..rewriting the tourist map..

Before I leave Tena I decide that I must fit in an adventure. By chance the week before I find myself sitting in the front room of my friend’s house, well the front room is actually an empty shop that opens onto the road but that’s just detail. We pass the entire day deep in conversation speaking over the top of the trucks going past every fifteen minutes to the river to collect gravel and rocks for building roads. Our conversation is about development and so very ironic that in fact I should be deafened and my voice drowned out by the sound of progress.

My friend showed me for the first time a GIS map of the region, on it located all the communities, the river and different sectors. I was fascinated. I have spent so much time in Tena without seeing maps with only the consciousness that there is the mountain range of the Andes to the left of me and a vast expanse of rainforest the my right, extending thousands of kilometres to the East and the Atlantic Ocean. But here it was, this was where people were living, and here were the roads and rivers, the lifeblood of the Amazon. It was certainly unlike any tourist map I’d ever seen!

And on the map I saw there was a road near Tena that no-one had ever mentioned. From where I live to the other side of Tena, San Antonio via the mountains. Super excited I roped my friend Emily into the mission. We set off without exactly having a physical copy of the map but a grainy picture on my camera. And admittedly we had a few wrong turns and had to ask quite a few people, but that’s all part of the adventure right. And admittedly we got to the bridge to cross the river and it had fallen down (twice), but taking local advice (of two girls bathing by the river and a cohort of children) we crossed the river carrying our bikes. Not the easiest manoeuvre but another first!

Careful as always for our safety, and not knowing how long this route was going to take (food was an issue) we asked the few people by the river, what the route was like. Responses ranged from, sighs, shakes of the head, to it’s very rocky, to it’s very muddy, from it’s a long way but about an hour to..oooh it’s a very long way about 3 hours.

And they were all partially right. People will always give you an answer, and I feel they are searching your face for a clue to give you the answer you want. We are mad gringas. Who else would cycle a steep incredibly rocky path in the midday heat for fun?

And yes, they were right it was a long way, and although I was super keen to carry on we were running low on water and food and we turned back after and hour and a half and I dived into the freshest most welcome river ever….. to be continued..!