August 15, 2006 - The Road to Tena

Today is the day when our jungle trip begins, barring any unexpected change of plans. We had our usual Hotel Los Alpes breakfast, which we’ve become rather accustomed to. Shortly after 9:30 a.m. Walter came to the hotel. His taxi was still in the Peuguot repair shop, so he had his daughter’s car, the same car went in to Otavalo yesterday. It’s new and we fit well in it, but it’s a small 4-door Chevy Cista (sp?), so we don’t have a lot of clearance if we hit any bad roads.

We head east, dipping down from Quito into Cumbaya and then head up the Oriental range as they call the mountain range on the east side of the Avenue of the Volcanoes. We keep going up and up, eventually topping out at around 13,400 feet, higher than when we went up the Teleferico last Sunday.

A view at 13,400 feet

Roadside on the way to Tena

Another Andean view

John and Walter looking at a roadside sign for the Reserva Ecologica Artisana

A note on Ecuadorian roads at this point. The main roads between the bigger cities are quite good in quality, being paved and giving a relatively smooth ride. But if you’re not on the main roads, the quality drops quickly, providing regular bouncing and at times possibly risking the undercarriage of your car. So far heading east from Quito, the road has been paved, the traffic has been light, and we’re making good time. We’re now headed down the eastern side of the Oriental range, into the Amazonian jungle. It starts raining and after a little while it’s coming down pretty good. We pass through Papallacta (at about 10,500 feet), known for the best hot springs in Ecuador and as Mom notes, a regular stopping point for Grandpa and Grandma Cedar when they made the five day journey between Quito and their missionary station in the jungle at Dos Rios.

Papallacta

The Ecuadorian oil pipeline alongside the road

Things are looking much greener and more like a jungle. We notice a man on the side of the road using a large leaf as an umbrella, as Mom had described Grandma and Grandpa Cedar doing when they were on the way to a wedding in the jungle many years ago.

Another thing to note that we saw in our visit to Ecuador. Every once in awhile on the main roads there’s be a checkpoint where you often pay a $1.00 toll and there is a military or police person who will question you as they see fit, possibly look at your papers, and whatever else they might choose to do. With Walter, he’s quite good with people, so he’d pull up, give the officer a Halls mentholyptus or a caramel, chat for a few moments, and we were through the checkpoint with no problems.

A roadside sign for the Parque National Sumaco

Well, back to the drive to Tena, where we now got to Baeza and then Cosanga, two more stopping points during Grandma and Grandpa Cedar’s five day trips. The rain has now stopped and the sky is clearing up just a bit. Until shortly after passing through Cosanga, the nice, paved road had for the most part continued, with just a few short rough areas where there was construction or something. But after leaving Cosanga the good road suddenly ends, with a rocky, rough road (“the bad road”) in its place. Not what we like to see, driving a compact car with limited clearance and still quite a few kilometers to go before arriving in Tena! Walter did a good job of trying to maneuver through the ruts, rocks sticking up, potholes, etc., but quite a number of times we heard the painful scrape of car undercarriage making contact with the road, a confrontation that the car generally loses. This continued for quite awhile, with a few respites of better road, but for the most part really poor road conditions, particularly when you consider that this is the main road from Quito to Tena. One of my guidebooks says that the paved road will eventually be extended all the way to Tena, and there was some construction taking place, but they’ve got a long ways to go! We seemed to be just crawling along, and a number of times after another scrape of the ground on the car’s undercarriage we would look behind the car, thinking we might see a piece of the car or a telltale oil trail or something, but we didn’t.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the road started getting better (at least in spots) as we approached Archidona (where Grandma Cedar walked to one night to deliver a baby) and the last few miles into Tena (the capital of Napo Province) were better.

The city square and church in Archidona

Rio Napo

But for a supposedly major artery in Ecuador’s transportation system, this section of the road to Tena was nowhere near what it should be. We were wondering how most things get to Tena, and speculated that maybe they come from the south, through Banos and Puyo, as we can’t imagine a lot of it would travel the route we just did. We’ll find out tomorrow what the road to the south is like.

Well, to finish today up, we did arrive safely in Tena, found our place to stay at Hostel Los Yutzos, a nice place right on the shores of the Tena River. We had dinner at a restaurant called Chiquitos, overlooking the river, and parted ways with Walter for the night, hoping that all would be well with the car the next couple days and that we wouldn’t have a repeat of “The Road to Tena.”

A view from my balcony at Hostal Los Yutzos in Tena



Some rowdy guy upstairs!

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