2006 Ecuador update

So it seems that all good stories contain the element of adversity, and this story is no exception. Though it all arrived in a burst and then vanished. Arriving at the airport i discovered that my luggage was incompatable with all the airplanes departing. so after a few hours of negotiating my options i choose the logical solution. take the six a.m flight out of Nashville to Miami and wait for my flight the following day to Quito. So after 21 hours in the Miami airport i boarded a plane for Nicaraugua at four-thirty in the morning. At that point my patience had reached guru status, and i felt levitation was not unobtainable. so a few hours in Nicaraugua, along with another couple of hours in Costa Rica didn´t seem that long. Flying into San Jose we encountered heavy crosswinds that tossed the small plane as we made our approach. the sound of seatbelts tightening was accompanied by deep breaths that seemed to be held until we hit the ground. Upon landing, the entire plane erupted into applause for the pilots valient effort. Which at the time i wasn´t sure how to feel about. But once we landed in Quito, the pilots also recieved a loud applause. So i took it as a cultural gesture, and happily exited the plane.
As i came through customs, i heard someone yell ¨hey, Jay¨ from within a crowd of cab drivers. And my friend Rob emerged from the crowd. I was excited to say the least to see a familiar face. Especially due to the fact that all i had was a name of a hotel and my spanish was very minimal. We stayed in Quito for the night, and the next morning caught a bus for Baeza which is a beautiful mountain town about three hours east of Quito.
We spent several days in Baeza exploring some of the wonderful rivers in the area including: the Quijos and the Oyachachi. Baeza is a very small town nesteled in the Quijos drainage, and is ussually very quiet. But it turned out that the Miss Quijos was due to be crowned, so we went to witness the festival. It was classic to say the least, and it seemed that everyone from the six surrounding townships had shown up to support their canidates. Ryan and Jason showed up a few days later and we had a great time paddling together on the Oyachachi and the casa de queso section of the Quijos.
So yesterday we traveled away from the mountains into the township of Tena, which sits at the edge of the Amazon. One of the best rivers in the area is flooded and everthing else is low, which is a bit weird. So hopefully tommorow the Jondachi will come down and we will be able to access the upper reached of the drainage. So until then.....