Every summer I try to write up my journeys for friends and the kayaking group. This years report got a little bit out of hand in term of length and hence I’m posting it long after summer. As a Math instructor lacking a good editor, I plead the fifth on the number of grammatical errors. Give it a try if you have the time and let me know what you think.
After a child hood with very few remembered dreams, it seems that my mind has decided to start making up for lost time. On one rather hung over night in the back of my Tacoma this summer I dreamt of butterflies. They had been let loose from stuffy cardboard shelters kept cool with dry ice like lost, poor pilgrims from a greyhound bus station. Freed on the banks of the Salmo River at the key moments of a new age wedding in the post-bong, post-E light of Shambala Music Festival 2005’s first morning in Nelson BC. The ground was still wet and trampled from spilt beer, morning dew, and mass herds of dripping raver’s sweat. The few standing remnants still bouncing the thump, thump, thump of the last stage and felt the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of the released butterflies. The new bride, dread locks still wet with dew and sweat from the night’s festivities, long white (tie dyed?) train covered with cowshit and mud from the “still operational” ranch and sight of the rave, leg hairs long and unshaven and slightly scorched from the funkadelic fire show, certainly she felt the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of an exotic butterfly as it so accidentally landed on her tattooed bicep for the perfect digital picture. I could see it posted on Shambala.net as propaganda for the 2006 show. And then as the day warmed up and the scantly clad and often topless nymphets came out to sun tan and dry out their BC saturated hangovers on the sandy banks of the ever slow, glacial chilled waters of the Salmo, the butterflies found increasingly more interesting helicopter landings and body parts to join in on the ritual sun baths. And where was I for all this? Passed out the in the back of my pickup for the wedding, but managing to drag myself to the sun tanning exhibits on the beach. Terrible, awful, pathetic, and how the hell did the drug inspired offspring of Nelson BC’s hippy generation of dodge drafters and communal farmers get to be so good looking? I never noticed the lack of butterflies, but I certainly noticed the aftereffects of the “surfer on acid’s” yagger content that we snuck into the rave in Nalgene bottles. No alcohol, dogs, or glass allowed. I’ve broken every rule before. Everything else is fair game, but it would have been a bad year to sneak any drugs across the Canadian border. The rave ready border crossing had a search dog and x-ray machines on the ready. I have a feeling that the residual evidence on some kayaker’s boats from many a safety talk would have been enough to interest the dog, but luckily my boat was clean. And where were the butterflies? Stuck on a greyhound bus desperately needing saving, but lets come back to that.
Every year I try to write up a small trip report from my summer kayaking extravaganzas. Sometimes they include more kayaking then others, but as a teacher I manage to get enough free time to create some tales. Last year’s report was written with lithium and a strong reliance on sanity, stability, and quantum physics. The summer report lost some of its Hunter S Thompson attributes (the same year we lost him, god bless his wandering soul). Not surprisingly, it doesn’t take long for a kayaker to realize that the new drug induced sanity is making it increasingly hard to rationalize taking risks on the river and in life, rationalize excessive drinking and womanizing, increasingly hard to adjust to a new desire to sleep on a regular basis, and hard to adjust to the drug induced side effects such as a 15 lb weight gain that made it hard to fit in my sinking zero gravity kayak. So with the promise of a hopeful, inspiring summer with very few conceivable inspirations for anxiety or depression, I stop swallowing the drugs. What a beautiful, mostly clear 8 week summer term that lead to, I’ll relate some of it below. Never confuse the phrase “teaching summer term” with work, I attend class on Monday and Wednesday and spend the rest of the week grading papers and kayaking. But there on the banks of the Salmo River while I was grading my final papers and preparing myself for 5 weeks in South America, that madness crept back in like a long lost friend. It might be because I was reading Don Quixote and his accounts of madness as an integral, interesting part of society, because middle age gives such a strange perspective on madness, or because I realized as a kayaker we all need a little madness (god I love you guys); but in any case my long lost friend has been a little easier to befriend then when it roared its loudest two years ago. In the past I found myself researching different mental institutes to find a good home in case I had a break down. Now I have resolved to search other countries and find a place where no one speaks English and might mistake my insanity for a language barrier. Currently I’m thinking that hanging out in a small Peruvian village with the senile Quechua speaking women over beers might just be perfect. It would be best to begin this story a few weeks before the rave. Because most of my travels and trip reports have been based in Canada, the usual stomping grounds of my summer exploits, let’s start with a trip to Whistler.
A strange thing about the rivers of Whistler: there are quite a few runs that I have only run once. This summer was no exception. Heather and I were hanging out at the take out for Callaghan Creek. Her friend would be meeting us soon and we could pick which river to run. That morning we had woke up for an early morning bump down the Chiliwack River canyon. It was only class 3 because of the low water, but a great way to spend the morning. Now I was stuck thinking of all my single descents in BC: from the day Lori had her ankle-biting piton on what was supposed to be a class 3 plus decent of Cayoose Creek, to the day that I wind milled above a formidable hole on the Soo River on what Mike and I read as a easy class 4 run, to reading about Mark Risley’s hike out of the Mine run on the Ashlu, to, what was currently on my mind, watching Eric puke up water after I pointed him down the wrong line on Callaghan Creek. I haven’t run any of them again and I really need to. But that doesn’t help the knots in your stomach as you are watching proboaters that you recognize from the movies head towards the put in. Always cautious, I talked Heather into trying the upper Cheakamus instead. As I ran the first rapid upside down, I remember, that yes I was back in Whistler. What a wonderful run! It reminds me of a more continuous version of the lower 5 on the North Fork Payette. The scenery (if you are able to notice it) is better and the drops are cleaner. The Check has none of the misplaced rocks the North Fork is notorious for. After a calm night in Whistler, Heather and I ran the play run on the Ashlu. Our shuttle bunny Amy Price had to do a little four wheel drive work just to make it down to the take out. It is a beautiful run that is worth doing if you’re in the area, but because of all the shuttle and hiking logistics, there are better options. Currently I have been talking to people about the last 3 miles of the Mine run which is supposed to be good class 4 on the Ashlu, and the upper run which is supposed to be class 5 creekin. That is my next Whistler goal (I’m hoping that it isn’t one of those rivers that I’m so scared of and only run once.) I’m not sure if I will ever run the Mine run or the lower Commitment canyon. They both look pretty formidable. Next it was back to Hood River to attend Huck and Jason’s wedding.
Had to work Monday and Wednesday and then for the next trip a bunch of pdxkayakers headed out to the Lower Main Salmon for a four day weekend trip. As usual, more drinking then boating. That trip deserves a special write up of its own, but special mention does go to Julia Wheeler and some of the Hood River Boaters for the neon light show, an over abundance of tequila, lots of suggestive photography, and low water levels that made the play wave at the Eye of the Needle perfect. Also special mention to William “I just got my roll” rodeo star.
Then it was back to work for the last time that summer. Christiane, my German friend visited on a small break from her studies. We took off after my final and headed to my second home, Nelson BC. Grabbed some Jagger and Malibu at the border for Surfers on Acid and headed to Nelson’s big event, a 3 day rave called Shambala. We stopped on the way up and surfed a beautiful, fun, friendly wave on the Koontaney called Brilliant. Imagine a big water wave, about chest high at this flow that surges and bounces, but doesn’t thrash. We where in a hurry to get to the St Leon hot springs that night so I only took a few rides, but what a great time. After resting our weary traveled bodies in the hot springs, we spent the next day looking at waterfalls that I had heard might be runable. As is usually the case in Canada, I would need to bring Chuck Taylor and Nate Garr along with me if I wanted to truly test how safe and deep the drops really are. Next thing we knew we where at the rave. Since we where late after taking the entire day to scout drops, the line was awful. As usual the event staff were high as kites and having a hard time keeping track. Personally, Brett and I snuck a dog into the show two years ago, and this time I meet a bunch of people who snuck past the guards without paying. You would think this leniency would mean a quick line, but that wasn’t the case. Not much to mention the first night. The second day was awesome. Sun bathing on the beach, ran out of alcohol, made a 10 km trip back to town, gave two hitch hikers a ride to the local abandoned log mill for the cheaper punk rock version of the show called Scumbala, marched around the rave with Portland’s very own March 4 marching band, and then passed out in the back of the pickup. On the way out of the rave for the 10 hour drive back home we picked up another hitch hiker. She was very distressed and needed a ride to save her butterflies from the Greyhound station. She had ordered them for a new age wedding that we had missed on Saturday morning. But thanks to a mistake in shipping they hadn’t arrived until today (Sunday morning) and they where going to die if they weren’t rescued and released from their cardboard boxes soon. Having nothing to lose, we gave her a ride to the bus station and then back to the rave. In a hurry we never watched her release the butterflies on the beach. But for the rest of the summer I would picture those poor butterflies stuffed in their small containers cooled by dry ice as a symbol for something. The thing is I’m not sure if I ever did figure out what they are a symbol for, but I sure imagined them a lot. My sister Carrie, my college friend Erick, and I have been thinking of writing a book. If we are to be the next Virginia Wolfe, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Saramago (respectively) I better start learning what the word existential means and practice some. Seems like images of caged butterflies would be a good place to start and they made a nice intro into this story. Hell maybe we will include this trip report in our book. But lets continue the story and find the next place that I encountered the butterflies.
It sometimes pays to have ridiculously good looking ankles. Thanks to Huck’s connections in the advertising business, Kimberly, Pytel, and I made good bucks working a weekend for an Addida’s photo shoot. I used this money to help fund a trip for my mom, sister and I in Peru and Ecuador. I would spend two weeks touring the ruins of Peru with my mom, have a week on my own, and then spend two weeks in Ecuador with my sister. First stop for mom and I: Houston International Airport, recently renamed George Bush International Airport. “Welcome to Houston, Texas the home of George W Bush, the weather is a nice hazy …”, the pilot belched out as we zoomed in for landing. Toured around for our 3 hour layover and saw the airports namesake immortalized in a bronze statue. His body in a running position, his coat hung solid in the wind as if the breeze of his running held it straight in a horizontal position over his shoulders. In his hand, ever so effortlessly he held the bronzed book, Winds of Change. It seemed awfully hard to picture a man made of bronze running so fast that his jacket stood straight back and it seems even harder to believe that a book made of bronze is very easy to ready. Maybe that was George’s problem, the book wouldn’t open so he didn’t read it. And I wondered what the butterflies would look like if they shared George’s solid state. Would they float forever in the breeze like his jacket, or would they fall directly to the ground. Small symbols of an unmerciful world lying on the ground. I would get used to seeing George Bush a lot in South America, but usually it was in spray paint, had a W accompanying it, and had a lot more anger then the elegant prose written about George senior by his Texan compadres on the wall of the airport.
Back on a plane, 2 nights in Lima, Peru, dirty city with a beautiful coast, and then another plane to Cusco, Peru: capital of the Incan empire, beautiful. What once was a great city of Incan engineering has been changed over the last 500 years to a city of great churches and small shanty houses on the hill. With the discovery of the ruin Machu Pichu 100 years ago, the city has once again been changed, now it’s a tourist destination. Spent a couple of days hitting the tourist sights with my mom and then ditched her for the nightlife. Danced to lots of Madonna. Fitting for a town full of churches. A couple of brothers from New Orleans and I talked Maria, the cocktail waitress, into a few dances on the bar. Little did the brothers know that while they would be on the Incan trail a hurricane would come destroy their city. But we were much more interested at the moment trying to keep up with the cubre libres that the bar tenders were serving. The youngest bartender had a habit of filling your class back up with rum, spinning it through the air in a large quick arch to mix it and adding significantly to my hangover the next day. It’s hard enough to semi-salsa dance to Grease songs, but for some reason the entire bar and I tried it at least 3 times that night. At least that was what I remember. When I met the town’s tattoo and piercing artist, I realized that I had more holes in my ears then he did. Kind of strange coming from the tattooed pierced city of Portland. In South America when I’m asked how much my earrings cost, I tend to lie and say 20 bucks otherwise I seem rich. When asked where I’m from I also sometimes tend to lie and say Canada for similar reasons. Sufficiently late into the night four locals and an Australian talked me into going to another bar. It’s up a staircase with no sign. El Muki is the name, I think. The bouncer likes to give tourist lots of crap and pretend that there is a $10 entrance fee. The trick is to walk right on by. When I entered I remember being dragged here late at night on a similar occasion 5 years ago. I also remember spending lots of money. I’m a math teacher, lets think about this. Suppose I spent $50, currently the exchange rate is 3.2. I would guess that it was closer to 4 soles per dollar 5 years ago. That would add up to about 200 soles. Now at 7 soles per drink that means I could have purchased close to 30 drinks. With drinks as stiff as the Spaceroom, its no wonder I remember being escorted home by a large group of happy drunks. This time I kept it cheap and only got a few hugs and an email address from a cute local: iwanttobeanangel@hotmail.com or something of the sort.
For the weekend mom and I did a little bit of rafting. We went down the class 3 section of the Urumbamba. The river itself was obnoxiously polluted, but the scenery was awesome. Our guide was terrible, but entertaining, one of the problems with going on a paid rafting experience. We met Rachel and her brother, just off the Incan trail. Both of them wished they had spent their vacation in a raft instead of the long, technical Incan trail. After a fun day on the river, we headed out on the town that night. Turns out that Rachel and her friend Veronica had spent the last two years in the Peace Corp in Bolivia. Veronica had extended her stay in Bolivia by 6 months so that she would have more time with her Bolivian boyfriend. By coincidence she knew my friend Kristian who was also in the Peace Corp in Bolivia. We made up a wonderful story about excessive drug use and some crazy sex adventures she had with some random kayaker named Shane she met in Cusco. In only took about two weeks for the story to come back to me, all the way around the world. Kristian of course told Margi, and Margi of course had to tell Brett. I had already warned Brett that the story was coming his way, so he just nodded and smiled. In reality we spent the night at a local bar full of rafters just back from a 3 day trip on the Apurimac. I had really wanted to go on this trip, but was worried about taking my Mom on class 4 plus waters in South America. After we watched the videos, all of us have a plan for the next time that we are in Cusco.
Next stop was tourist stuff. Mom and I did the classic one-day trip to Machu Pichu. Awesome ancient structure in the heights of the Andes. I believe it is still considered one of the wonders of the world. Awesome. Then Mom and I headed to Puno and Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, and a hell of a good name. It is also home to some interesting island people that we visited on a tourist boat. To escape persecution the islanders actually went out into the lake and made floating islands out of reeds and that is what their houses are built on. They actually have schools built on a couple of the islands, sponsored by the Peruvian government so that the islanders can preserve their heritage. Interesting that they designed the islands so that they could stay secluded and now they are so overrun with tourist that it isn’t even free to take a picture of any of the locals. Most of the islanders are born again Christians. This is interesting because most of Peru is Catholic. A lot of missionaries from the US have visited the islands. There must be something romantic for the missionaries about saving people stuck on a floating island. The nearby stationary island of Taquille is still mostly Catholic like the rest of Peru. Catholism’s greatest strength has always been allowing the locals to retain a lot have their believes in mother earth while incorporating part of the catholic credo. The islanders still wear their traditional clothes even though they include pants that were introduced by the Spanish. You won’t find any teenagers on the island; they have all left to find work in the larger cities. After the boat ride I left mom at the hotel and went out to check out the bars in the small fishing village. Managed to start up a game of uno in the bar with Angela the cocktail waitress, her brother Eddie, Thelma the bartender, and Kenny the bar’s coke dealer. I couldn’t seem to explain the rule about calling uno with the last card, so we played without it. And to think, that is one of the few Spanish words that I know. They next day, mom and I headed back to Cusco.
The next night there was a fun free concert in the town square of Cusco. A pretty cool setting for a concert with all of the old Spanish churches, but the sound was terrible because it echoed back from the flat church walls. The band was called Libertad and Cusquena, the beer of choice in Peru, sponsored the concert. I later found out the Cusquena had actually been bought out by Heiniken. God forbid a Peruvian would ever have a successful business and make some good money. Somehow it didn’t seem very liberating that the entire band seemed to be white Spanish decent and they where singing in the sacred capital of the Incans about equality. I met a couple of drunken machismo men mad that I was talking to their girlfriends. Normally it wouldn’t have been too big of deal, I’m taller then most Peruvians. But these guys where huge and their friends had nicknamed them The Towers. After drinking enough rum and cokes from coke bottles it turns out the only thing that we could communicate about in our mixed English and Spanish is where are you from, what is your name, do you like Cusco, and do you like Peruvian women. Normally that wouldn’t be too big of deal either, but these guys where so drunk that they kept forgetting what they had asked and repeated the questions over and over again for the length of the concert. The whole thing was a little sketch since fights kept breaking out and many of them involved broken glass bottles. But in the end it all ended up fine and it was fun hanging with The Towers and their girls. After the concert we tried to go to one of the gringo bars in Cusco. Turns out I could get in for free but they had to pay an entrance fee. I would have paid for them but at the moment I was poorer then they were. Mom and I hadn’t been able to get any of the ATM machines to work that afternoon and we were broke. I was a little bit worried that I might be emailing iwanttobeanangel@hotmail.com the next day for a place to stay, but luckily all the ATM’s worked the following morning. It’s strange that the bar wanted to charge them a cover and not me. “Libertado” seemed an improper name for the band that night.
Next day Mom flew home. I met up with Rachel for a 36-hour bus ride to Quito, Ecuador where I picked my sister Carrie up at the airport.
Let me mention a little bit about Rachel, our traveling partner for the next couple of weeks. As I previously mentioned, she had just finished her tour with the Peace Corps in Bolivia and was taking a tour of South America with her modest exit funds from the Peace Corp. She had spent a lot of her life traveling because her father is a minister in the Army. It was nice to have someone as random as Rachel to hang out. Carrie and I could dish out advice, what all Horners do best, and in Rachel case, some of it was even good advice! There is a waterfall on the Clearwater River in BC that is impassable by Salmon. It is the end of the line for their long trip from the Pacific Ocean. Non-the-less its still a great place to see fish jump, trying to make it up the falls. For as long as anyone has been keeping track, none of them have been successful. Most Salmon are content to lie their eggs in the exact place that they are born; but it is important for there to be a couple of stubborn salmon every year trying to make it up that rapid. Someday it will be passable and they well have hundreds of miles of the Clearwater to themselves. This endearing stubbornness is the best way I can think to describe Rachel. Her brother and sister have resigned to trying to find a stable way to pass their existence after army brat life and Rachel is still at it. Her headstrong ways fit in well with my sister and I.
While in Quito, the three of us spent a couple of days checking out the sights and museums. It’s nice to be in a country that appreciates art. A local artist, Guayasmin, had an awesome museum that he designed for himself up on the hills of the city. The themes are mostly about the suffering of the poor and defeated in South America and around the world. All the while he managed to keep an appropriate amount of optimism in his work. We also visited Fernando Botero’s exhibit. He is Columbia’s most famous artist, and the exhibit was called “The Faces of Columbia”. The images captured the shooting and fighting in Columbia over the rebel group FARC. A few weeks later, while the art was still on my mind, an Israeli traveler would tell me her argument for the existence of God, “You have to blame someone for everything.” Not entirely optimistic. Then back to my old internal argument: If God knows everything, then (he,she,it) knows about Satan’s plight. If he knew Satan would exist, he knew all along about pain and suffering, atom bombs, rape, murder, etc. So you certainly can’t blame the devil. But then what good is it really to pray. Are prayers just internal comments? It seems that the existence of pain and suffering must somehow be just as important as the existence of good and happiness. How then does it make sense to pray for their reduction? I’ve come up with a lot of possibilities, but I always come back to two of them. God does not exist. As a mathematician I have a hard time with this. The entire theoretical math that I gained access to in school was so perfect. It didn’t feel accidental. There is a famous mathematical debate: is math created by humans or is it discovered by humans. I’m always left feeling that it was discovered. So again the question, why pray? Maybe we should be praying to give up something of ourselves to relieve others suffering. Kind of a trade to keep the balance of Good and Evil. Although I would love to help South America, I’m not so sure I want to give up all my privileges as an American citizen. Kind of like Guayasmin’s art losing some of its powerful statements about the poor because it is in a museum in his former house in the rich highland neighborhoods of Quito. As a world traveled artist and Ecuadorian what did he give up for the poor other then a piece of his artistic soul? This is all academic though, I love what Guayasmin did with his art to try and change the world.
Through all of these vacations that I take, I’m slowing beginning to realize that madness is just a part of my nature. I definitely need to reed Don Quiote again and I was to hang with sidekick. Knowing that these visions and strange enchantments that work on my life are only figments of my imagination helps me get through them, but similar to Guayasmin, I think they just might be the part of my soul that I’m supposed to sacrifice. I’m reminded of my first vacation away from my family. We spent the morning tying the four wheelers in the back of the trailer with small twine to make Aaron’s controlling dad happy. It seemed so pointless, if we rolled there was no way that the tiny rope would keep the four wheelers in the trailer. Besides that, I think the last thing I would be worried about if we rolled would be the safety of our four-wheelers. Such parallels on all of my vacations to follow. Trying to tie my life together with each subsequent vacation and not seeing the big picture. Maybe Mimi and I figured it out once on a vacation to Alaska. We reduced our goals. The only hope for the trip was to hit every bar on the road between Anchorage and Homer. For the most part, that was a successful trip.
Well enough wondering, lets get back to the story and Quito. Just before Carrie left the states for Ecuador, hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on New Orleans. The person next to Carrie on her connection flight was flying back to see if his house was still in one piece. I hung out in Internet cafes, reading the news and trying to get a picture of the devastation. After Carrie arrived, the plan was to head to a small village in the North of Ecuador. Here is the poem that I wrote on my first vacation to Ecuador five years before as we left the capital city for the jungle:
Left Quito dark city on a bus for the jungle.
Paid the hotel cashier in his cheap dark suit worn by the bankers downtown.
Jobs defined by their genes.
Drunk from the profit of a sudden increase in income,
Our guide’s brother left us on the bus.
Drinking a habit defined by his genes.
Bored eyes welcomed us to our seats,
Over-stimulation a problem only in other large cities.
The driver climbed kilometers above the mile high city.
A job created by the automobile revolution.
Drove over a deep ravine on a wildly high bridge.
No one seemed to mind trusting the engineers who built the bridge.
Designs based on mathematics only their computers understand.
Bags weighted down our laps,
Scared of the robbers they might find in the holding bins on the bottom of the bus.
Careers created by the invention of property.
Fast Latin music played from a tape through the speakers.
Music played to entertain a bus full of people that refused to be entertained.
Passed the Nestle Cocoa Research Plant.
Money formed from the sweet toothed, consequence blind mouths of our home country.
Forced by the presence of guns to show passports at the guard station.
The border guard smiled behind his influence as we reentered the bus.
A life created by necessity and the desire for power.
Next the road came to the top and began its descent to the jungle, an action well known to the devil after his great rebellion.
The bus driver changed the music to American rock and roll.
A tape left by previous lost jobless and wondering honkies.
Music inspired by and named after fornication in the back of automobiles.
In the valley to the right, two waterfalls simultaneously leapt hundreds of feet to their deaths amongst the thick overgrown vegetation.
A jungle molded by a god who created his own job.
The population in this particular part of Ecuador is mostly African-Ecuadorian. It was an interesting place to be while the US was forced to once again face its black-poor minority population. Those without the means to escape were the ones affected the most and they were predominantly black. Interesting things to think about as we entered San Miguel, an African-Ecuadorian jungle village that is a 3-hour boat ride from even the smallest town with bus service. The people are very happy, yet very poor. This is fairly common in Ecuador’s Orient (jungle) region, but you rarely see rich black people wandering the streets of Quito. You also rarely see the strong cheekbones of the indigenous communities wondering the rich highland suburbs of the capital. And rarely will you hear a word of Quecha, the indigenous Incan tongue, but if you head to the jungle you can even find witch doctors and old women that don’t speak a word of Spanish. After days in the village, we headed back to civilization and I went into the Internet cafes again to see how the US was dealing with New Orleans. Most of you know the story. One very interesting article that I found on the Internet mentioned all of the countries that were offering the US aide. We are so used to handing out aide, but when do we actually receive it, and what was wrong with our planning that we would require it after a storm that affected only a small part of our country. Such countries as Columbia, Venezuela, and Iraq were pledging support. I have a feeling that some of it was just as a farce and a slap in the face to the US. Especially in the case of Venezuela. The Bush administration has been very displeased with their president recently. He has been very mouthy. The countries oil reserves give them a lot of freedom not to rely on support and money from the US. The Bush administration has retaliated and has gone as far as to say that the president is giving money to the Columbian resistance movement, FARC, but they have offered very little supporting evidence. So Venezuela probably offered money as a jest to the US. I don’t blame them, especially after the head of the Christian Coalition suggested that Venezuela’s president should be assassinated. Again, some of the time when I’m in South America I just say I’m from Canada. It makes it a lot easier to ignore all of the spray painted messages on the side of the road that say something in Spanish and include the word Bush with a capital and some of the times with a W. The German government has always been well prepared for disasters and also offered a helping hand. They sent a few planes full of emergency food supplies. The US accepted the first plane, but wouldn’t allow the second plane to land for fear that the food might be infected with mad cow disease. A German magazine, Spiegel, suggested that Bush might just be too proud to accept foreign aide. The magazine also polled the German population and found that only a very small portion of the country agreed with sending the US aide anyway, often stating that we aren’t a developing country and should be able to take care of ourselves.
Well, we did manage to get some rivers in while we where in Ecuador. Our next destination was the town of Banos where we were able to run the Rio Pastaza. We paid a local rafting company to take us down this fun class three river. Our crazy guide kept pushing people in the river just to keep it interesting. Later that night we met the guides out at the local bar and where treated to some flaming Bob Marley shots. The idea is to stick a straw in and suck them empty from the bottom so you don’t burn yourself. After watching one of the others burn his throat, I’m definitely going to blow mine out next time. Then Carrie and I said goodbye to Rachel and headed to the town of Tena. Not much of a tourist destination, but it are the center of some world class boating. We didn’t have a lot of time, and it wasn’t high season, so we didn’t find to many kayakers. We still managed to run of the Jondachi River. I had heard about it from Pytel after his extended stay in South America. He had run the upper class 5 run. (Small note about Pytel: He started off taking the summer off to vacation on the Grand Canyon and South America. We called it the Summer of Jim. Liking his vacation time, it has now become the Year of Jim). Carrie and I again paid to go rafting on the lower run. At the put in we took a side hike up a canyon. The creek used to have a 25-foot waterfall but had cut a tunnel under the falls and now flowed out of the cave on the side of the cliff. We where able to crawl back into the cave, crawl up and out the river exit and then jump off the dry riverbed. Awesome! The Jondachi had amazing jungle scenery and will forever rate high on my list. It is in an area with a decent population, but hardly anyone makes it down to the river’s edge. We saw a couple of fisherman and a couple of abandoned suspension bridges. Other then that the river was deserted. I think we were about the fourth of fifth commercial trip to ever run the stretch. Pretty amazing. Carrie and I decided that we had found our perfect marriage partners. The owners of the company had moved from Ireland and brought their kids along with them. The son and daughter with both super-cool and nice to look at. We decided that it would make the perfect marriage and we could just switch off between hanging in Portland and hanging in Tena. The only problem was Carrie and I didn’t even say a word to the brother and sister. It would have been a different marriage of convenience, the kayaker version. The next day we paid the same rafting company to takes us down the Rio Jatunyacu in kayaks. It was a fun day in big water class three. Unfortunately, neither the brother or the sister accompanied us on this trip. Mid-trip we took a very interesting side hike. We walked up a creek that entered through a small canyon. On this hike we would find lots of spiders, watch our guide play with a very poisonous small snake, crawl through a narrow crack while bats flew over our heads, etc. The point is this was definitely the scariest part of the river.
Well that’s the end of Ecuador. We made our way back to Quito and flew back to the States via George Bush international airport again. Normally this would be the end of my trip report, but this year it took me so long to write it up that I have a lot more to say. I need to include the rest of my summer vacation and also my Christmas break vacation as well.
Here is another one of the great things about teaching at a Community College: after returning from Ecuador I was required to attend a mandatory meeting on Tuesday. Then I found if very easy to slip away again until I started teaching on the following Monday. So Sandra and I headed once again to BC. Someday I’ll learn that these late September trips to BC lead to some fairly low river flows. But any trip to BC is worth it. Our first stop was the good old Thompson River. It needs late summer flows to be optimal, but this time the frog wave at the put in looked down right punishing. The river was definitely a little bit to low. About a mile down stream I was reminded why its nice to have a play wave at the put in, so you can practice a few rolls and get to feel comfortable in your boat again. Heading down the left side cheat route at Cutting Board, a midstream eddy line decided to eat me whole. My roll attempts were weak and uninspiring and led to a wet exit. Making my way to shore I gave Sandra the heads up to go chase my boat. As soon as she took her eye off me, I found another whirlpool. Down I went. On my first trip to Canada I had arrived a day ahead of the other rafters and drove up and down the Thompson River to check out its rapids. That day while road scouting I saw a man fall off a private raft. He was down a very long time and the next thing I could make out they had him on the shore. On the river the next day I saw the same raft again and went to ask what happened. Turns out the man had stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated. He had a beer in his hand and I asked him what it was like to have a near drowning experience (ten years ago I didn’t know). He said it was fine, but he wasn’t planning to get quite as drunk today. So here I was in a similar part of the river, underwater. In the very slow motion time that only happens underwater, I had a strange thought and started to look for the butterflies from the Shamble rave. I figured that the Salmo River must empty into the Thompson and maybe butterflies are like cows and they like to pass away down by the riverbanks. I never did find the butterflies, but I kept looking. It sure would have been a peaceful way to pass away, looking for butterflies in the depths of the Thompson River in my favorite place in the world, BC. But instead I did resurface and made it to shore. Sandra had managed to catch my boat on the other side of the river right on top of the Jaws. It took us quite a while to get the boat to my side of the river and we called it a day and hiked back to the truck. Always a good reminder that three people can make a lot safer team then two, cause even old dogs like me can swim on eddy lines. We finished up the trip with some nice hikes, fun times in Whistler, and a great run down the very low Squamish River. And it was back to work on Monday.
Again this would be a good time to end this trip report, but somewhere in the middle of fall term I got the crazy idea to head to Costa Rica for the Christmas Break. By some crazy fluke of scheduling I had three and a half weeks of break instead of the usual two and a half. Because I’m not taking Lithium anymore to counteract my hypomania, I still fall prey to these crazy ideas that seem so awesome until I get the credit card report. No big deal though, I’m not letting that worry me anymore.
So I’m really excited to send this trip report out and it already has taken me about 4 months. So in the sake of time, and so that my trip report can catch up with the events of the real world, I’ll talk fast. Met my German friend Christiane in the San Jose airport. We headed to Quepos to catch up with Broken Foot Melissa and Sam Drevo. Spent a fun day in the park waiting for the Portland crew. It included Howler monkeys, Squirrel monkeys, Iguanas, Sloths, Oliver North’s airplane, a freak rainstorm that flooded the streets, the world’s best fried chicken, prostitutes, you get the picture. That night we managed to find Sam’s crew, but they seemed a little bit mellow.
Amazingly enough they were having an awesome time after a lot of trauma: one person had to go back to the states to replace his delaminated passport, one person had a dislocated shoulder and a popped ear drum, one person was missing a camera, the whole group had experienced an epic day on the Pacuare river after an early morning flash flood. None of these things reflect Sam’s good planning skills, just some of the time stuff like that happens. What was amazing was how much fun the crew was having. But they didn’t need to party that night, they needed rest. That night Christiane and I partied for my 31st birthday in a stationary airplane. After the Ollie North plot a restaurant in the area bought the supposed US airplane that had crashed, exposing the scandal. It makes a cool little bar up on the hill above the Manual Antonio Park. That and they made a stiff pitcher of margaritas. Met the group for the Naranjo River the next morning. A fun class 3 river set in the jungle. It was nice to be in Costa Rica paddling with such a great crew. We managed to party so hard that I don’t really remember much. Said goodbye to the Portland crew.
Over the next couple days Christy and I climbed Mount Chirripo. Turns out my knees where made for kayaking and not mountain climbing. We stopped just 800 vertical feet from the top, but it was an amazing hike through the cloud forest and not a bit of snow. We then cruised back to pick John at the airport. Grabbed a car and spent some interesting time learning how to drive in Costa Rica, watching mountains erupt, hanging in a resort hot springs with a full bar, etc. We then hooked up with Rio Tropicales and headed to the upper run on the Sarapiqui. Amazing!! Imagine the Wind River in Washington except the action keeps up all the way to the take out and you’re in jungle scenery wearing a splash top. The river was a bit harsh on John, cohorsing him into a couple of swims. Headed to the coast for Xmas. Saw a man stabbed to death on Xmas eve. The Caribbean East has historically been where Costa Rica’s black community lives. Similar to the US, a lot of the community has suffered from years of segregation and racism. Again I was reminded of the Katrina event. Definitely ruined the evening. Headed back to the airport to pick up Mike and the raft. Decided to take a “short cut” to the General River.
The short cut took all night and saved us from what would have been an hour and a half traffic jam through the city. On the shortcut we found a redneck party at a sawmill and decided to stay. Awesome! Mike had been in Costa Rica for less than 4 hours and we already had him at some random party in the middle of nowhere. The karaoke van had been hired from San Jose and all of the locals walked from the village to visit. All that I can say is that we where very popular with the locals. Then it was an all night drive to the General. We found low water and two excellent days of rafting in the farmlands. The shuttle logistics where hell but the rest was sweet. Then it was back to pick up Cindy and head to the Pacuare. Hard to describe. It falls into my top ten for sure. It has beauty, side hikes, good rapids, everything!
OK. I need to end this thing some how. That was it. Back to the states. Here it is now, already post spring break and I need to wrap this story up. I don’t even dare include the Spring Break trip, but when you see the video of Erick’s swim on next year’s PDXkayaker movie, you’re gonna laugh. Carrie’s arm is in a cast after a post spring break car wreck. It’ll be a couple of months before she hits the rivers again. Brett and I are already talking about next Summer. It already has the makings of a good trip report and its still the first week of Spring term. I’ve stopped seeing butterflies but my nightmares have been getting worst. I really want to go back to the days that I didn’t remember anything when I woke up, but now that takes excessive amounts of alcohol. How to end this? Maybe I’ll just give away the ending of the book that Carrie, Erick, and I will most likely never write. There we are in Las Vegas after a long vacation in the dessert with no rain. Its raining. You can only see our backs as we walk off into the future across a mud puddle that reflects shadows and the Vegas lights. I promise it will make more sense and be more interesting if we actually write the book.
