Traverslogue - Ecuador

Ecuador

Gallery Shots

Our travel to Ecuador was like a three-for-one vacation, with three distinct and delightful adventures. First, our stay at the Napo Wildlife Center was an intriguing Amazon rainforest adventure.

The mountain town of Otavalo, with its market and distinctive culture, was another world away.

A completely unplanned side-trip to the Galapagos Islands was unique and wonderous.

Visit our Galapagos page to learn how a volcano eruption sent us packing to the Galapagos Islands.

To travel to the Napo Wildlife Center in the Amazon basin we first flew to a frontier town, got a ride in a pick-up to the river, took a motorized long-boat hours up the river, then completed the journey in a dug-out canoe.

Transportation in some countries comes without a long list of safety rules. We try to be practical about the actual dangers and sometimes you just do as the locals do.

At the lodge, David wanted to go in the lake, so we went to enquire about safety.

Them: Perfectly safe for him to go in the lake.

Me: There aren't any piranha here?

Them: Well,yes, but they won't bother him if he isn't bleeding.

Me: What about caiman (a type of small crocodile)?

Them: Yes, but they are small and don't like to come close to shore.

Me: Nothing else? No anaconda?

Them: For someone his size, an anaconda would need to be at least 7 or 8 meters (21-24 feet) and the biggest we've seen here is 6 meters (18 feet).

Me: Oh, I see. Perfectly safe then....

Both David and John were cleansed by a Quechua shaman.

Basketball in Quito

In Quito, we spotted some basketball courts and David quickly discovered that even a 12-year-old gets out of breath playing basketball at 10,000 feet!

River rafting

A river rafting day-trip from Quito was great fun but the true adventure was the death-defying bus trip to the river - over a mountain summit on a two-lane road with blind corners and no passing rules. But, really, that's a different story.

Cock Fight in Otavalo, Ecuador

No, I don't advocate cock fighting, or any other animal fighting, for that matter. In Otavalo, however, I saw a sign for a cock fighting event and was curious enough to want to see. (It has since been outlawed in Ecuador). The "pregame" evaluation of the "fighters" by the betting public was most interesting.