Canyoneering

Last night we crossed the continental divide as we drove from Quilotoa to the town of Baños de Agua Santa. We’re still about 6,000 feet above sea level, but all the water on this side of the mountains flows into the Amazon River. The Amazon River isn’t just the world’s largest river, it discharges more water into the ocean than all of the next seven largest rivers in the world combined. Its average output is 7.4 million cubic feet per second – more than 1.6 billion gallons every single minute. My brain can’t really conceptualize that amount of water. It’s probably a lot more water than you’re imagining. ...

The hotel was hot. I don’t sleep well when it’s too hot, and it was too hot last night. We tried opening the door to let in the amazingly cool and fresh air from outside, but it was so noisy that we had to close it. Maybe leaving it open and loud would have been a better choice, but instead we suffered and didn’t really sleep more than about 4 hours each. That’s a terrible record for our first night here after a full night of not sleeping on the plane. So we’re going to have to solve something for tonight. Hopefully there won’t be as many late loud parties tonight since it’s Sunday. We’ll see. ...