Chapter 3-Water and El Diablo

Back in the van for a three hour drive to the tachi river, this was quite a drive starting at 8000 feet and ending at 1000 feet what a change in temperature and vegetation. We started out at 60 degrees and ended up at 85 degrees. Anyway, we found our starting point on the tachi river (mostly a class 3 with two or three rapids rated at class 4), the guides unloaded the equipment, inflated the rafts and got the chase kayak ready to go (a fun little playboat by dagger, the first guy to use the kayak was gregory, we was quite impressive to watch, it looked so easy, but then again last year he went to the world kayak championships in korea last year). So after a few pointers and some in water exercises, we were off to go downstream. shortly thereafter, we hit a big rapid and we lost two of the girls, one hung on and the other went swimming for awhile. but all was recovered and we continued on downstream without further incident including getting through the class 4 rapids which were quite fun. Then we had an amazing lunch riverside of very fresh burritos and then after lunch we continued on down to the merge of the tachi and the rio blanco, the river became much bigger but not really any harder and shortly there after we had completely 3 hours or so on the river and we never saw another soul. maybe my next trip here will be a kayak immersion week, sounds like there are lots of great places to go in this near vicinity. anyway it was now 6 pm and we had a 3 hour or so drive back to quito, this portion was labeled the diablo trip, due to the driver being a maniac and almost killing us all many times over (people in ecuador drive very insane, kind of like controlled chaos, but i never saw an accident, but many crosses and hearts painted on the road to indicate death). anyway it became very foggy, rainy, dark and this guy would pass just about anything that got in his way, whether it was legal or safe to do so. any he would get to within inches of the person in front of him just to get them out of the way. even still, the drive took over four hours, but we were all very glad to make it to quito alive.