Don't Monkey Around

At one point during the rafting, we pulled over to the shore and hiked up a little cavern to participate in a local tradition of face painting. The two rafting guides ran up ahead to find and mix the paint, which, of course, was a mixture of river mud and monkey sh!t; or at least that's what they told us right after smearing it all over our faces. I'll let you guess as to whether or not they were full of the monkey stuff themselves.

Eat Simple in the Jungle

The second best part of the rafting trip--the best part being the actual white water--was the lunch we had on shore halfway through the day. The lunch consisted of stale tortillas, freshly diced avocado, onion, pepper, and Doritos, with fresh cut pineapple for dessert. We stuffed the diced ingredients into the torts and chowed like there was no tomorrow. It was, hands down, the best meal we had eaten in Ecuador so far. So simple, yet so tastey--but the point isn't really how good it was, but rather, how good it was compared to everything else we ate in Ecuador. Perhaps it's our own darn fault for refusing to eat guinnea pigs, but it just seemed impossible to find decent food. So, we savored every bite, and even cleaned up after ourselves.

Amazon

On the first day of our four-day jungle tour, we did some white water rafting down the Napo river. It was the best day of all four days, for many reasons, not the least of which was that it was, we felt, the least life threatening activity we ended up doing during the tour. Even though towards the end, in very flat water, we hit a bump or something and lost control of the boat, as you can see in the photo.