Neil's and Lloyd's Most Excellent Adventure: Riders of the Storm

From Lago Agrio we went directly to the small town of Tena. Our night bus stopped shortly after midnight, because we reached a patch of deep mud. We had to wait for sunrise and a bulldozer to help us across!

Tena is also situated in the jungle, but the jungle in this area is entirely different from our trip to the Cuyabeno. The terrain is much more mountainous, there are incredible volcanoes jutting out of the lush jungles, waterfalls crashing down deep ravines, absolutely beautiful!

Our reason for coming to Tena is the fact that it is the undisputed capital of river rafting in Ecuador. We booked a tour with River People, a very cool family business, which I can definitely recommend. Our previous experience with rafting in Arequipa left us hungering for more. We wanted a longer, harder, faster and more dangerous trip filled with testosterone and adrenaline... And we got it.

We went off to the river at 9h. It was just us and the two guides, Alex and Tim. It was a bit of a hike through some nasty slippery clay down to the river. The trip is a full day on the river, rafting two contrasting rivers. The first is a difficult and technical river with small fast level 3 rapids and LOTS of obstacles. The second is a raging river with lots of big waves, level 4 rapids and some serious whitewater. Lloyd, me and Alex took a small 4 man raft and Tim took a kayak for support, taking photos and just playing around! From the word go it was just an incredibly exciting ride through some of the most beautiful scenery of the whole trip. The canyon walls towered above us covered with insane jungle growth and waterfalls crashing down everywhere.

the river canyon

one of the many beautiful waterfalls

serious splashing

We took about 4 hours to get to the other river where we stopped for lunch. There we were absolutely ravaged by sand flies, I have more than a 100 bites and Lloyd is looking just as bad! Sand flies are worse than mosquitos, they get in everywhere, and if they bite you it starts bleeding and it itches like hell! Today it´s absolute torture...

another big rapid

The rest of the river was just as exciting culminating with the HUGE waffle maker. A mean rapid where we did really well not to tip! Along the way we had lots of fun swinging on lianas, swimming some of the smaller rivers and goofing around.