// ECUADOR

// ECUADOR A tragedy struck while I was in Ecuador. While on a river ship that brought me down the Rio Napo, a remote tributary of the Amazon River that joins Ecuador to Peru, my bag fell in the river. And with it, my camera and laptop. I lost weeks, if not months, worth of photos. Nearly all my photos of Ecuador and Colombia, the two places I had been most recently, were gone. All I really have to show for them are a few cell phone photos, which you can see below. Just know that Ecuador was a magical experience. I spent a month in the ancient city of Cuenca. I straddled the Northern and Southern hemispheres, at one point with a foot in each, for Ecuador is simply Spanish for 'equator'. I hung out in the little hippy beach town of Montanita, played with wild iguanas in Guayaquil. I rubbed elbows with fellow backpackers in the hostels of Quito, stayed with indigenous tribes in Otavalo, tribes who still spoke the dialects of the Inca. I played in the rain forests of Baños and journeyed many days on a tiny cargo ship through the Ecuadorian Amazon—a once in a lifetime opportunity. Parts of that journey you can see on the Peru page. The road has its ups and downs, but on it goes.