Ecuador Living

Ecuador Outdoor Life has the ability to be just as amazing and fullfilling as you want it to be.

Now I grew up in Fareham, England. It’s a mid-sized town and if you Google it I’m pretty sure nothing remarkable will come up. As a boy I was an active townie; that’s to say me and my friends built tree houses, dens, floated sticks down meandering rivers, played on railroad tracks and just generally larked around.

But nothing quite prepared me for all the possibilities that present themselves in Ecuador and at such close hand. It’s almost as if I can make up for all those years of sedentary life living in London. There it took hours just to get out of the city and arrive in the countryside, especially with all the traffic congesting the country lanes.

Here in Cotacachi I can literally walk across the road and from El Meson and talk to Jose to arrange to go horseriding. Jose will charge you a minimal amount to ride off up the side of Cotacachi mountain. Or you can as I did, hire him as a guide and he will take you further afield to Piñan for high Andes adventure.

I can jump on my mountain bike and cycle off with friends for hours at a time if I want. Cotacachi itself is pretty flat but venture more than half a mile in any direction and you are soon reminded that we are in the Andes.

Catch a taxi and ride 15 minutes south from Cotacachi and we arrive at the 10,000 ft above sea level Cuicocha crater lake. This is a marvellous 4 hour hike for the reasonably fit. It would also make a wonderful place to canoe or row and I’m working on how to do that.

This is not a photo-shop-edited pic … incredibly this was the color of the water that day.

Just two hours away in the Intag tropical valley I’ve progressed from floating sticks down meandering streams to careening in a raft down white water torrents and rapelling down 150ft high waterfalls.

Go 2 hours away to the northwest and you again encounter the sub-tropical cloud forest. Here’s a townie, me, just having arrived at the foot of a spectacular waterfall after hacking away with a machete. Washington, our guide showed us how to meditate in a waterfall … or giving a new meaning to ‘wash and wear’!

Fishing anyone? There are trout in these highland lakes. I’ve seen them .. might not have caught any but as a townie I guess I don’t have the experience yet for high lake trout fishing which seems a little more tasking than the time I fetched brook trout out of a Sierra creek in California. I’m waiting for an expert to come and show me how it’s done. Mind you with the El Niño weather distortions we’ve been having camping out at 11,000 feet has hardly been the most attractive proposition. That said the last two days the weather has picked up and it’s sunnier and warmer.

A few weeks ago on the coast I had the chance to go paragliding on the coast at Crucita. While I was scouting out properties for our upcoming coastal tour. My mind was more on properties than paragliding so I passed up the opportunity thinking I’d do it the next day but I kind of forgot that you needa little wind and the wind just dropped right off those following days. A tandem flight is arranged just by stepping up and volunteering yourself. It’s not for the feint-hearted but certainly would be a memorable experience swooshing over the Pacific breakers a hundred feet below.

Then, I can look out of the windows at El Meson, or at any time on the streets of the town, and see towering summits beckoning me. The 2 Bob’s, Gary and me have been promising ourselves we will climb the summit of the 16,000 foot Cotacachi. So far that hasn’t happened but we convince ourselves that we are in training and it is only a lack of convergence of certain self imposed requirements that has held us back thus far. Think of fitness, clement weather, time. You’ll hear about it when we do it, I’ll say no more until then!

So I count myself blessed and challenged in equal measure and being able to live the out door life and then write about it has to be one of the best vocations ever.

Mauricio profiling his nascient tour company

If you’d like to experience the outdoor life in Ecuador why not come for a slightly extended stay after a seminar and let Jose take you up mountains on horseback, or go hiking around Cuicocha with Mauricio our young and bi-lingual trained tour guide? Our program here in Ecuador looks like this:-

March 7-9 at International Investing and Business Made EZ which will be conducted at our Ecuador hotel. See www.garyascott.com/catalog/international-business-made-ez-ecuador

Mar. 10-11 Imbabura Real Estate tour. See
www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-real-estate-tour

Mar. 12-14 Coastal Real Estate tour. www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-coastal-real-estate-tour

SAVE! Mar. 7-9 IBEZ and one or both real estate tours. www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-tours-savings

April 10 - 14 Super Thinking + Spanish
www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-spanish-course

April 16-17 Ecuador Imbabura Real Estate Tour
www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-real-estate

May 13-17 Ecuador Import Export tour
www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-import-and-export-tour

June 11-15, Super Thinking + Spanish
www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-spanish-course

June 16-17 Imbabura Real Estate Tour
www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-real-estate

June 19- 21 Ecuador Shaman Tour
www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-shaman-mingo-tour