The Day I Let A Stranger Lead My Family Into A Dense Forest...(The Jungle Part II)

We cross over another creek and climb a dilapidated bridge as Edi easily navigated us out of the jungle. Covered in mud up to our ears and famished, we headed back to the cars.  This, of course, was not before we paid Edi for his handy skills and his time, handed him a bag of cookies (from the USA!!), and thanked him profusely.   

Resting back at Edi's house with more of his family.

After we left Edi, we treated ourselves to a delicious lunch at a nearby hostel where we reminisced the days events. It was a beautiful setting overlooking the local river basin, complete with domesticated local wildlife.

Finally, we returned to our hosteria, where the kids played in the wonderful (but chilly) pool/water park. 

The next morning at breakfast we spoke with the manager of the hostel about the best possible direction home, clearly we wanted to avoid the 4 hour drive on the dirt road from Limon to Gualaceo.  The manager made a phone call with the strangest wireless phone EVER.  It looked like your traditional wired phone - a handset connected to a cradle by a wire - but the cradle itself was wireless. The phone call was to inquire about the condition of the original road with the mudslide only to find out the road is...still sliding in mud.  CLOSED.  The manager proposed another route, but it was a private road which you have to be granted special access from a special someone to cross a bridge.  The manager just so happened to be elected to a provincial government post the day before but he didn't start until Monday and unfortunately didn't think he could pull strings for us to get us easy bridge access. The alternative route would be out of the way but would ensure a beautiful drive through Sangay National Park.  The drive home did not disappoint, with a vast array of converging rivers, picturesque waterfalls, and thick lush trees it was a feast for the eyes.

Looking for the wreckage

We stopped a few times to take in the beauty and make countless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  At one point we saw a few highway workers peering over the edge of a steep cliff (guard rails are a rare sight here).  The workers informed us that two nights earlier a car with three passengers inexplicably drove off the cliff 250 meters down.  Amazingly, three of the four people and survived, and two were actually able to climb out to safety.   About a third of way through our drive, as we crossed over the pass of a large mountain, seemingly out of nowhere the scenery totally changed.  Gone were the thick lush trees and shrubs and instead we found the paramo, a golden and more bleak and rough countryside, equally beautiful but vastly different.  The instantaneous change was unbelievable. This area is also known for its two large alpine lakes.   We stopped here to have lunch at a place that served one delicious meal to all its patrons....freshly caught trout.

The remainder of our trip home was fairly uneventful except for some horrific fog just outside of Azuay that left it nearly impossible to see two feet in front of you. The fog itself would not have been horrific had we not been winding through mountain roads with several-thousand-foot drop-offs with the fresh memory of a car shooting 250 meters off the side of a cliff! 

In the end, I am so thankful we were invited along with our friends to the jungle.  The views along the way were some of the more breath-taking scenery upon which I have ever laid eyes.