Ecuador Images — Mountains to Amazon

By Mark Gunlogson

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Try­ing to fin­ish up the last of the blogs for the fam­i­ly adven­ture trip in Ecuador. After Zule­ta we head­ed down into the cloud for­est for some ziplin­ing, bird watch­ing, tube raft­ing, and tak­ing in the beau­ty of one of the most bio­log­i­cal­ly diverse ecosys­tems on the plan­et. Great stuff and only an hour or so from Quito!

From there we spent four nights in an amaz­ing jun­gle lodge on the Rio Napo, a major trib­u­tary of the Ama­zon. There we swam, float­ed down the riv­er on a bal­sa raft, ate ants, learned about how the trees and plants are used by locals, and basi­cal­ly stayed in one place for awhile, unlike the rest of the trip when we were on the go almost every­day. It’s amaz­ing to think that in about a half a day you can be in the high­lands, even on a glac­i­er, and by the after­noon you can be swing­ing in a ham­mock in the Ama­zon Basin- talk about diversity!

We end­ed up the trip back in Quito doing a city tour with Moun­tain Mad­ness guides Ale­jo and Gas­par- always good to see them. Quito is an amaz­ing city and among it’s many sites to see are some of the old­est church­es in South Amer­i­ca and it has the church with the most gold on the con­ti­nent. Grace and Ellie took in a huge paint­ing of the Judge­ment Day, fol­lowed by a 20 x 30 foot paint­ing of hell! Scary stuff for young minds.…

In the evening we ditched the kids with a box of piz­za and a movie up at Amber and Ossy’s house and Hei­di and I enjoyed a last sup­per at the Rumilo­ma- notably, it is con­sid­ered one of the top ten places to eat in the coun­try- way to go Amber and Ossy build­ing this spec­tac­u­lar place! Not much else to say oth­er than we had a the trip of a life­time not soon to be repeat­ed, or at least not until the next time!