Hey all.  We had a lovely bus ride from Banos to Tena.  Full on jungle looking scenery and lots of deep canyons to gaze at.  It was super humid when we arrived in Tena and we went to book a river rafting trip right away.  We found a company that was helpful and friendly and spoke English and had openings on a Class IV trip the next day so we went with them. Happy to have accomplished our mission we braved a pizza place and were pleasently surprised with the results.  Fifty million cold showers later we felt cool enough to go to bed.

The next morning bright and early we headed to the river rafting company for breakfast were we ran into an English guy (Geoff) that we semi-met on the bus trip the day before.  We got to know him a bit more over a yummy breakfast and then piled onto a bus to head for the river.  The bus dropped us off in the middle of the jungle where we grabbed lifejackets, halmets, and a paddle and started our 25 minute trek to the water.  THe night before we had a crazy rainstorm so the ground was VERY muddy and VERY slippery and of course we were all in flip flops.  Hil and Geoff and I were way ahead of everyone else with one of our guides and soon followed his lead by ditching our flipflops to squish through the, at times, knee deep mud.  Yes we did bite it a couple of times because of course it was always the most slippery on the steep downhill sections.  We arrived at the river dripping with sweat, covered in mud, and mostly in one piece (Hil cut her foot a little on a rock and I got to play doctor when we got back to our room...healing nicely don´t worry).  There were four rafts in total and we split up into groups of four and piled into  a raft with a guide.  A brief safety meeting (I felt like I was back at work) and some very brief instructions on how to paddle and how to respond to our guide´s shouted instructions of ´ooookay, foooooorward or oooooookay baaackward´ and we were off.  It was actually hard work for the periods of crazy paddling we had to do to get through rapids and mostly avoid rocks so the floating rest periods were very nice.  Plus then we got to admire the crazy jungle all around us.  There were huge cliffs covered in plants and vines dripping over the river and waterfalls everywhere (some of which our guide floated us under) and huge gorgeous fantastically coloured butterflies fluttering all about.  Of course when you were deep in contemplation of the beauty of nature one of the other rafts would sneak up on you and start a splashing war.  We stopped to swim in the river and then later for lunch and then our practice time on the class III rapids were over and we were on to class four.  It was sooooo much fun and intense going through them and of course about five minutes in everyone (but the guide) got ejected from our raft into the middle of some crazy rapids.  It was refreshing, that´s for sure.  Our guide hauled us all out of the water and after that were were a bit gun shy.  We stopped at a couple more places for some cliff jumping and horse play and ended the day with beers back at the bus.  It was an awesome experience and we both really want to go again.  I will tell you the old shoulders were sore the next day though. 

Anyway, of course our day didn´t end there.  We arranged to meet up with Geoff for dinner and drinks after showers and passed the night drinking copious amounts of beer and wine and playing drinking games and getting salsa and some Quechua lessons.  Good times.  Lets just say it was a VERY late night and were were sketchy hurtin units the next day.

Erika

I should add that, while everyone else got one dip in the river, I managed to fall in again in some more rapids, as well as getting hauled/pushed in 3 more times between our guide and one of the other guides (Erika claims that there's something about me that makes people either want to help me or pick on me) - it was hot out, though, and the water was lovely, so it was all good.  And for anyone reading this who wants to go raftin gin Ecuador, the company we went with was River People - such a good experience!

Hil