Extreme Tubing

One benefit of the paro was an unexpected jaunt over to Mindo, located in the lower elevation cloud forest. We hired a bird guide for an early morning hike, chilled out in hammocks, and risked our lives to satisfy my desire to go tubing.

Tubing, to me, is a mellow, low risk sport. We spoke with a man who flagged down a truck full of locals and climbed in back. They were heading to the river to relieve severe hangovers, and Cameron impressed then with his knowledge of the cane alcohol Puntas and the Ecuadorian word for hangover: chuchaqui. We bounced along amiably until we arrived at the out in, and the volume of water confirmed my suspicion that tubing in Ecuador might be a little different. They placed a flotilla of six tubes in the river with ropes rigged up as handles, and off we went, followed by two solo tubes (in one a very buff guy straddled his girlfriend, navigating the water in an almost obscene display of manliness). We were the only ones wearing life jackets and helmets. After many years of white water guiding and kayaking, I would not have run most of the rapids we encountered which were separated by tumultuous stretches of white water, and here I was TUBING them. Our guide, in nothing more than jeans and rubber boots, controlled our big unwieldy mass by jumping out and swinging us around. I was terrified of losing him, and terrified that he or one of the guys who kept bouncing out if the solo tubes was going to get foot entrapment and drown or dashed to bits on the rocks. It was only the sheer bulk of our flotilla that kept us from pinning on numerous rocks or flipping in giant holes. I clung to those little handles sternly telling myself “falling out is not an option.” Eventually we landed on shore, shivering and white knuckled, adrenaline coursing through our veins, gratitude that we were alive flooding over us. We were bonded to our tubing comrades by the sheer high of survival, and when one of them wound up on our bus back to Quito, he bid us goodbye like an old friend.

The ironic thing is that earlier that day a child had fallen in the river and almost drown. After that, Cameron said he was nervous to go tubing, and I scoffed. A few moments after we escaped the river, I turned to him and said, “The next time you tell me you are scared of something, and I say really?, remind me of this moment, please remind me of this moment!”