ECUADOR

ECUADOR

Quiotola Crater lake, Ecuador

Straight from the border of Colombia, a fellow traveller, Travis and I journeyed to the Andean mountains of Ecuador to province of Latagunga to visit the Quiotola crater. Many years ago a volcano this volcano imploded and the result now is this beautiful green turquoise crater lake some 3500metres above see level. On the first day we walked down to the waters edge and chilled out and caught our breath before walking back up. On the second day i walked around the carter itself, some 4hours with a group of travellers i met the night before. As you will see the views were stunning from all sides and it was even possible to see the volcano Cotopaxi at 5900 metres.

Banos, Ecuador

Banos, known for its spring baths, well hardly, man made swimming pools filled by natural springs, Banos is also known for its outdoor activities, one of them being the big the 60km bike ride from Banos to Puno. Well of course i could not resist. A group of us left early one morning on mountain bikes riding partially on tarmac and off road. The road being both up and down, sometimes a killer going up. However the scenery is well worth it. Huge mountains covered with pristine rain forest, waterfalls falling from the side of the road as we cycled along.

We stopped and visited the magnificent ¨Devils throat¨waterfall, of course the pics don't so it any justice but just the scale of water falling per second was so powerful. Later on we found this ¨Banos Natuaralles¨which is a basically a beautiful rock pool swimming area beside the Rio Verda (clear water). Just beautiful. We stopped here for lunch and chilled. We then carried finally reaching Puno some 7-8hrs later. We got the bus back to Banos. We were shattered!

TENA, Ecudaor

I met up with a friend, Zoe, and we travelled on to Tena, the white water rafting capital of Ecudaor and also home to the Amazon rain forest. We found a nice hostel in Tena and sorted our rafting trip for the next day. Well it was decent Class III rapids all the way. We had an excellent guide who managed to get us soaked whenever possible. The scenery was of course just beautiful and even Zoe who was slightly apprehensive to start with loved it. On another trip into the jungle we visited an animal rescue sanctuary by boat, thought i would share some of the animal pictures with you, aaahhhhh.

From there, via via, i managed to get in contact with a local guide named Juan, who let us stay with his family in their village in the amazon. Juan took us for walks into the jungle explaining all the different medicinal purposes of several different plants. Juans´father being a Shaman and his fathers close friend, Franciso, being the President of the Ecudorian Shamans, well lets just say they had vast amounts of knowledge between with regards to the plants in the forest and their properties. On that note i was introduced to ayahuasca (see http://www.ayahuasca.com/). A drink produced from mixing a vine from the forest with a particular green leaf called Charlie, used to enter the spirit world. Well it would have been rude of me not to have partaken, so i did!. Honestly, i didnt have the visions they spoke of, a little numbness but no hallucinations. Oh well, we shall see what happens next time!

So much so in fact that Francisco is working with the Ecuadorian government to secure a tract of rain forest whereby a university is going to be set up and all the knowledge that he and his peers knows will be properly captured and documented. A very interesting and worthwhile project i think, certainly before all the rain forest is destroyed. (Funnily enough i met an American doing the same thing, documenting the plants, i will bring them in contact with each other).

Below, these were the local village kids that performed a dance for us in their traditional dress.

And here below i did a little video diary below at the crater lake, aaahhhh.