Andrew Tolve's eco-adventure journal

Andrew Tolve spends five days in Ecuador rafting, hiking, horse riding and biking with native guides to discover whether the practice of eco-adventure lives up to its promise.

Ode Editors | April 2009 issue

Day 1: White Water Rafting, Río Taochi

We met our group just after sunup this morning. Bleary-eyed and packed into a van outside a hostel in Quito’s new town, we numbered eight—four tourists, my photographer and I and two local guides, Gaston and Roberto—assembled for a day of white water rafting on the Río Taochi. It had been a rainy week here in the Andes, which boded well for our outing. Rainfall on the tops of the mountains means more drops in the watershed, which in turn promised bigger rapids for us.

Our target stretch of the Río Taochi lay near Santo Domingo, some three hours to the west. We followed a road out of Quito down through the High Andes. Here the mountains were lean and bony, their ridges pronounced, their walls green but sheer. The road wound its way through, only two lanes wide and clogged with a steady flow of traffic: small cars and vans like ours and big trucks and busses too. Seeing pollution literally absorbed into the ecosystem didn’t make me feel all that green.

After all, I was here to assess an eco-adventure. For the next five days I’ll white water raft, trek, horseback ride, and mountain bike my way around Ecuador. The goal is twofold: to be actively immersed in Ecuador’s wilds and to learn about its environment and local communities along the way. So-called eco-adventures like mine have blossomed in popularity. Going green is in vogue, as is the notion of combining adventure travel with environmental and cultural education. Responsible Travel, the company that arranged my trip, is one of myriad companies catering to the concept.

But what exactly is an eco-adventure? It’s easy to say you’re merging adventure with environmental friendliness on a website, but does it ring true on the ground? I’m here to find out. At last we turned off the highway onto a bumpy road in Santa Domingo and reached the Río Taochi. Normally a gentle class 3, it was roaring at a muddy, unwelcoming 4-plus. Gaston and Roberto were clearly concerned. Gaston said, “If we only flip once, we’ll be lucky.” Calming words. Nonetheless, we inflated the raft, fortressed ourselves in helmets and life vests, and set off into the choppy flow.

It was an adrenal rush from the start. Before we had time to work out a good rhythm—Forward, Back, Left Forward, Right Back, Everybody in!—we were thrust into a run of rapids both high and wide. Gustan rode ahead of our raft in a kayak, pointing out dangerous pockets in the current, or downed trees, which was a threat due to the frequent mudslides in the tropical forest. We were in a spectacular setting but moving too fast to enjoy it. One surge followed the next. We almost flipped, then Bob, a Spanish professor at the Naval Academy, went for a swim. I was fortunate to pull him back in before the next boulder streamed by.

When we finally came to a stop, we were exhausted, shaking, and soaking wet. A four-story stone wall rose from one bank and a massive tree on a black sand beach shaded the other. Ferns and shrubs dangled from the wall like Swiss cheese from a cheese grader. Roberto pointed upstream at a bird.

“You see that, it is a cormorant. Very beautiful. They have it in the Galapagos too, but in the Galapagos they cannot fly. Here they fly and dive for fish.”

None of us turned in time to see. The river swept us away once more, on through big rapids and a confluence with the Río Blanco on into a smoother section where dozens of cormorants lined the banks. White egrets flapped low to the water. High overhead tropical vultures wheeled round and round, as though waiting for our imminent demise. It never came. We reached a riverbank overgrown with massive bamboo shoots after three hours on the river, our anticlimactic destination. We popped a few cervezas, ate a quick lunch of vegetarian burritos, then returned up that long and winding road all the way back to Quito. At the end of the day, was it an adventure? Absolutely. An eco-adventure? With shades of gray.

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