Archidona and Tena (November 19-21)

Another CIMAS student, Lela, and I fit a little trip to the Amazon in between class field trips and to escape the rainy weather of Quito. We had been offered a place to stay in Archidona when our class visited the Orient a few weeks before. Our friends are volunteering at an organization there called Runa. They are trying to grow and export a tea called guayusa, which has been used by the local Indigenous populations for a long time and has an amount of caffeine between black tea and coffee. The group is especially focused on interacting with the farmers and making it a feasible alternative to more destructive industries in the Amazon. We arrived at their office/volunteer house at about midday on Friday and it felt so good to be warm again! We went out to lunch with our friend Alex and a few of the Peacecorps volunteers who also work there. Then we took a walk to the swimming hole in the river located 2 blocks from Runa! In the afternoon we attended the organizations meeting to learn more about it and we found some delicious empanadas near the cute town square of Archidona for dinner.

There are also 7 Minnesota CIMAS students currently doing internships in Archidona and the nearby town of Tena, so Friday night we met up with them in Tena to celebrate a birthday and have a fun time dancing!

On Saturday we walked to Cavernas Jumandy with a few Runa people to hike through the lava tube and to swim in the pools filled with water coming out of the caves. There was also a horrifying waterslide that I think was meant to knock the wind out of poor kids like us brave enough to go down it!

Lela and I walked in the sunshine back into Archidona, made some lunch and took the bus to Tena. Parts of the town are really touristy because it is reputed to be the best place in Ecuador to river raft. But other than the two rivers that meet and divide the town in two, there wasn’t too much to see. We did run into a school gymnasium with an intense youth pingpong tournament going on. I had no idea that it was a big sport in Ecuador! We grabbed a bus back to Archidona and returned to the river near Runa to hike around and swim in the beautiful water. We hung out at the volunteer house for the night because we were mighty exhausted!

On Sunday morning we left early with 4 Runa volunteers to go to Tena to start a day-long raft trip! We had to ride in the raft company’s truck for a while before actually reaching the river, but once in the boats, we had an awesome time! Even though we were constantly being splashed and knocked into the water by the guides and their “games”, no wet suits were needed this time! The rapids were mostly a Class 3 and there were sections that we could float down. At one point we stopped to jump off of a bridge into the river and we estimated that it was about 25 feet tall! Terrifying! We also stopped for a side-canyon hike at one point to rub mud all over ourselves and then swim under a gorgeous waterfall. We didn’t reach the end until we’d covered 25 km of river and it was 6pm! Lela and I still had to get back to Quito that night and we ended up catching the second to last bus and getting home at 12:30 am on Monday! The raft trip was by far worth it and the whole weekend was a total blast!