boat and we set off, a group of three, and a safety kayaker. From the drop off point, we hiked downhill for about 30 minutes through the mud and sludge to the river. Right as we got to the river, our guide re-routed us to an amazing waterfall spot where we were inside a canyon (or kind of like a hole in the earth) and there was a waterfall coming from above and dropping through many terraces. It´s so hard to explain, but it was the closest I´ve ever felt to Fern Gully. We were able to get under a waterfall and have a back massage from it while holding onto rocks with a firm death grip! Beautiful and unbelievable!
The start of the rafting was awesome and super technical. The river flooded from really intense rains about a week earlier and our guide could not get over how much the river changed. Literally every rapid he told us how much it was different...like running a completely new river. It was obvious on the river banks that the level of the water was about 7 or 8 feet higher during the floods, moving around all the rocks, including HOUSE sized boulders. Crazy! We got our fair share of paddling in, manuevering around lots of rocks in BEAUTIFUL clear water! Dave and I really couldn´t get over how amazing it was to be floating through the Amazon on a raft and taking in all of the scenery.
As to be expected, our weather quickly changed from awesome, to 'not as awesome' and we had some pretty big thunder and lightning, and well as pouring rain! This continued for a good two hours or so, including during lunch, where we stopped at the confluence of the two rivers Jondachi and Hollin. We literally watched the color of the water change and the water come up during our 30 minutes on shore.
Our guide grew increasiungly more concerned with the rising water and our light boat. Needless to say, we got off that shore REALLY quickly and started paddling. The rapids after lunch were SOLID and really fun! We couldn´t believe how continuous it was. Class IV rapids one after the other! We came really close to flipping once...our boat was sucked back into a huge hydraulic because we were so light. There was another boat which came from behind us from a different company and booted us out. We were so lucky! They had three swimmers though....ha! 
I think that the most extrordinary part of the trip was that we were really remote (like a LONG 6 hour hike to get out of the canyon) and there was only one other boat with us...but from a different company. The day was topped off again by bridge jumping and Pilsener at the end of the long 40 km (25-ish miles) on the water. We used the company River People and would highly recommend it to anybody looking for some great rafting in Tena! Exhausted and hungry, we headed out for an incredible dinner of enchiladas and mentally prepared ourselves for some bussing the following day! Off to hiking in the mountains outside of Riobamba!
Much Love,
Dave and Liz
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