Pirhana Fishing...or Should I Say Pirhana Catching

While in the Jungle we were able to do and see some cool stuff. For instance, we met a real, live Shaman. A shaman is a kind of witch doctor. He heals people with spiritual and natural medicine. Interesting fact: to this day, Shamen intake hallucinagenic plants in order to diagnose and treat their patients...any takers for this alternative medicine?

We also saw a ton of cool animals. But in order to keep your reading attention, here's our top five list...

5. Three different types of Monkeys...all were polite and didn't throw poop at us. We also saw a relatively fresh dead monkey while hiking. It's pretty crazy (and gross) how quickly nature takes care of decompsition. Sorry, we didn't take a photo, but the monkey looked like it was still moving because of the amount of flies and mosquitoes covering its body.

4. Baby Anaconda...relieved to not run into a full size adult. Apparantly, they've been spotted as large as 12 meters AND small children HAVE been eaten.

3. Pink River Dolphins...we were really fortnate to see one of these guys. They are much smaller than the dolphins you see around the California coast. It's amazing that they are able to survive in a body of water containing so many predators.

2. Caymen...speaking of predators, I'm betting these guys could do their fair share of damage. According to our jungle expert, it's much easier to see caymen during the dry season because they all congregate to the few, small watering holes because it's their only option. Our guide decided it would be a good idea to go caymen hunting at night. Remember, our boat was made out of a tree and barely floated higher than the surface of the river. These guys are pretty creepy...especially at night because you can only see their red eyes reflecting the light of the flashlights. As soon as we saw the caymen go under water we were out of there pretty quick...thank goodness!

Last, but not least. Drum roll please....

1. Pirhanas...okay, you might be thinking Pirhanas are cool, but with the vast variety of animals in the jungle, why are they number one on our list?

Here's how we answer that question...because we got to catch them! (and eat them if we wanted to.)

Using tree branches as rods and red meat as bait, we sat in our small tree canoes in a lake where it wasn't safe to swim. At first we were only getting bites of lakeweed, but as soon as it started to pour down rain the baby pirhanas started chomping (literally) at the bait. It was crazy! We could hold the meat just above the surface and the little guys would jump out of the water to get at the meat. Don't worry we threw back all of the babies.

Once the rain let up, we decided to paddle over to a different part of the lake in hopes of catching some big pirhanas. Our luck didn't seem to follow us. We sat for a solid hour before we even got a tug. Finally, our guide caught a big guy! I guess his friends weren't too far behind him because a few of us got some solide tugs on our lines. The bigger pirhanas definitely put up a fight disproportionate to their size.

Once we finally got these guys into the boat, the next challenge was keeping the fingers away from their jagged teeth while taking out the hook. Personally, I gave this resposibility to our guide...figure he could us the practice :) But, other, more brave (or stupid...there's a fine line dividing the two) fisher-people attempted to unhook the big pirhanas by themselves.

Unfortunately, there was one casualty. The incident went down as follows...Roisin (pronounced RO-SHEEN, not raisen) a very nice girl from Ireland, wasn't in the same canoe as the guide when she caught a big pirhana. She needed to get the thing off of the hook and her brother told her she'd be fine so she gave it a shot. The picture at the top illustrates how this story ended. That's her bloody finger and her brother's the guys smiling at the bottom of the picture. Check out the teeth on that fish!! Luckily, she was a tough Irish girl and made it away with only a flesh wound and a great story to write home about.

After we had our fill of Irish-girl-eating-fish, we decided it was time to call it a day. At this point, our guide informed us that we had at least a two hour paddle back to camp. After we confirmed that he wasn't joking, we came really close to understanding the phrase, "up a river without a paddle".

Okay, yes, we did have paddles, but we had become comfortably accustomed to our tree-boat with the 40 horsepower engine. Three near-miss accidents with other boats on the river, 2 and 1/2 hours, and one gnarly sunburn later we made it back to the lodge. Lunch never tasted so good. We were all super sore the next day. Gracias a Dios for 4 stroke Yamaha engines!

This Isn't Disney's Jungle Boat

After we finally figured out the Galapagos situation we decided to spend some time in the jungle. While we knew we were going to be somewhat remote, we didn't have any idea how far from civilization we would actually be.

From Quito, we took an overnight bus to an oil town called Lago Agrio. From there, we took a taxi for about three hours towards the Peru and Columbia borders. As I just said, this area of Ecuador is prime oil real estate. Along the side of this dirt road there were miles and miles of pipeline to move the oil out of the jungle...a pretty extensive set-up. Our taxi ride came to an end when we reached the bridge that marked the beginning of the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve...aka part of the Amazon Jungle.

From there, we jumped into a 30 foot boat carved out of a Sequoia Tree. While a Sequoia IS an extremely large member of the tree world, there isn't a lot of wiggle room (especially for 10 people) inside of half of its diameter. With all of the passengers and all of the luggage the hull was only about 3 inches above water level...when we took a turn a bit too sharp, water would rush into the boat. But, this boat wasn't totally "heart of darkness" style...it did a 40 horse power Yamaha engine.

The boat ride was about 2 and a half hours of ducking under trees and vines while the driver weaved around logs and debris floating in the river. The skill of the boat operator was IMPRESSIVE to say the least. It must take a good part of a lifetime to learn all of the in's and out's of this river. We were lucky that we were there during the wet season because during the dry months it apparently takes about 10 hours to make the same trip.

We arrived at the lodge safe and sound and most of the way dry. This place was absolutely wonderful...such a nice change from the city noises. With the amount and activity of animals, the jungle had a whole host of noises of it's own. It was actually pretty loud at night, but it was a relaxing type of noise. We slept wonderfully wonderfully underneath our much needed mosquito net!

Carnival...Brazil...who's coming with us?

Just wanted to plant the seed...looks like we might already have one taker. If you're thinking of entertaining the idea of Carnival in Brazil, it's the very beginning of February. Email us if you're into it and we'll start making moves towarads coordinating.

Cotopaxi and Mountain Bike Luging

Today, we spoiled ourselves and took a mountain biking tour up to El Volcan Cotopaxi. Fun Fact: At 5897 meters, Cotopaxi is the 6th tallest active volcano in the world.

We lucked out and caught some great weather in the morning. We were able to see the summit of the volcano from it's base. After enjoying the view and taking our fill of pictures, we hiked up to the refuge at 4800 meters (15,748 ft). The refuge is, basically, the starting point for the people that hike to the summit of Cotopaxi.

Even after hanging in Quito which is at 2800 meters, we were definitely feeling the altitude. To top it all off, the trail was basically straight up the mountain. After we reached the refuge we traversed over to check out a glacier. Turns out the glaciers in the region are slowly receding...global warming sound familiar?

After lunch, the trip got a little interesting. As we were headed down from the refuge to grab our bikes the weather took a turn for the worse. The clouds rolled in and hail started pelting us...in the face.

Our guide voiced his concern of riding downhill given the icey conditions, but we all thought..."what the hell...let's get what we paid for." We took off down the hill with our poorly adjusted bikes and safety helmets.

At the beginning it was a blast! The dirt road was a bit slippery, but we managed to not eat crap.

About a half hour later, we were singing a different tune. There was enough hail on the ground to make it really icey and I couldn't feel my fingers...the fingers in charge of breaking the bike...the bike that was close to the edge of a cliff.

My fingers went past the no-feeling stage and were well into the painful stage when I noticed that I was totally soaked. Cold, recovering from the flu, and envisioning frost bitten black fingers, Brandon and I decided it might be a wise choice to flag down the guide and hop into the truck. The majority followed our lead, but two guys DID end up making it all the way down to the meeting point. Good on em!

Great fun, but we're ready for some warmer weather. We're off to the Amazon on Saturday.

Up the TeleferiQo..get it teleferi-Quito

Well, we're still in Quito finishing booking our Galapagos trip and waiting to head into the Amazon. Today, we found a pretty cool way to see the city. It's a cable car that goes up to 4500 meters. Check out the view if you can see past our heads.

We found the middle of the world...according to Ecuador

Turns out the middle of the world falls in Ecuador... well, technically in the Galapagos Islands. We're both not exactly sure how they figured that the middle of the world was here. Yes, we do understand that the equator cuts through Ecuador, but not sure how it's figured to be the middle of the world.

A few people have explained that on the equator and every ninety degrees longitude around the world there's only water, EXCEPT for where the Galapagos sits on the world's grid...hence, what make more sense than to build a center of the world monument on mainland Ecuador?

On top of that, there's not one, but TWO centers of the world in Ecuador. The first monument was build in the 1700's and was figured using the navagational tools of the time. The second was built in the age of GPS. Impressively, the two are only 240 meters apart.

The monuments lay just north of Quito so Brandon and I decided to kill some time and check it out. (There's an entire backstory as to why we're back in Quito. Let's just leave at poor prior planning and Guayaquil sucks...BUT we DID FINALLY book a Galapagos trip.) We checked out the first monument which was a great place to take some fun pictures and pay way too much to visit a small museum.

The second, more recent monument was actually really fun! We had a tour of some old indegenious building and burrial sites (more like of what's left of them). We learned a bit about how they lived and what their belief systems were. Did you know that an egg captures all the elements of the earth? Yolk - Fire, White - Water, Membrane - Wind, Shell - Earth...interesting, huh?

Speaking of eggs...did you know that you can balance an egg on a nail at the equatorial line? Well, I will say it takes a bit of skill, so maybe not everyone can do it, but we did :) We also witnessed the coriolis effect by watching water spin counter-clockwise south of the equator and clockwise in the north. Cheap thrills, but we felt like it was money well spent.

Pets are food too!

We happened to luck out and be staying in Cuenca during their version of the 4th of July. Their independence day happens to be the 3rd of November, but there was a solid week of festivities leading up to the actual day...parades, art shows, markets, and it wouldn't be a latino holiday without an excessive amount of fireworks.

Through our spanish school we learned how to make special food and drinks that Cuencanos consume on these special occasions. One delicacy that everybody recommended is called Cuy. Everyone says it has a unique taste and people only eat it on special occasions because it's rather expensive.

If you're wondering what Cuy is, well here it goes...Cuy is more commonly referred to as GUINEA PIG back home. We had seen rotisserie spits with whole guinea pigs (teeth and all) roasting on a few occasions throughout our trip, but weren't exactly sure how we felt about actually eating one.

Well, after lots of questions about Cuy we finally decided, "When in Ecuador..." Thursday, we sacked up and had Cuy for lunch. The restaurant was great...they let us go out back and become familiar with what we were about to eat. While the site of guinea pigs lined up on a spit was a bit disturbing, the smell was actually really great.

At the table we had our choice of cuy sections with legs, paws, and even the head. I opted for a piece that was a little less obvious. The spanish instructor that accompanied us to lunch suggested that we eat the skin and all.

We did...surprisingly, once you get over the initial idea of eating a cute, furry creature, guinea pig IS really tasty. And the masses were right, it's unlike any other meat I'd ever tasted.

Into Cajas National Park

We've been in a city called Cuenca, Ecuador for the last couple weeks studying spanish. School is going well and we have a great teacher. The city's nice, except on Sundays...it's an absolute ghost town.

Last Sunday, we decided to get out of town and head to the Cajas National Park just outside of the city in order to keep ourselves entertained. We ended up going with our salsa teacher (yes, we're taking salsa classes) and two other girls we had met through school. We were under the impression that we would do a bit of walking, but mostly chilling out by one of the lakes.

WRONG...turns out our salsa teacher is also a park guide in his spare time. We all shared a taxi to an obscure section of the park. The last group of people we saw was a bus full of students at a roadside restaurant. We started into the park on an uphill slope...keep in mind, at this point, we were at about 12,000 feet...the slightest incline definitely got the heart pumping. When we first started walking, I felt like a had a slight case of altitude sickness, but after a solid dose of water and about ten minutes walking I felt much better.

About 30 minutes into our hike we arrived at a lake and the last few people we'd see on our trek. The scenery was very different from what I expected in the Andes. Instead of pine trees the terrain was what I imagine a tundra would be like (except we were in the mountains). The plants were short and the ground was squishy with a hard crust of short grass on the top. At points the ground was just flat squishy (I don't think our socks will ever be the same color again).

Cajas national park is known for it's numerous amount of lakes. After we were done taking in the sights of the first lake we headed to another...and another...and another. Luckily, Brandon and I had plenty of water, but we neglected to bring any kind of food. Remember, we thought we were going to be hanging out in a tourist mecca.

The further we went, the trails became smaller and smaller. Eventually, I think we were just on rarely used animal trails. The scenery was amazing and the sound of nothing but the wind was a great change from the city.

About 6 hours, 7 rivers, 5 lakes, and 2,000,000 mosquitoes later we finally made it to another part of the highway. It only took about five minutes before we hitchhiked a ride into town in the back of a Puerto Rican family's truck.

All in all, it was a day of firsts for us. Number one, neither Brandon or I had done any "real" hiking in the middle of nowhere. Number two, neither of us had ever tried to hitchhike before.

When we got back into town first item on the agenda was FOOD and then it was all we could do to shower before collapsing into bed.