Our Family Time Out: Up and Over the Andes

Every time we move to a new destination within Ecuador, I’m amazed at how much can change within a few hours’ drive. When we descended from Cuenca to Guayaquil, we went from Andean chill to tropical heat in three hours. When we went from Canoa to Esmeraldas, we went from a dry and brown beach environment to (or really, through) a lush, tropical one. When we went from Esmeraldas to Mindo, we went up about 4500’, moving from a tropical beach to a cool and wet could forest in a few hours.

Yesterday did not disappoint, as we went up and over Ecuador’s Andean spine. Starting at 5:30, we left Mindo before dawn with Nano at the wheel and us and our bags loading down his 2002 small SUV, that has seen a lot of mountain miles, to put it mildly. With a full moon overhead, we started to ascend up to Quito, O&R asleep, while Yo and I were treated to an amazing winding road of vertical lush forests and deep ravines, as the full moon set and the sun began its ascent. Nano was, as always, a great conversationalist, as we discussed everything from schooling philosophies to local politics to our shared distrust of extreme adventure sports like zip lining (“canopy” in Spanish).

Pre-dawn departure in high spirits!

By 7:00, we passed the Mitad del Mundo monument and were entering Quito. The environment changed – we were now back at altitude, out of the lush cloud forest, and back into the drier, thinner air. And we hit traffic, big time. We needed to get to the airport by 9:00 to get our 10:00 flight to the Oriente, and had assumed that by leaving at 5:30, we’d be more than safe. The road to the brand-new airport is an old regional road that alternates between 1-2 lanes, goes up and down some steep ravines and passes through busy residential suburbs. Quiteños typically suggest allowing 2 hours for the trip. But just as the traffic was getting really bad, Nano’s car began to act skittish and lose power on the ascents. The mood in the crowded car changed as we all got stressed out – us mostly because we were surely going to miss our flight, and the boat that was to meet us on the other side, and Nano mostly because his car was dying.

Somehow it all worked out – the car recovered after Nano raced the engine in neutral for about 5 minutes, the traffic cleared, and we got to the airport around 9:15, which allowed us to catch our flight to the Oriente at the last possible minute.

Our destination was Coca, a small but rapidly growing oil town in the Oriente, or the East, as Ecuadorians call the Amazonian part of their country. The flight was no more than 30 minutes, more or less straight down. At least half of the passengers were, like us, tourists headed for an Amazon lodge. The Amazonian heat and humidity that we felt on the tarmac confirmed that we were again at a much lower altitude, about 3000’. Our third climate zone that day, and not even 11am!

The pier at Coca - that's an old plane mounted on a barge

We were met in the one-room Coca airport by guides from NapoWildlife Center, our destination for the next four days. After a 5 minute bus ride, we arrived at Coca’s port on the Rio Napo, a major tributary of the Amazon. The Napo seems less like a tributary than a major river unto itself, though I’ve never seen the Amazon. I’ll guess it’s a bit less than a half mile wide at Coca.

An hour or so wait by the piers gave us time to deal with a new problem; our new boiler in Brooklyn had quit last night and the house was cold. We got it fixed, but are now dealing with the cause – a crumbling, century old chimney. Pretty much the kind of thing you don’t want to be faced with when heading to a remote part of the Amazon. Nonetheless, I’m still impressed that we were able to pull out our iPhones in Coca, Ecuador and call and text with our tenants and plumber back in Brooklyn as easily as if we were in New Jersey (actually the signal in Coca is better).

Along with our guides and the other dozen or so guests headed to the Napo Wildlife Center, we boarded a motorized canoe and surged downriver for two hours and a bit, arriving at the mouth of a small tributary long enough to change into a few man-powered canoes for the trip upriver to the lodge. The trip was stunning, full of jungle-y plants and the moist, earthy smell of decomposing plants. Interesting birds, and some other creatures will have to wait for another post. We arrived at Napo Wildlife Center at about 5pm, almost twelve hours after we started.