The highlight of my summer was definitely our incredible two week canoe trip down the Teslin and Yukon Rivers.  Unlike last year’s trip, this time Chelsea and I had some company – both our dads (Doug and Jim) came along for the ride, and Chelsea’s brother Shawn & his friend Sarah joined us for the second half.  As much as we enjoy each other’s company, it was a nice change to have some other people around to mix things up (and allow more options for the evening card games!).  One of the best parts for me was being able to share such an awesome trip with my dad, who’s the main reason I’m into all this outdoorsy nature stuff to begin with.  Thanks everyone for helping pack the trip with so many unforgettable moments!  =)

Since it’s taken me such a long time to put together this post (I’ve been busy, get off my back!), I’ll skip the nitty gritty details and stick to some of the more memorable moments.  If you’re interested in the practical details on the trip, I stuck those at the end.  So, with no further doo-doo, I present to you "Stories from the River".  Enjoy!
~ Mandrew

Who needs bear spray when you’ve got Mandrew Musk™?
One morning before we’d all gotten up, Doug was lying awake in his tent when he heard something moving around beside him.  He peeked out and saw a black bear sniffing about.  Not wanting to alarm anyone (or the bear) he quietly watched as it made its way around our camp and over to our tent.  Just as it reached us I happened to rip out a nice loud fart, startling the bear and causing it to flee for its life.  Yup, I've got skills.

Well, after our amazing and educational 5-day trek to La Ciudad Perdida (the Lost City), we decided it was time to do some intense relaxing.  We didn't know where we were going to go next, but a quick look at my notebook (where I keep all my notes about places to stay from other travelers we meet along the way) gave us some ideas. 

A friend named Shawn who we met in Ecuador in January had recommended a hostel called Rancho Relaxo, located just outside Tayrona National Park, an area that sounded amazing. We couldn't remember why he recommended it, but I had drawn two big stars beside the note so it must have been something good.

After our time in San Gil we were ready to head north to the Caribbean and spend some time lounging on a beach, but not before earning it.  We arrived in Santa Marta early in the morning and settled into a hostel near the main market area.  At first glance the city was pretty terrible: smelled of urine and rotting garbage mixed with thick black car exhaust, noisy vehicles, sketchy people, etc.  I had no interest in walking around so after inquiring into “La Ciudad Perdida” (the Lost City) five-day trek through the jungle, I decided to relax and read a book for the rest of the day.  

Andrew went to the bank machine and for a little walk around our area.  I had expected him to take longer but after 10 or 15 minutes he barged into the room panicking, with something tucked away in his shirt.  At first I thought it was a mouse or a small rat, Andrew just mumbled that he had found it screaming on a sidewalk and could barely explain that no one seemed to care and someone made fun of him for picking it up!  It was a TINY kitten.  Couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5 days old, with eyes still closed and one of them swollen to half the size of its head.  Its hair was thick with dirt and smelled like human urine!  Our hearts broke and we didn’t know what to do.  Feeling like this kitten urgently needed some food, we left the hostel in search of a veterinarian.  It took us far too long to find one but we eventually did after wandering through nasty smelly sweaty streets and market stands.  We bought a container of kitten milk powder that you just add water to and a syringe we could use to try and feed him.  We hurried back to the hostel and sterilized the syringe.  Using a damp towel I cleaned the kitten as best I could while Andrew mixed some milk.  It took some time to convince the kitten to eat from the syringe, but with patience we got the job done.  

After defeating Greece 3-0 and a closer win over the Ivory Coast at 2-1, Colombia gears up today to play Japan.  In Colombia, “gearing up” means…

Fred, the latest addition to our Curious Characters series, is a half-French, all German chef who for the last fifteen years has been sharing his talents all over the world.  After receiving his training at a hotel in Germany, he spent a few years working around the South of Germany and near the French border.  His passion for travel then led him to work in some of the most beautiful places in the world, including Panama, Australia, the Krabi region of Thailand, and the cities of Tulum, Mexico and Granada, Nicaragua. In addition to his chef training, his ability to speak to customers in German, French, English and Spanish make him an asset in restaurants worldwide.

We met Fred while volunteering over Christmas at Sol y Mar, a hotel & restaurant in the surf and dive town of Santa Catalina, Panama.  Part of our job there was to help in the restaurant, serving the customers and lending Fred the odd hand in the kitchen. Despite having a much smaller kitchen than he’d like, it was awesome to watch Fred work his magic, whipping up a variety of rich dishes of chicken, pork, or freshly caught corvina (sea bass) or red snapper, almost always with a side of potatoes (he is German, after all) and always presented delicately and artistically.  As his servers Fred would summon us to duty, as he put the final touches on each plate, by announcing “BRING BRING!”, a habit that no doubt was carried from his work at a professional kitchen where there was an actual bell to serve the purpose.

Working and hanging out with Fred was one of the better parts about our time in Santa Catalina, and we’re excited to see where his cooking takes him next!  Keep bein' chili, Fred!

~Mandrew

What's your favourite part about being a chef?
Always being surrounded by good food, being able to work & travel in beautiful places where others go for a holiday.

How would you describe your cooking style?
“Oma's Küche”, real cooking like our Grandmas did with influences from all over the world.

Shamans, medicinal plants, earthquakes, ancient cities, mysterious symbols; Peru really is the most diverse and magical country we have been to so far!  Since this is our first visit to Peru (though likely not our last) we decided to go a bit more mainstream than usual and visit the recommended sites along the well-known "Gringo Trail", taking us through all of the major attractions of the country, starting with Lima.

To start out on our route we headed via airplane from Iquitos to Lima, in order to save a week or more of time (the other option was another multi-day cargo boat from Iquitos since it has no road access, followed by a 24+ hour bus ride).  We didn't spend much time in Lima before departing to Pisco to visit the Ballestas Islands and Paracas National Reserve, and to unexpectedly experience a 5.7 magnitude earthquake while face-timing with Donna and Jim, Andrew's parents.  The next stop on the Gringo Trail was Nazca where we saw for ourselves the infamous Nazca Lines and learned a lot about the ancient cultures that inhabited the area between 100bc and 800ad, and then spent the next few days barfing due to the horrific flight over the lines and/or some bad food or water, who knows what.  After Nazca was Arequipa, the second most populous city in Peru and the hub to get to the beautiful Colca Canyon (but we decided not to go there since it was a bit far and really expensive). Finally, we arrived in Cusco, our base for some intense Shamanism and of course, to visit Machu Picchu.  Next and last on the list (heading out this afternoon via bus) will be the town of Puno where we can visit Lake Titicaca before crossing the border into Bolivia.  We can really see why so many people travel this route: the diverse beauty and culture have taken our breath away almost every day since we have arrived.

Following our insane Rio Napo trip we spent a couple of days exploring the incredibly loud Amazonian city of Iquitos.  There were hardly any cars or trucks in the city, but thousands of moto-taxis (converted motorbikes with carriages on the back), thus the very noisy streets.  We have come to realize, however, that almost everywhere in South and Central America so far the people seem to need noise at all hours of the day.  You can't help but wonder if they purposfully design the bikes to be extra loud!

On one day while our muuuuuuch needed laundry was being done we wandered around the Belen Market, where one may find almost any kind of medicinal plant (or animal for that matter) you can think of.  Of course, as is always wise while wandering in local markets, we only took out our camera a few times and made sure that not many people saw us with it, and we left anything else of any value back at the hostel.  

After a fun-filled week in Quito we decided it was time to make our way into the jungle.  After spending a day preparing for the trip, we hopped on a bus to Coca.  The bus left late in the evening and arrived around 5:00am, which is usually too early to find a place to sleep so we chilled/napped at the bus terminal for a couple of hours.  After the sun was up and things started moving outside we grabbed a cab to Hotel Florida ($12) near the river.  It was without a doubt the filthiest place we've stayed yet, but it was at least a place to take a nap, shower and keep our stuff while we wandered around town looking for options to get to Nuevo Rocafuerte (NR).  Coca is quite large and busy, and definitely not a tourist destination.  We eventually found a couple of tourist offices and asked for information about tours and/or boats heading down the river.  Tours into Yasuni National Park are expensive ($300 per person for 3 days) so we quickly ruled that out and decided to see if we could find a more affordable guide ourselves once we arrived in NR.  We found that there was a boat through one of the transportation co-ops by the port due to head to NR the next morning (perfect!) and was only $15 each (though we later saw that some of the locals had paid as little as $4 each... we'd been Gringo’d again… but what can ya do).

Right after talking with the tourist office and buying our boat tickets, we decided to head back to the hotel and rest.  We had just started down the street when a creepy looking guy on a motorcycle, who had been parked on a curb beside the tourist office, started his motor and began following very closely behind us.  When I looked back it was super obvious that he had his sights set on us (though, as usual, we weren't carrying anything valuable along with us - just a small backpack with our Lonely Planet and Mandrew's slimy handkerchiefs).  Before long, we noticed a little shop across the street with two big guys stocking the display, and we quickly crossed to duck inside.  We pretended to look around for a few minutes but when we looked outside he was still there, staring at us maliciously.  I smiled back as if to say “ok, we are on to you, it’s not going to happen so move on!” but he just stared back.  I went back inside and told the store guys what was going on - they agreed we should stay in the store, and found us a place to wait where we couldn’t be seen from the street.  We ended up having to wait over 20 minutes before the guy finally gave up!  It was brutal how obvious he was - what the hell was his game?  The storeowner said he was shocked by it, especially in this part of town, but we had been feeling a bit of an unfriendly vibe since we arrived.  For the rest of the day we left the backpack at the hotel and stuck to busy streets.

The next morning at 7:00am we departed on a CRAZY packed lancha (like a really big canoe) to NR.  We were told the trip would take 10 hours, so we arrived early and scored some seats near the front of the boat, maybe better for sightseeing.  At first there weren’t too many people or things aboard, but as we waited to depart we realized that the massive crowd of people on the street above, as well as the mountain of stuff piled on the dock, was meant for our boat.  To say the very least, it was insanely packed!  And the boat wasn’t all that big.  There were probably 30 or 40 women with newborn babies scattered in the crowd as well, and it seemed that no matter where you looked there was someone breastfeeding openly.  

Yes they are real, and we have seen them!  There is a story for the more manly in here too, don't worry.  It involves criminals and crocodiles... !

During our trip along the Rio Napo from Coca to Iquitos our first stop was in a tiny town called Nuevo Rocafuerte, the place to find a local guide to take you on a trip into Yasuni National Park (without having to pay the crazy prices quoted by travel agencies in Coca).

We met Roni Cox while walking around Nuevo Rocafuerte (NR) after only ten minutes.  He pulled his motorcycle over to us and asked (in Spanish, of course) if we wanted a guide (himself) to Yasuni National Park.  While that is exactly what we were looking for and he seemed super cool, we weren’t too quick to accept.  We had been reading a few too many horror stories about people going into the jungle with fake “guides” who essentially take people down the river to their friend’s place and rob and/or murder them.  I don’t think any of these stories came directly from NR, but after the weirdo motorbike robber encounter in Coca, we've been a bit more on our toes.  We told him that we were actually looking for Frederico (a guide that a Park Ranger recommended to us) but we would consider his offer and come by his house later that day to let him know.  We knew that there was a College in town (down the only street) that trains guides so we went there and asked if they knew Roni.  They sure did and said that he was great. 

Within a few hours we managed to meet a couple of solo travellers, María-José from Chile and Rodrigo from Argentina, who were also looking to go into the park and after some consideration the four of us decided to go for it!

Roni turned out to be a great guide, very enthusiastic and funny.  The four of us had a blast riding in the smaller lancha (boat with outboard motor) through the Yasuni River and into a large lagoon called Jatuncocha (Quecha for "large lake").  We spent 3 days and 2 nights in the park, hiking for a few hours each day, learning about the plants and birds, watching the pink river dolphins breaching in the river (SO COOL!!), and fishing for piranhas before dark.  After eating dinner and playing a couple rounds of cards (ninety-nine, or noventa y nueve en Español), we took the lancha out to do some caiman watching!  We really didn’t have too much chill time, always on the go and keeping watch for some rare creatures!  Mandrew had a great time snapping photos of birds as we passed by - he said it was a lot like the video game "Pokemon Snap" or something ... On the last day we did end up seeing the giant river otters, which was a great bonus! 

When we got back to NR we parted ways with María-José and Rodrigo, sadly as they were a lot of fun, and started looking into plans to get further down the river, eventually to Iquitos in Peru which we have been told can take anywhere from 3-11 days on a barca (cargo boat).  We had been hearing rumours that there would be one leaving from Pantoja (the first small town on the Peruvian side of the border) on Saturday or Sunday (it was Wednesday at this point).  It's always a bit hard to tell with this kind of info in these small, isolated towns - we actually thought near the end that we may have somehow started this rumour ourselves - so really weren’t too confident.  At any rate, we'd had enough of NR and decided to make our way across the border and into Pantoja to try our luck.

It started out as a very high fever.  I thought I was going to freeze to death but the thermometer said I was nearly 104°F.  In the middle of the night on day two of the fever we went to the hospital.  There were two nurses telling jokes to each other in the corner who were visibly annoyed that we showed up.  They woke up the pharmacist who took some blood, told us that I didn’t have dengue and sent us home.  No investigation into what it would have been. Just told us to go away.  Later we found out that you can’t test positive for Dengue until after 6 days of fever. 

The next day I went to a different pharmacist down the street from our hostel and asked for antibiotics because I thought maybe I had an infection or something.  They gave them to me without question or explanation of any side effects or anything.  I later found out that you can get as much of anything you want from any pharmacy here – for example a guy from our Spanish classes bought 20 or more vicodin, valium, oxycotin and some other mystery drugs that are apparently stronger than all of those.  He bought them all at once and took most of them in one day.  Apparently this is one reason that a lot of people come to Montañita.

The doctor recommended that I return for monitoring in a few days, however when we did return, no one there could find any record of me ever being there so after A LOT of persuasion we got them to run some new tests that we took with us and emailed to our health insurance providers in Canada. Luckily google gave us the heads up on my symptoms and nothing suggested the dangerous type of dengue (the one where you haemorrhage and your insides turn to mush) so I just had to wait it out. 

After 12 days of fever between 101-104°F I finally awoke without a fever.  For the next three days I had random full body hive flare-ups which google alerted us was normal for the recovery stage of Dengue.  It took another few days before I was able to eat a full meal again and about two weeks before the nausea finally left (now). 

Unfortunately my opinion of Montañita is not too good, likely in part based on the fact that I felt like crap the whole time we were there.  However I did manage to attend 20 hours of Spanish lessons at Montañita Spanish School, which were very good, and we did a couple of smaller day excursions as well.  I just had to get out of the hostel we were staying in.  

I can’t blame any of you for not knowing the proper way to celebrate New Year’s Eve, because until just a few days ago we too were in the dark.  But, now having lived through the festivities in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s biggest city, we feel we must share with you what is clearly the correct way to go about it.  Follow these five simple steps, and we're sure you, too, will agree.

¡Prospero Año!
Mandrew & Chelsea

As one would imagine, a reasonable amount of work needs to go into getting ready for a serious celebration like this.  On this front, I’m sure we’re all aware of the obvious: stock up on liquor, invite friends over, buy some snacks, etc.  What I will focus on, however, are the things that will transform the event from something like an afternoon tea with your grandmother to, well, something like an Ecuadorian-style New Year’s Eve celebration.  You will need to procure the following:

• Fireworks.  A ridiculous amount of fireworks.  Big ones, small ones, loud ones, bright ones – buy them all.  Buy out the entire store. 
• At least two litres of accelerant, gasoline will do the job.  If you don’t have an approved gas container, have no fear – a plastic soft drink bottle is perfect.
• A paper mache model of your favourite character.  Bonus points if you make your own.  Extra bonus points if it’s really huge or ridiculous.
• A reliable lighter … I think you know where this is going.

Alright, you’ve got everything ready nice and early, why not get out and enjoy the afternoon before the serious stuff starts?  Remember to bring along some dinero so you can buy treats from the many street vendors.  Popular choices are beer or sangria, and if you’re thinking, “but it’s too early to start drinking!” then I recommend you keep your thoughts to yourself.