Me and Kim went to a beach town called Playas for a night this week, here's us in the hammock area:
Here's Kim and the sea:
Another view of the beach:
Us and the sea:
Me with some super glue to fix my glasses which broke:
Thursday, 4 September 2014
Monday, 1 September 2014
Nariz del diablo
Hi again
To continue about the Devil's Nose train in Alausi. In Spanish this is called Nariz del Diablo, and basically the mountain that it goes up, looks a little bit like a devil with a nose. The train was built originally in the 1800s, to make the journey from the coast to the sierra easier - it previously took about 2 weeks to do that journey. The Devil's Nose is just one small section of the whole train route that originally existed, it's possible to do other parts of the whole train line too in other parts of Ecuador. It had closed for some time as I mentioned previously. We got up super early, at 6am, to get to the station at 7am for the 8am train, which meant we had time for breakfast too, which is always my favourite part of the proceedings. I do love trains, and remember being a little bit upset when I first discovered you couldn't travel all through South America by train - I think you used to be able to as Paul Theroux wrote that Old Patagonia Express book about it, but I think gradually they all closed down, probably due to costs of maintaining them.
The train leaves Alausi and goes to a station about 20k away, called Sibambe. Which I kept mispronouncing Zimbabwe. The train goes slowly and the views are actually amazing, of canyons and rivers and fields and typical Andean things. We basically chatted lots, about things that were nothing to do with the train or the scenery, and then kept remembering we should be looking at the scenery and would stand up and look out of the window. There was a lady talking about various historical / geographical things to do with the journey, and she translated it all into English, especially for us, but we still didn't fully listen. I am probably the worst tourist ever at the moment. We then got paranoid that a man across the carriage from us was angry that we were eating crisps, but it turned out later when we got chatting back at Alausi station that his wife was very interested in Kim's lovely pink hat that she'd put on around the same time as the crisps got eaten. Isn't it funny how you can completely misconstrue a situation, is what we thought. We nearly offered the hat to the woman for 5 dollars as we thought it might make her really happy, but after trying it on she seemed satisfied with the whole transaction and gave it back to Kim.
At Sibambe we looked round a little museum about the train. There used to be lots of condors in the area but the dynamite they used to create the train track in the rock scared them away. There is 600m altitude difference between Sibambe and Alausi train stations, and the engineers therefore decided to make 2 switchbacks to get up there. This means the train goes up one way then goes back on itself and up the next switchback if you see what I mean. There were also very difficult weather conditions when they were building the train track and apparently the rock they had to cut through was very difficult to work with, so it earned the name of the most difficult train track in the world to build. We watched some traditional Andean panpipe dancers doing some dancing and looked at a llama and a horse, and at the views from the little cafe. We ate some really really good chocolate too. Then you get back on the train and go back to Alausi, pretty much exactly the same way you've come. The whole experience was very sedate and definitely enjoyable but absolutely not what I was expecting. I was expecting to be scared as we climbed up a cliff edge precariously on a train, maybe like when you get the funicular trains in places like Switzerland and Austria and you feel like you're going vertically upwards and it's all a bit frightening. Not that I like being frightened particularly, but I suppose I didn't feel any strong emotions about this train and we had been quite excited about it beforehand.
Anyway, we went back to Alausi and bought a few artesanial (if that's a word) items in the local shops. like rings and earrings, and then got our stuff from the hostel and chatted to Victor, who owns the hostel. He's lived there for 5 years and is US/Ecuadorean, his father owned the farm before him. It's really stunning there, and I can imagine how nice and calm life must be there. Me and Kim had talked about all the beautiful landscape and the difference in ways of life between our hectic citiy life (whether that's London or Guayaquil), and the sedate countryside farming life. But I think we romanticise it, like the old painters did like Gainsborough and those others that painted haywains and cattle lowing - it's actually probably really tough, you never get to take a holiday if you're a farmer, and you must always be worrying about weather, and soil, and slugs (or the Andean equivalent) eating your crops, and then natural disasters wiping things out too. I'd love a slower/simpler way of life, as I think most people that live in cities would, but are our brains just too deeply used to having to have all that stimulation all day that it would actually feel really difficult to make that change for the long term? I suppose the only way to find out is to try it one day and see what happens. It's like town mouse country mouse.
After a 2 dollar lunch, we got the bus back to Guayaquil. The last bus to Guayaquil leaves Alausi at 1pm, which is an early last bus. We chatted a bit then both fell asleep for a while. The journey is about 4.5 hours, and the last 3 hours of that are really really hot as you are going lower down and into jungley country again towards Guayaquil. If you remember last time I arrived in Guayaquil I was wearing 7 layers of clothing and that was too many. This time I had just 1 layer on and that was still too much too, but at least I was expecting the heat this time. We got back to Kim's and basically didn't do too much as we were really tired and hot, but we did eat some strawberry cheesecake as a treat for the long journey. Tyrone came round and we went to a really good street stall for tacos. It reminded me of the hamburger stall we used to go to in Mexico when I was there doing my TEFL course, that place was just incredible, I've never had burgers like that before or ever again. These tacos were great, full of beans (literally), and then you choose from a long list of other things, I had chicken and mozarella in mine, and loads of guacamole and onion/tomato stuff. We had planned on getting up at 5am on Sunday for our cycling, but changed our mind when we got home and realised how tired we were.
After the cycling yesterday we went for some seafood dinner at the Malecon, with Becky (Kim's flatmate that I'd met in Cuenca that weekend), and then went to las Penas (there should be a squiggle on the n here and it's pronounced las Pen-yas), which is where we'd gone last time I was here - where all the steps are and the lighthouse at the top. This time we went up the lighthouse, in all there are about 500 steps (only about 50 in the actual lighthouse). Tyrone explained some things to us about the lighthouse and the forts and the pirates that had landed in Guayaquil, and we drank some really strong cocktails on a pretend pirate ship near the lighthouse. I had a white russian which was really nice but as I don't drink much anymore it knocked me out a bit, which was also quite nice. The pretend pirate ship was pretty weird as there was no one on it apart from us and some weird pirate statues and really loud music. After another taco on the street that was the end of that day. Today our plans changed as Kim had to go to work unexpectedly and I have a cold, so I've been catching up on blogging and reading / blowing my nose etc, but hopefully tomorrow we're going to the beach for the day/night.
Over and out pepinillos from pepinillo in Guayaquil xx
To continue about the Devil's Nose train in Alausi. In Spanish this is called Nariz del Diablo, and basically the mountain that it goes up, looks a little bit like a devil with a nose. The train was built originally in the 1800s, to make the journey from the coast to the sierra easier - it previously took about 2 weeks to do that journey. The Devil's Nose is just one small section of the whole train route that originally existed, it's possible to do other parts of the whole train line too in other parts of Ecuador. It had closed for some time as I mentioned previously. We got up super early, at 6am, to get to the station at 7am for the 8am train, which meant we had time for breakfast too, which is always my favourite part of the proceedings. I do love trains, and remember being a little bit upset when I first discovered you couldn't travel all through South America by train - I think you used to be able to as Paul Theroux wrote that Old Patagonia Express book about it, but I think gradually they all closed down, probably due to costs of maintaining them.
The train leaves Alausi and goes to a station about 20k away, called Sibambe. Which I kept mispronouncing Zimbabwe. The train goes slowly and the views are actually amazing, of canyons and rivers and fields and typical Andean things. We basically chatted lots, about things that were nothing to do with the train or the scenery, and then kept remembering we should be looking at the scenery and would stand up and look out of the window. There was a lady talking about various historical / geographical things to do with the journey, and she translated it all into English, especially for us, but we still didn't fully listen. I am probably the worst tourist ever at the moment. We then got paranoid that a man across the carriage from us was angry that we were eating crisps, but it turned out later when we got chatting back at Alausi station that his wife was very interested in Kim's lovely pink hat that she'd put on around the same time as the crisps got eaten. Isn't it funny how you can completely misconstrue a situation, is what we thought. We nearly offered the hat to the woman for 5 dollars as we thought it might make her really happy, but after trying it on she seemed satisfied with the whole transaction and gave it back to Kim.
At Sibambe we looked round a little museum about the train. There used to be lots of condors in the area but the dynamite they used to create the train track in the rock scared them away. There is 600m altitude difference between Sibambe and Alausi train stations, and the engineers therefore decided to make 2 switchbacks to get up there. This means the train goes up one way then goes back on itself and up the next switchback if you see what I mean. There were also very difficult weather conditions when they were building the train track and apparently the rock they had to cut through was very difficult to work with, so it earned the name of the most difficult train track in the world to build. We watched some traditional Andean panpipe dancers doing some dancing and looked at a llama and a horse, and at the views from the little cafe. We ate some really really good chocolate too. Then you get back on the train and go back to Alausi, pretty much exactly the same way you've come. The whole experience was very sedate and definitely enjoyable but absolutely not what I was expecting. I was expecting to be scared as we climbed up a cliff edge precariously on a train, maybe like when you get the funicular trains in places like Switzerland and Austria and you feel like you're going vertically upwards and it's all a bit frightening. Not that I like being frightened particularly, but I suppose I didn't feel any strong emotions about this train and we had been quite excited about it beforehand.
Anyway, we went back to Alausi and bought a few artesanial (if that's a word) items in the local shops. like rings and earrings, and then got our stuff from the hostel and chatted to Victor, who owns the hostel. He's lived there for 5 years and is US/Ecuadorean, his father owned the farm before him. It's really stunning there, and I can imagine how nice and calm life must be there. Me and Kim had talked about all the beautiful landscape and the difference in ways of life between our hectic citiy life (whether that's London or Guayaquil), and the sedate countryside farming life. But I think we romanticise it, like the old painters did like Gainsborough and those others that painted haywains and cattle lowing - it's actually probably really tough, you never get to take a holiday if you're a farmer, and you must always be worrying about weather, and soil, and slugs (or the Andean equivalent) eating your crops, and then natural disasters wiping things out too. I'd love a slower/simpler way of life, as I think most people that live in cities would, but are our brains just too deeply used to having to have all that stimulation all day that it would actually feel really difficult to make that change for the long term? I suppose the only way to find out is to try it one day and see what happens. It's like town mouse country mouse.
After a 2 dollar lunch, we got the bus back to Guayaquil. The last bus to Guayaquil leaves Alausi at 1pm, which is an early last bus. We chatted a bit then both fell asleep for a while. The journey is about 4.5 hours, and the last 3 hours of that are really really hot as you are going lower down and into jungley country again towards Guayaquil. If you remember last time I arrived in Guayaquil I was wearing 7 layers of clothing and that was too many. This time I had just 1 layer on and that was still too much too, but at least I was expecting the heat this time. We got back to Kim's and basically didn't do too much as we were really tired and hot, but we did eat some strawberry cheesecake as a treat for the long journey. Tyrone came round and we went to a really good street stall for tacos. It reminded me of the hamburger stall we used to go to in Mexico when I was there doing my TEFL course, that place was just incredible, I've never had burgers like that before or ever again. These tacos were great, full of beans (literally), and then you choose from a long list of other things, I had chicken and mozarella in mine, and loads of guacamole and onion/tomato stuff. We had planned on getting up at 5am on Sunday for our cycling, but changed our mind when we got home and realised how tired we were.
After the cycling yesterday we went for some seafood dinner at the Malecon, with Becky (Kim's flatmate that I'd met in Cuenca that weekend), and then went to las Penas (there should be a squiggle on the n here and it's pronounced las Pen-yas), which is where we'd gone last time I was here - where all the steps are and the lighthouse at the top. This time we went up the lighthouse, in all there are about 500 steps (only about 50 in the actual lighthouse). Tyrone explained some things to us about the lighthouse and the forts and the pirates that had landed in Guayaquil, and we drank some really strong cocktails on a pretend pirate ship near the lighthouse. I had a white russian which was really nice but as I don't drink much anymore it knocked me out a bit, which was also quite nice. The pretend pirate ship was pretty weird as there was no one on it apart from us and some weird pirate statues and really loud music. After another taco on the street that was the end of that day. Today our plans changed as Kim had to go to work unexpectedly and I have a cold, so I've been catching up on blogging and reading / blowing my nose etc, but hopefully tomorrow we're going to the beach for the day/night.
Over and out pepinillos from pepinillo in Guayaquil xx
Pictorial update
Me at the equator - not looking overly impressed, and seemingly with both feet in one hemisphere:
Me and Kim and the Devil's Nose train:
The first llama to appear on my blog:
A view from the train (this isn't the best picture I admit but I don't know how to delete it from this blogpost now it's there):
The Wild West town of Alausi:
Drinking a coconut in a plastic bag in Quito wth Danny:
Sunday, 31 August 2014
Latacunga to Quito to Alausi to Guayaquil
Hola todos
Here I am in Guayaquil again, at Kim's house. Today we went cycling, this is exciting for many reasons - the main one being that I didn't bring my cycling clothes and helmet and shoes and pedals all the way to Ecuador for no reason. I borrowed Tyrone's single speed bike, called La Negra, as it's black (and gold), and Kim went on La Flamma, which is the road bike that Tyrone built for her. If you're not a cyclist, this basically means I went on a bike that has no gears, and Kim went on a bike that has lots of gears. We went on a pretty flat route however, so lack of gears wasn't a huge issue at all. Having shunned the idea of getting up at 5am to miss the heat, we set off at 1030ish, meaning we were out cycling in the midday heat, like mad dogs and Englishmen. It was so nice to be on a bike again after around a month of not cycling or doing anything involving exercise, and the traffic was surprisingly calm on the carreterra, which it tends to be on Sundays. We went around 25k, then stopped in a park and ate biscuits and an apple, then cycled back to Guayaquil and drank cups of tea. We didn't take cameras so I have no proof we actually did this, but I'm sure you'll believe me as it would be an odd thing to make up.
We were going to go to the beach tomorrow, to a place called las Playas to see some dolphins, but this would have meant getting up at 5am to get the first bus there, so we could do it all and be back for the night bus to Esmereldas, in the North on the coast. We have however, shunned the idea of getting up at 5am (a theme is emerging), and after our excitement of cycling today, we're going to also cycle tomorrow, to the island in Guayaquil where there are some animals apparently, including iguanas. Then we're going to go to the non-Starbucks-but-very-similar-to-Starbucks cafe as a reward for all our exercise, and then the plan is to get the night bus still to Esmereldas. Kim is a little bit perturbed by the fact that my overriding memory of Ecuador when I get home might be a Starbucks-esque cafe in Guayaquil.
Here's the update since last Tuesday when I was in Latacunga. On the Wednesday I wandered round Latacunga in the morning, looking at the cultural things there. This involved a strange one-room museum, with some paintings and little re-enactments of Andean people dancing round maypoles and things. I then looked for another museum but couldn't find it, and also felt a little bit ill so instead took a few paracetamols to pass the time and drank some tea back at the hostel. The pavements in Latacunga are annoyingly narrow, which I was also finding stressful. I then got the bus back to Quito. This was an adventure in itself. I got a taxi to where you get the bus to Quito, which isn't a bus staion, just a corner of a street where all the Quito-bound buses stop. En route the taxi driver asked me loads of questions, which included 'are there trees in England?'. Yes, I answered, as there definitely were last time I was there. He wanted to know how the landscape compared, so I was explaining we don't really have huge mountains like they do here, and that our tallest mountain is probably 1500m, so not really a mountain, more of a small Andean hill. He was very nice and seemed genuinely pleased I had chosen to spend 5 weeks in Ecuador.
I got out of the taxi and straight onto a Quito bus. A man grabbed my rucksack off me and trotted alongside the still moving bus and threw it on the luggage bit. I then got on and sat down, next to a sleeping man to my right, and a man reading a book to my left across the aisle. The man to my left immediately started asking me questions about where I was from, and what I was doing - the usual stuff basically. He was reading a psychology book so we talked about psychology a bit, and by the end of the bus journey he wanted my number and to be my friend and to call me and talk in English. I told him I didn't know what my phone number was, sorry. The sleeping man to my right woke up during the journey and asked me the usual set of questions too. He was going back to Quito after visiting his parents somewhere further south from Latacunga. He worked as a security guard in Quito, for a factory. I told him I was going to Quito for a few days, to see my boyfriend Danny. He asked me some more questions about Danny and then told me that Danny must definitely be married, as he is 34 and Ecuadorean, and that's just how it is here in Ecuador, it's totally normal to be married and then have lots of girlfriends too. I said ok, and that I'd check when I got to Quito. I asked him if he was married and had lots of girlfriends, but he said no to both. I didn't know what to believe by this point, so we talked about the landscape. I explained (again) that there weren't any big mountains in England, and he asked if it was just totally flat then. Not really, no, I said, but in parts yes.
The little girl on the seat in front of me kept turning round to give me sweets and talk to me too, she was on her way back to Quito as she had to go back to school the week after, she'd been in the countryside, I think helping her family on a farm somewhere, but I might have got that all wrong. She also wanted my phone number but I told her I didn't know it. She was really really sweet and only asked me a few questions, so she was my favourite of the 3 people I was surrounded by. I asked the men what time we would get to Quito, one of them said 1 more hour, the other said 10 more minutes. I think they often just invent things here, when it's to do with time related things. It was around 30 minutes more, so on average they were about right. When I got to Quito I met Danny and we went to look for a Panama hat for my friend Melissa. She bought one here last year and needs one that is a bit bigger, so I said I'd find the same hat shop and get her one if I could. I did find the same hat shop, in Plaza San Francisco, run by Homero Ortega, who wasn't there at the time, but I did find a very similar hat, which I'll go back to get on Friday before I go to the airport there. I then went to buy tickets for the Devil's Nose train, which me and Kim had planned to do on Saturday (ie yesterday) in Alausi. This is a train that goes up a mountain, and looked pretty exciting, you used to be able to ride on the roof of it and then it closed for quite a while due to maintenance etc and possibly because somebody fell of the roof and died. You're not allowed to travel on the roof anymore. We wanted to go on the 11am train, but there were just 2 tickets left on the 8am train, one at either end of the train. They sell out like 2 weeks in advance usually. Eek. I left the shop to ring Kim and check what she thought. In the meantime lots of people went in the shop to buy train tickets, so when I went back in I had to wait for ages, and hope that none of the people in front of me were buying the last 2 tickets on the 8am train. Luckily they weren't, and I got them, and we figured we'd just ask people to move when we got there so we could sit together rather than at opposite ends of the train.
That was both tasks achieved for the day, which was nice. On Thursday I went to el Museo de la Ciudad (the museum of the city), as I wanted to see if I could learn some things about Quito and had heard it was a good museum. It was a good museum in fact, and I tried really hard to read all the information, especially as it was all in Spanish. It's hard to read fluently when you have to look up every 10th word, but I did learn some new vocab, including gremio=trade, and cofradia=brotherhood, and prendas=garments. There was a reenactment of a hospital, as the museum was on the site of an old hospital, and there were lots of interesting black and white pictures of the hospital back in the days. This made me suddenly think a lot about death and illness and how precious life is, so I was grateful to that section of the museum for reminding me about the shortness of life and how important it is to do things you enjoy/that are useful for the world. I can't remember any of the factual things I may have read about whilst there, but overall it was nice to be in a museum and momentarily feel like I knew some more things about Quito.
After the museum, me and Danny went to la Mitad del Mundo - the equator. This was such a touristy experience, it actually made me feel a little bit sick. That's not a fair thing to say really about an interesting tourist attraction that's also an important part of Ecuador's heritage, but I have been trying to avoid doing anything that makes me feel like a tourist here, and here it was utterly impossible as I was in a group of tourists from New Zealand, on a little tour in English, around a very touristy tourist attraction. The start of the tour was all about the Amazonian tribes, and the animals that live in the jungle, like snakes and tarantulas. The longest ever snake found in the jungle was 12m long. Our tour guide showed us some shrunken heads from the Amazon too - some of these used to sell for 50,000 US Dollars. The Amazon tribes have a secret recipe that means the heads they shrink and the most shrunken in the whole world. This was all very interesting, apart from I didn't understand why we were being told about the Amazon tribes, when we were in the mountains at the equator. Anyway, then we got to the equator, and our guide explained some things about the equator and how gravity doesn't apply there, and you weigh 2.2 pounds less. Ho ho, everyone laughed, let's go and live at the equator. Then we did some eggsperiments, such as balancing an egg on a nail (because the yolk goes straight down in the egg, it therefore can stand straight upright), and watching some water go straight down a plughole instead of swirling to the right of left, both of which it did on either side of the equator. I got my passport stamped with an equator stamp and bought some postcards, and then promptly left. There's a 2nd equator museum, just down the road, which is the first ever place they found the equator, but then they decided it was a bit up the road, ie where I had been. I couldn't bring myself to visit this 2nd touristy place so just looked at the monument from afar, and then we got back on the local bus back to Quito, which at least cancelled out any more touristy activities for the day.
On Friday I didn't do anything touristy, but we did sit in the square and drink coconut juice from a coconut. Coconut juice is really really good for you, if you ever get a dodgy stomach you should drink it. I then got the bus to Alausi to meet Kim for our train ride. Getting to the bus terminal in Quito was really stressful as all the buses and taxis were full, as it was Friday afternoon, so I got really stressed thinking I was going to miss the 5.30 Alausi bus, which was the last one, and then not be able to do the train ride and then the world might end etc. I managed to find a taxi that wasn't full, so everything was fine, as usual. There was a sleeping man to my left, he did wake up at some point, but he didn't ask my any questions. The bus took 5 hours, and then I got stressed as I couldn't find a taxi that knew where my hostel was, but I did in the end, and met up with Kim at the hostel down the road, which is also a really lovely farm. Alausi is a really nice small peaceful town in the mountains, with lots of painted colourful houses. It reminded me of a wild west film, kind of like the place where that person ends up from that famous Western film, thought I think that's in Bolivia somewhere - is it Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where they steal all that money and go to Bolivia and there's a huge shoot out at the end? I pictured myself living there and sitting outside on the pavement smoking cigars and playing the guitar and watching tourists arrive and get stressed trying to find where to get a taxi from ha ha.
Saturday morning we went on the Devil's Nose train, which was pretty cool, but not as thrilling as you would expect, maybe because you can't sit on the roof, or maybe because it goes pretty slowly, or maybe because we were exhausted as we'd stayed up chatting until about 1.30 and had to get up at 6am. Talking of which I have to go to sleep now as I'm exhausted, but will write more soon.
Adios for now pepinilllos xx
Here I am in Guayaquil again, at Kim's house. Today we went cycling, this is exciting for many reasons - the main one being that I didn't bring my cycling clothes and helmet and shoes and pedals all the way to Ecuador for no reason. I borrowed Tyrone's single speed bike, called La Negra, as it's black (and gold), and Kim went on La Flamma, which is the road bike that Tyrone built for her. If you're not a cyclist, this basically means I went on a bike that has no gears, and Kim went on a bike that has lots of gears. We went on a pretty flat route however, so lack of gears wasn't a huge issue at all. Having shunned the idea of getting up at 5am to miss the heat, we set off at 1030ish, meaning we were out cycling in the midday heat, like mad dogs and Englishmen. It was so nice to be on a bike again after around a month of not cycling or doing anything involving exercise, and the traffic was surprisingly calm on the carreterra, which it tends to be on Sundays. We went around 25k, then stopped in a park and ate biscuits and an apple, then cycled back to Guayaquil and drank cups of tea. We didn't take cameras so I have no proof we actually did this, but I'm sure you'll believe me as it would be an odd thing to make up.
We were going to go to the beach tomorrow, to a place called las Playas to see some dolphins, but this would have meant getting up at 5am to get the first bus there, so we could do it all and be back for the night bus to Esmereldas, in the North on the coast. We have however, shunned the idea of getting up at 5am (a theme is emerging), and after our excitement of cycling today, we're going to also cycle tomorrow, to the island in Guayaquil where there are some animals apparently, including iguanas. Then we're going to go to the non-Starbucks-but-very-similar-to-Starbucks cafe as a reward for all our exercise, and then the plan is to get the night bus still to Esmereldas. Kim is a little bit perturbed by the fact that my overriding memory of Ecuador when I get home might be a Starbucks-esque cafe in Guayaquil.
Here's the update since last Tuesday when I was in Latacunga. On the Wednesday I wandered round Latacunga in the morning, looking at the cultural things there. This involved a strange one-room museum, with some paintings and little re-enactments of Andean people dancing round maypoles and things. I then looked for another museum but couldn't find it, and also felt a little bit ill so instead took a few paracetamols to pass the time and drank some tea back at the hostel. The pavements in Latacunga are annoyingly narrow, which I was also finding stressful. I then got the bus back to Quito. This was an adventure in itself. I got a taxi to where you get the bus to Quito, which isn't a bus staion, just a corner of a street where all the Quito-bound buses stop. En route the taxi driver asked me loads of questions, which included 'are there trees in England?'. Yes, I answered, as there definitely were last time I was there. He wanted to know how the landscape compared, so I was explaining we don't really have huge mountains like they do here, and that our tallest mountain is probably 1500m, so not really a mountain, more of a small Andean hill. He was very nice and seemed genuinely pleased I had chosen to spend 5 weeks in Ecuador.
I got out of the taxi and straight onto a Quito bus. A man grabbed my rucksack off me and trotted alongside the still moving bus and threw it on the luggage bit. I then got on and sat down, next to a sleeping man to my right, and a man reading a book to my left across the aisle. The man to my left immediately started asking me questions about where I was from, and what I was doing - the usual stuff basically. He was reading a psychology book so we talked about psychology a bit, and by the end of the bus journey he wanted my number and to be my friend and to call me and talk in English. I told him I didn't know what my phone number was, sorry. The sleeping man to my right woke up during the journey and asked me the usual set of questions too. He was going back to Quito after visiting his parents somewhere further south from Latacunga. He worked as a security guard in Quito, for a factory. I told him I was going to Quito for a few days, to see my boyfriend Danny. He asked me some more questions about Danny and then told me that Danny must definitely be married, as he is 34 and Ecuadorean, and that's just how it is here in Ecuador, it's totally normal to be married and then have lots of girlfriends too. I said ok, and that I'd check when I got to Quito. I asked him if he was married and had lots of girlfriends, but he said no to both. I didn't know what to believe by this point, so we talked about the landscape. I explained (again) that there weren't any big mountains in England, and he asked if it was just totally flat then. Not really, no, I said, but in parts yes.
The little girl on the seat in front of me kept turning round to give me sweets and talk to me too, she was on her way back to Quito as she had to go back to school the week after, she'd been in the countryside, I think helping her family on a farm somewhere, but I might have got that all wrong. She also wanted my phone number but I told her I didn't know it. She was really really sweet and only asked me a few questions, so she was my favourite of the 3 people I was surrounded by. I asked the men what time we would get to Quito, one of them said 1 more hour, the other said 10 more minutes. I think they often just invent things here, when it's to do with time related things. It was around 30 minutes more, so on average they were about right. When I got to Quito I met Danny and we went to look for a Panama hat for my friend Melissa. She bought one here last year and needs one that is a bit bigger, so I said I'd find the same hat shop and get her one if I could. I did find the same hat shop, in Plaza San Francisco, run by Homero Ortega, who wasn't there at the time, but I did find a very similar hat, which I'll go back to get on Friday before I go to the airport there. I then went to buy tickets for the Devil's Nose train, which me and Kim had planned to do on Saturday (ie yesterday) in Alausi. This is a train that goes up a mountain, and looked pretty exciting, you used to be able to ride on the roof of it and then it closed for quite a while due to maintenance etc and possibly because somebody fell of the roof and died. You're not allowed to travel on the roof anymore. We wanted to go on the 11am train, but there were just 2 tickets left on the 8am train, one at either end of the train. They sell out like 2 weeks in advance usually. Eek. I left the shop to ring Kim and check what she thought. In the meantime lots of people went in the shop to buy train tickets, so when I went back in I had to wait for ages, and hope that none of the people in front of me were buying the last 2 tickets on the 8am train. Luckily they weren't, and I got them, and we figured we'd just ask people to move when we got there so we could sit together rather than at opposite ends of the train.
That was both tasks achieved for the day, which was nice. On Thursday I went to el Museo de la Ciudad (the museum of the city), as I wanted to see if I could learn some things about Quito and had heard it was a good museum. It was a good museum in fact, and I tried really hard to read all the information, especially as it was all in Spanish. It's hard to read fluently when you have to look up every 10th word, but I did learn some new vocab, including gremio=trade, and cofradia=brotherhood, and prendas=garments. There was a reenactment of a hospital, as the museum was on the site of an old hospital, and there were lots of interesting black and white pictures of the hospital back in the days. This made me suddenly think a lot about death and illness and how precious life is, so I was grateful to that section of the museum for reminding me about the shortness of life and how important it is to do things you enjoy/that are useful for the world. I can't remember any of the factual things I may have read about whilst there, but overall it was nice to be in a museum and momentarily feel like I knew some more things about Quito.
After the museum, me and Danny went to la Mitad del Mundo - the equator. This was such a touristy experience, it actually made me feel a little bit sick. That's not a fair thing to say really about an interesting tourist attraction that's also an important part of Ecuador's heritage, but I have been trying to avoid doing anything that makes me feel like a tourist here, and here it was utterly impossible as I was in a group of tourists from New Zealand, on a little tour in English, around a very touristy tourist attraction. The start of the tour was all about the Amazonian tribes, and the animals that live in the jungle, like snakes and tarantulas. The longest ever snake found in the jungle was 12m long. Our tour guide showed us some shrunken heads from the Amazon too - some of these used to sell for 50,000 US Dollars. The Amazon tribes have a secret recipe that means the heads they shrink and the most shrunken in the whole world. This was all very interesting, apart from I didn't understand why we were being told about the Amazon tribes, when we were in the mountains at the equator. Anyway, then we got to the equator, and our guide explained some things about the equator and how gravity doesn't apply there, and you weigh 2.2 pounds less. Ho ho, everyone laughed, let's go and live at the equator. Then we did some eggsperiments, such as balancing an egg on a nail (because the yolk goes straight down in the egg, it therefore can stand straight upright), and watching some water go straight down a plughole instead of swirling to the right of left, both of which it did on either side of the equator. I got my passport stamped with an equator stamp and bought some postcards, and then promptly left. There's a 2nd equator museum, just down the road, which is the first ever place they found the equator, but then they decided it was a bit up the road, ie where I had been. I couldn't bring myself to visit this 2nd touristy place so just looked at the monument from afar, and then we got back on the local bus back to Quito, which at least cancelled out any more touristy activities for the day.
On Friday I didn't do anything touristy, but we did sit in the square and drink coconut juice from a coconut. Coconut juice is really really good for you, if you ever get a dodgy stomach you should drink it. I then got the bus to Alausi to meet Kim for our train ride. Getting to the bus terminal in Quito was really stressful as all the buses and taxis were full, as it was Friday afternoon, so I got really stressed thinking I was going to miss the 5.30 Alausi bus, which was the last one, and then not be able to do the train ride and then the world might end etc. I managed to find a taxi that wasn't full, so everything was fine, as usual. There was a sleeping man to my left, he did wake up at some point, but he didn't ask my any questions. The bus took 5 hours, and then I got stressed as I couldn't find a taxi that knew where my hostel was, but I did in the end, and met up with Kim at the hostel down the road, which is also a really lovely farm. Alausi is a really nice small peaceful town in the mountains, with lots of painted colourful houses. It reminded me of a wild west film, kind of like the place where that person ends up from that famous Western film, thought I think that's in Bolivia somewhere - is it Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where they steal all that money and go to Bolivia and there's a huge shoot out at the end? I pictured myself living there and sitting outside on the pavement smoking cigars and playing the guitar and watching tourists arrive and get stressed trying to find where to get a taxi from ha ha.
Saturday morning we went on the Devil's Nose train, which was pretty cool, but not as thrilling as you would expect, maybe because you can't sit on the roof, or maybe because it goes pretty slowly, or maybe because we were exhausted as we'd stayed up chatting until about 1.30 and had to get up at 6am. Talking of which I have to go to sleep now as I'm exhausted, but will write more soon.
Adios for now pepinilllos xx
Tuesday, 26 August 2014
More random pictures
This appears to be a trig point dad, but it had 4 sides to it so I'm not sure:
The hostel I'm at - stairs to the roof terrace:
Me and Kim in Guayaquil drinking an enormous beer at las Penas:
Retro Hotel Cotopaxi in Latacunga; I'm not sure how new the new fashion mentioned actually is:
Street in Banos plus mountain behind it:
Getting a bit carried away at having enough wifi signal to put pictures up. This is the last one, it made us laugh, the preciseness of the distance in a country where precision isn't exactly commonplace:
Lake quilotoa pictures
Me at the lake - it was cold:
The lake:
Some men passed us with donkeys. They asked where we were going which I misheard as where are you from, and answered Inglaterra. They looked at me blankly and carried on walking:
Some sheep in a line, oblivious of the amazing view behind them:
Another amazing view:
A man with a bike in latacunga. I followed him for a bit to take this picture as I was excited to see a drop handle bike:
Quilotoa lake
Hi!
I´ve just eaten my body weight in pasta and tomato salad at a local Italian place that I found recommended online here in Latacunga. Which makes me think of 2 things - the internet is really useful, and why do we have so many different weighing systems? I went to Quilotoa lake today with a German couple (Christoph and Irini), who obviouly both spoke perfect English and it was really nice to meet some new people and have some random chat that wasn´t just about where I was going, or where I´d been, or whether I was married etc etc. We were trying to figure out stones / pounds / ounces / kilos, in terms of weighing things. I literally have no idea, and had just recovered from trying to explain to them what a furlong was ha ha (something to do with horse racing....?). Are there 13 pounds in a stone, or 13 ounces in a pound, or both? Or neither? I´m convinced I´ve asked this same question on a South American blog before. Incidentally the lake was about 350m deep in the middle, and 3km in diameter. We walked for approx 2.5 hours, possibly covering 4km. The altitude was 3900m which makes your heart beat approx 3 times faster (some of these statistics are made up but the gist of them is true). I decided not to go to Cotopaxi tomorrow, as it goes to 4800m, which might make my brain explode, and I´ve had my fill of day trips to Andean countryside now.
We also chatted about school systems in England and Germany - in Germany private schools are where you go if you´re rich but a bit thick, kind of the opposite of England. Irini is a teacher and had spent a year in Sunderland of all places as a German teaching assistant. They are here for 3 weeks which seems like nothing when most people you meet are here for 6 months or more. Talking of which, much to my chagrin, I had to talk to some other guests in my hostel this morning at breakfast. I do love hostels, mainly as I love a bargain, and some hostels, like this one, are actually really nice and very well managed and full of information. However, as you know, I don´t like the hostel chat, so I tend to just ignore it / walk off. Someone invited me to sit with them this morning though so I had to go along with it. He was Irish and has been in South America since January and next he´s going t.........
oh sorry I actually just fell asleep on to the computer
So I was very pleasantly surprised to have the day at the lake with a genuinely interesting and friendly couple, who were MY AGE and had similar feelings re hostel chat. I recommended the hostel in Banos that me and Danny had stayed at and also gave them the number to get a taxi safely in Guayaquil, so that´s some good karma saved up for me in terms of useful information. Which is maybe why I just found the nice Italian restaurant, so maybe I´ve already cashed it in. Perhaps in my case my karma is as fast as my metabolism, ie very. Which interestingly reminds me that I recently dreamt about fighting and swords and being a bit scared, and very soon that day had an argument with someone. I also once dreamt that I went back in time and met Paul Mcartney and Ringo Starr on a park bench and they gave me some of their records. I don´t remember what happened that particular day, but definitely not that.
So our driver, Alex, seemed like the last thing he could be bothered doing today was driving 3 Europeans to a lake that he´s probably been to about a million times. On the way back he drove like he was expecting an important phone call and had left his mobile at home, ie too fast, and kept checking his watch. The road was curvy (but so well paved, thanks to the president), and fairly empty, but the few times we veered to the other side on sharp corners, there unfortunately seemed to be large lorries or buses coming towards us. Nothing bad happened, and it turned out he had in fact left his mobile at home. Anyway all that aside, it was really lovely to get out into the hills and countryside and see some typical Andean villages, and typical Andean people, and llamas, and lots of dogs. Which reminds me (this is a very desultory blog, apologies) - yesterday a dog adopted me in the park and followed me round the streets for ages, and it really really stressed me out. Psychologically I can´t explain quite why, but I think it was something to do with fear of responsibility. I honestly thought he was going to be there waiting for me for the next 2 days everywhere I went, and people would start asking why I´d brought a dog to Ecuador with me, and I´d have to start paying for his dog food, and I don´t even like dogs. I tried to shoo him away and I wasn´t remotely moved by his little dog face looking up at me (ok maybe I was a little bit, but the fear of buying dog food outweighed any compassion). I managed to lose him on a corner somewhere and now writng about it I feel a bit bad and hope he´s ok. I then had a small pizza in a totally empty pizza restaurant - it was 4.30 which might explain the emptiness, that´s not exactly pizza time. The man appeared to find it a little bit inconvenient that I wanted to eat a pizza in his pizza restaurant, so perhaps his hostility was my dog karma coming back to get me, which again proves how fast it works.
Whilst walking round part of the lake today, we chatted about Ecuador, and decided that Ecuador is kind of a more grown up version of Peru and Bolivia. It´s kind of slightly more modern and with better infrastructure, and clearly has more money than Peru and Bolivia, but is still of the same origins. We feel that the government here probably has done things a bit more wisely, and involved foreign investment whilst protecting its own resources - perhaps it is a little bit less extreme than the socialist Bolivia under Morales, which kicked out all the foreign NGOs and really tries to limit if not totally ban foreign investment, to the detriment of the mining industry. It´s funny, but whilst I´ve absolutely loved being here, it hasn´t had the kind of effect on me that Peru or Bolivia ever did. This could be because I´m older now, and it´s hard for anything to be as hugely overwhelmingly impressive as it was years ago, or it could be because there is something genuinely different about Ecuador. I don´t feel that I´m in an Incan country, though it definitely is, and whilst everywhere I´ve been is really lovely, none of it has had a `feeling´ as such. I remember first being in Peru, particularly Cuzco for example, and feeling a really strong sense of foreign-ness and fascination at the culture, and that I was inside something very different. Even in Bolivia last year on my very restricted volunteering progamme, I felt I was in a really different place sometimes in terms of culture and landscapre. I can´t explain it very well, and I can´t work out if it´s something in me, or something in Ecuador. The towns and cities I´ve been to here are really nice - Quito´s really great for a capital city, and Banos was really relaxing and surrounded by mountains, and Cuenca was old and colonial, and Guayaquil was totally different and all industrial and more modern. Perhaps there is a limit to how many Plazas you can look at, or statues of independence day heroes, or colonial cobbled streets, and then they all become the same. Or perhaps it is a desire in me to be in one place now, and get to know things on a different level. I suspect it is the latter, and that I am seeing things with different eyes - and it´s not that the things I´m seeing are not beautiful and interesting because they still are.
The other thing of note, to me anyway (and I am in fact the most avid reader of my blog - sometimes I read it back to myself before going to sleep and chuckle at the bits I think are funny) - is that in the last few days I´ve been truly on my own, which is actually the first time since I got here. Because I met Danny and hung out with him in Quito quite a bit, and then in the jungle, and then hung out with Kim in Cuenca and Guayaquil, and then with Danny again in Banos, it wasn´t until Sunday afternoon that I was on my own for the first time properly. Here´s what I noticed being on my own, and looking only with my own eyes - there are loads of shoe shops here in Ecuador, seriously loads, I don´t know what´s going on with that. Lots of men spit on the street. And suddenly taxi drivers / other random men whistle at you, or say ´hola preciosa´as you walk past. And you have to feel a teeny weeny bit awkward when you go to eat somewhere as you´re always on your own, but it´s always fine and I usually sit there writing notes such as these ones that then get turned into a blog. I love that the smallest thing becomes a reason for being really happy, like tonight - finding a place to eat, walking to it, ordering in Spanish, eating (in Spanish), getting the bill and talking to the owner - it gives me such a sense of achievement to do all that all on my own in a really far away country in a foreign language.
Yesterday I had to ask the police for help. This wasn´t as serious as it sounds. Basically the address of the hostel in my out of date guidebook was wrong, and I couldn´t find the hostel anywhere. I wandered up and down some streets getting a little bit stressed as my bag was heavy. Then I saw about 8 armed policeman on a street corner - which at the time didn´t strike me as anything other than extremely fortuitous. I smiled and said buenas tardes, and asked them if they knew where hostel tiana was. One of them said a few English words, like hello, and then some Spanish words, then got on his walkie talkie, then wandered up the street with me, then some random pedestrian got involved and he seemed to know where the hostel was so I followed his instructions and thanked the policeman. Turns out Banco de Sudamerica had gone bankrupt yesterday, and that´s why there were so many armed policemen outside it on that corner, today I walked past and there was a big notice up about all this, and still some policemen around. I´m not sure of the details, but it worked out well for me finding the hostel - that´s an interesting bit of global / financial karma I´ve got saved up, wonder how that will manifest itself - hopefully in an international lottery win.
So then yesterday there was the Garcia Marquez funereal moment, and the man with the missing teeth in the square, and then the dog that adopted me. I saw the man with the missing teeth again today near the square and we had another chat. Or rather he asked me some stuff, and I said some sentences that may or may not have satisfactorily answered his questions. I then went to the laundry to pick up my washing. I had dropped it off yesterday, it was literally just my underwear, and probably weighed not very much (they charge 1 USD per 1 kilo of washing), so I was expecting it to cost 1 USD maximum. They charged me 3 USD because it still had to go in a big machine to be washed. It came back one sock less, so I reckon that´s not a great return rate on investment. It had taken ages to find the laundry so I wasn´t willing to shop around, or go back to get more stuff to wash just for the sake of it.
Anyway, this blog is meant to about the lake, not my underwear. The lake was stunning, a volcanic crater lake. The volcano is still active, but obviously not hugely active - perhaps deep down inside it there is some lava and perhaps one day it will explode again, but for now it´s a lake. I´ll post some pictures from my iphone. It´s very very blue and greeny-blue, and flat as a pancake lake, but with ripples where the wind blows on it. The wind at the top, which is where we were was quite strong too, and I had my 7 layers of clothing on, and gloves that I´d bought in Cuenca at the park with the religious statues and the canelazo. Then I got too hot. Then too cold again. Then out of breath. Then we got to a small area called Shalala. There were a few really new buildings, one was a restaurant-cafe, and one was an artesan museum thing, but it was closed. We had a really really good coffee and wondered what the deal was with us being the only people around that day, and howcome this was the best coffee all 3 of us had had in Ecuador so far.. Shalala, it turns out, is a typical Andean village nearby, but this was the swanky new bit for the tourists. Which, despite the coffee, I could do without, and would rather have seen a traditional village. We did talk to a traditional Andean lady which was nice.
We walked back the way we´d come, with the lake to our right now, still beautiful, and with some small boats on it. On the way there we´d said how nice it would be to see boats on the lake, and now there they were. When we met up with Alex (our driver) again, he said actually they´re only little canoes and not very safe due to the wind on the lake. Oh well, they looked nice from the top of the crater where we were. We had some lunch - soup and omelettes with plantain and rice - then set off back to Latacunga, via the curvy roads and near misses. The Germans got out at the bus stop to go to Banos, and I came back to the hostel to do some more avid avoiding of other guests, and go out for dinner on my own and then write my blog.
I haven´t updated about Banos yet, so I´ll do that now too. Basically I got the night bus there from Guayaquil last Wednesday night and met up with Danny there. We hung out in the square and ate some brownies and generally wandered around for quite a while. Banos is a place to go and do things like rafting, bungee jumping, mountain biking etc, or also just do nothing as it´s really relaxing and chilled out and a really nice size and surrounded by lovely mountains you can just look at. On day 2 we hired mountain bikes and got a lift up a big long hill that goes to this treehouse and tree swing, called Casa de Arboles, with a great view of mountains and really peaceful, apart from the American tourists screaming about how awesome the treeswing is - it´s not, ha ha ha. We then mountain biked back down the big long hill, stopping at various viewpoints along the way to look at Banos. Then we carried on and cycled along the Ruta de Cascadas (route of the waterfalls), where you can stop at various points to look at waterfalls on the other side of the valley, and watch tourists do zip lines across the valley, and generally look at nice scenery. We finished in a little place called Pailon de Diablo and had some lunch. Actually I didn´t as I´d had an enormous breakfast in the local market - eggs and rice and avocado and plantain and coffee - but Danny did and I stole some of it whilst diverting him by chatting in my terrible Spanish to him ha ha. We then waited for a pickup truck to take us and the bikes back to Banos - we had to wait until 4 other people with bikes also needed a lift, as they wouldn´t take just the 2 of us.
The next day we hired a quad bike thingy, not sure what you call them but I´ll put a picture up when I can. Like a little buggy thing you would drive in the desert I guess. And we drove up some steep roads and looked at some mountains and then to look at waterfalls again. I had to get out of the buggy at some points as it wouldn´t go up the hills with us both in. I did drive it too but not all the time, and I wasn´t overly keen on driving it on the actual roads there, alongside the traffic. Seems a bit nuts, but lots of other people were doing it, so it must be fine. Danny used to live in Banos so he knows where all the places to go are. We looked at a big reservoir / dam that produces electricity and it reminded me of the dam in Belize that caused all the controversy for being built on not very safe ground and making all the wildlife have to migrate. On our way back into Banos, the engine suddenly started making a really loud strange squealy noise. We got out and looked at it. Then got back in and set off again. Then stopped and looked at it again. Then decided it did not sound good, and we didn´t have an option to drive really slowly if we were going to be on the actual roads. So we decided to call the tour company we´d hired it from. But we had no phone credit so I went to get some. But there was no network for Danny´s phone, so we had to keep driving with me staring at the phone until some signal came along. Then we couldn´t get the phone numbers for the tour place to work for ages, and the signal kept coming and going. We got through and they said to leave it there and they´d come and pick it up. So we pushed it into someone´s driveway (which was quite funny as we had to kind of push it into the oncoming traffic to get it up on to the pavement), and told the people whose house it was that it would be picked up later. They were totally not remotely bothered or interested about this, but I found it all quite hilarious.Then we hopped on the bus and were back in Banos no problem. Amazing.
That night was the panpipe music in the square, which obviously I was over excited about and did some videos of. I tried to find online if there´s anywhere in London where you can learn Andean dancing as I´d love to do that when back. That´ll get me over my post-Ecuador blues, hopefully. I´m going to buy a wooden whistle too and play it all the way home on both flights. After the lovely panpipe music was the other band who played some other traditional music but it was too out of tune for me to handle. I did learn how to say out of tune in Spanish though, which is desafinado. I realised that I´m a bit lazy with Spanish, and need to be more disciplined if I really want to improve. I don´t think I´ll have time for more Spanish lessons whilst here, but am determined to do a class once back. I think I just assume that I´ll improve just by being here, and that isn´t really realistic.
I´m going to actually stop now as my hands are cold. I got an extra duvet as it´s really cold here at night. Wish me luck avoiding any more hostel chat until tomorrow when I leave. I´m off back to Quito to go see the Mitad del Mundo (middle of the world - ie the equator) and find a Panama Hat for my friend Melissa, and book train tickets for me and Kim´s trip on the Devil´s Nose train on Saturday. Exciting.
Ciao pepinillos xx
I´ve just eaten my body weight in pasta and tomato salad at a local Italian place that I found recommended online here in Latacunga. Which makes me think of 2 things - the internet is really useful, and why do we have so many different weighing systems? I went to Quilotoa lake today with a German couple (Christoph and Irini), who obviouly both spoke perfect English and it was really nice to meet some new people and have some random chat that wasn´t just about where I was going, or where I´d been, or whether I was married etc etc. We were trying to figure out stones / pounds / ounces / kilos, in terms of weighing things. I literally have no idea, and had just recovered from trying to explain to them what a furlong was ha ha (something to do with horse racing....?). Are there 13 pounds in a stone, or 13 ounces in a pound, or both? Or neither? I´m convinced I´ve asked this same question on a South American blog before. Incidentally the lake was about 350m deep in the middle, and 3km in diameter. We walked for approx 2.5 hours, possibly covering 4km. The altitude was 3900m which makes your heart beat approx 3 times faster (some of these statistics are made up but the gist of them is true). I decided not to go to Cotopaxi tomorrow, as it goes to 4800m, which might make my brain explode, and I´ve had my fill of day trips to Andean countryside now.
We also chatted about school systems in England and Germany - in Germany private schools are where you go if you´re rich but a bit thick, kind of the opposite of England. Irini is a teacher and had spent a year in Sunderland of all places as a German teaching assistant. They are here for 3 weeks which seems like nothing when most people you meet are here for 6 months or more. Talking of which, much to my chagrin, I had to talk to some other guests in my hostel this morning at breakfast. I do love hostels, mainly as I love a bargain, and some hostels, like this one, are actually really nice and very well managed and full of information. However, as you know, I don´t like the hostel chat, so I tend to just ignore it / walk off. Someone invited me to sit with them this morning though so I had to go along with it. He was Irish and has been in South America since January and next he´s going t.........
oh sorry I actually just fell asleep on to the computer
So I was very pleasantly surprised to have the day at the lake with a genuinely interesting and friendly couple, who were MY AGE and had similar feelings re hostel chat. I recommended the hostel in Banos that me and Danny had stayed at and also gave them the number to get a taxi safely in Guayaquil, so that´s some good karma saved up for me in terms of useful information. Which is maybe why I just found the nice Italian restaurant, so maybe I´ve already cashed it in. Perhaps in my case my karma is as fast as my metabolism, ie very. Which interestingly reminds me that I recently dreamt about fighting and swords and being a bit scared, and very soon that day had an argument with someone. I also once dreamt that I went back in time and met Paul Mcartney and Ringo Starr on a park bench and they gave me some of their records. I don´t remember what happened that particular day, but definitely not that.
So our driver, Alex, seemed like the last thing he could be bothered doing today was driving 3 Europeans to a lake that he´s probably been to about a million times. On the way back he drove like he was expecting an important phone call and had left his mobile at home, ie too fast, and kept checking his watch. The road was curvy (but so well paved, thanks to the president), and fairly empty, but the few times we veered to the other side on sharp corners, there unfortunately seemed to be large lorries or buses coming towards us. Nothing bad happened, and it turned out he had in fact left his mobile at home. Anyway all that aside, it was really lovely to get out into the hills and countryside and see some typical Andean villages, and typical Andean people, and llamas, and lots of dogs. Which reminds me (this is a very desultory blog, apologies) - yesterday a dog adopted me in the park and followed me round the streets for ages, and it really really stressed me out. Psychologically I can´t explain quite why, but I think it was something to do with fear of responsibility. I honestly thought he was going to be there waiting for me for the next 2 days everywhere I went, and people would start asking why I´d brought a dog to Ecuador with me, and I´d have to start paying for his dog food, and I don´t even like dogs. I tried to shoo him away and I wasn´t remotely moved by his little dog face looking up at me (ok maybe I was a little bit, but the fear of buying dog food outweighed any compassion). I managed to lose him on a corner somewhere and now writng about it I feel a bit bad and hope he´s ok. I then had a small pizza in a totally empty pizza restaurant - it was 4.30 which might explain the emptiness, that´s not exactly pizza time. The man appeared to find it a little bit inconvenient that I wanted to eat a pizza in his pizza restaurant, so perhaps his hostility was my dog karma coming back to get me, which again proves how fast it works.
Whilst walking round part of the lake today, we chatted about Ecuador, and decided that Ecuador is kind of a more grown up version of Peru and Bolivia. It´s kind of slightly more modern and with better infrastructure, and clearly has more money than Peru and Bolivia, but is still of the same origins. We feel that the government here probably has done things a bit more wisely, and involved foreign investment whilst protecting its own resources - perhaps it is a little bit less extreme than the socialist Bolivia under Morales, which kicked out all the foreign NGOs and really tries to limit if not totally ban foreign investment, to the detriment of the mining industry. It´s funny, but whilst I´ve absolutely loved being here, it hasn´t had the kind of effect on me that Peru or Bolivia ever did. This could be because I´m older now, and it´s hard for anything to be as hugely overwhelmingly impressive as it was years ago, or it could be because there is something genuinely different about Ecuador. I don´t feel that I´m in an Incan country, though it definitely is, and whilst everywhere I´ve been is really lovely, none of it has had a `feeling´ as such. I remember first being in Peru, particularly Cuzco for example, and feeling a really strong sense of foreign-ness and fascination at the culture, and that I was inside something very different. Even in Bolivia last year on my very restricted volunteering progamme, I felt I was in a really different place sometimes in terms of culture and landscapre. I can´t explain it very well, and I can´t work out if it´s something in me, or something in Ecuador. The towns and cities I´ve been to here are really nice - Quito´s really great for a capital city, and Banos was really relaxing and surrounded by mountains, and Cuenca was old and colonial, and Guayaquil was totally different and all industrial and more modern. Perhaps there is a limit to how many Plazas you can look at, or statues of independence day heroes, or colonial cobbled streets, and then they all become the same. Or perhaps it is a desire in me to be in one place now, and get to know things on a different level. I suspect it is the latter, and that I am seeing things with different eyes - and it´s not that the things I´m seeing are not beautiful and interesting because they still are.
The other thing of note, to me anyway (and I am in fact the most avid reader of my blog - sometimes I read it back to myself before going to sleep and chuckle at the bits I think are funny) - is that in the last few days I´ve been truly on my own, which is actually the first time since I got here. Because I met Danny and hung out with him in Quito quite a bit, and then in the jungle, and then hung out with Kim in Cuenca and Guayaquil, and then with Danny again in Banos, it wasn´t until Sunday afternoon that I was on my own for the first time properly. Here´s what I noticed being on my own, and looking only with my own eyes - there are loads of shoe shops here in Ecuador, seriously loads, I don´t know what´s going on with that. Lots of men spit on the street. And suddenly taxi drivers / other random men whistle at you, or say ´hola preciosa´as you walk past. And you have to feel a teeny weeny bit awkward when you go to eat somewhere as you´re always on your own, but it´s always fine and I usually sit there writing notes such as these ones that then get turned into a blog. I love that the smallest thing becomes a reason for being really happy, like tonight - finding a place to eat, walking to it, ordering in Spanish, eating (in Spanish), getting the bill and talking to the owner - it gives me such a sense of achievement to do all that all on my own in a really far away country in a foreign language.
Yesterday I had to ask the police for help. This wasn´t as serious as it sounds. Basically the address of the hostel in my out of date guidebook was wrong, and I couldn´t find the hostel anywhere. I wandered up and down some streets getting a little bit stressed as my bag was heavy. Then I saw about 8 armed policeman on a street corner - which at the time didn´t strike me as anything other than extremely fortuitous. I smiled and said buenas tardes, and asked them if they knew where hostel tiana was. One of them said a few English words, like hello, and then some Spanish words, then got on his walkie talkie, then wandered up the street with me, then some random pedestrian got involved and he seemed to know where the hostel was so I followed his instructions and thanked the policeman. Turns out Banco de Sudamerica had gone bankrupt yesterday, and that´s why there were so many armed policemen outside it on that corner, today I walked past and there was a big notice up about all this, and still some policemen around. I´m not sure of the details, but it worked out well for me finding the hostel - that´s an interesting bit of global / financial karma I´ve got saved up, wonder how that will manifest itself - hopefully in an international lottery win.
So then yesterday there was the Garcia Marquez funereal moment, and the man with the missing teeth in the square, and then the dog that adopted me. I saw the man with the missing teeth again today near the square and we had another chat. Or rather he asked me some stuff, and I said some sentences that may or may not have satisfactorily answered his questions. I then went to the laundry to pick up my washing. I had dropped it off yesterday, it was literally just my underwear, and probably weighed not very much (they charge 1 USD per 1 kilo of washing), so I was expecting it to cost 1 USD maximum. They charged me 3 USD because it still had to go in a big machine to be washed. It came back one sock less, so I reckon that´s not a great return rate on investment. It had taken ages to find the laundry so I wasn´t willing to shop around, or go back to get more stuff to wash just for the sake of it.
Anyway, this blog is meant to about the lake, not my underwear. The lake was stunning, a volcanic crater lake. The volcano is still active, but obviously not hugely active - perhaps deep down inside it there is some lava and perhaps one day it will explode again, but for now it´s a lake. I´ll post some pictures from my iphone. It´s very very blue and greeny-blue, and flat as a pancake lake, but with ripples where the wind blows on it. The wind at the top, which is where we were was quite strong too, and I had my 7 layers of clothing on, and gloves that I´d bought in Cuenca at the park with the religious statues and the canelazo. Then I got too hot. Then too cold again. Then out of breath. Then we got to a small area called Shalala. There were a few really new buildings, one was a restaurant-cafe, and one was an artesan museum thing, but it was closed. We had a really really good coffee and wondered what the deal was with us being the only people around that day, and howcome this was the best coffee all 3 of us had had in Ecuador so far.. Shalala, it turns out, is a typical Andean village nearby, but this was the swanky new bit for the tourists. Which, despite the coffee, I could do without, and would rather have seen a traditional village. We did talk to a traditional Andean lady which was nice.
We walked back the way we´d come, with the lake to our right now, still beautiful, and with some small boats on it. On the way there we´d said how nice it would be to see boats on the lake, and now there they were. When we met up with Alex (our driver) again, he said actually they´re only little canoes and not very safe due to the wind on the lake. Oh well, they looked nice from the top of the crater where we were. We had some lunch - soup and omelettes with plantain and rice - then set off back to Latacunga, via the curvy roads and near misses. The Germans got out at the bus stop to go to Banos, and I came back to the hostel to do some more avid avoiding of other guests, and go out for dinner on my own and then write my blog.
I haven´t updated about Banos yet, so I´ll do that now too. Basically I got the night bus there from Guayaquil last Wednesday night and met up with Danny there. We hung out in the square and ate some brownies and generally wandered around for quite a while. Banos is a place to go and do things like rafting, bungee jumping, mountain biking etc, or also just do nothing as it´s really relaxing and chilled out and a really nice size and surrounded by lovely mountains you can just look at. On day 2 we hired mountain bikes and got a lift up a big long hill that goes to this treehouse and tree swing, called Casa de Arboles, with a great view of mountains and really peaceful, apart from the American tourists screaming about how awesome the treeswing is - it´s not, ha ha ha. We then mountain biked back down the big long hill, stopping at various viewpoints along the way to look at Banos. Then we carried on and cycled along the Ruta de Cascadas (route of the waterfalls), where you can stop at various points to look at waterfalls on the other side of the valley, and watch tourists do zip lines across the valley, and generally look at nice scenery. We finished in a little place called Pailon de Diablo and had some lunch. Actually I didn´t as I´d had an enormous breakfast in the local market - eggs and rice and avocado and plantain and coffee - but Danny did and I stole some of it whilst diverting him by chatting in my terrible Spanish to him ha ha. We then waited for a pickup truck to take us and the bikes back to Banos - we had to wait until 4 other people with bikes also needed a lift, as they wouldn´t take just the 2 of us.
The next day we hired a quad bike thingy, not sure what you call them but I´ll put a picture up when I can. Like a little buggy thing you would drive in the desert I guess. And we drove up some steep roads and looked at some mountains and then to look at waterfalls again. I had to get out of the buggy at some points as it wouldn´t go up the hills with us both in. I did drive it too but not all the time, and I wasn´t overly keen on driving it on the actual roads there, alongside the traffic. Seems a bit nuts, but lots of other people were doing it, so it must be fine. Danny used to live in Banos so he knows where all the places to go are. We looked at a big reservoir / dam that produces electricity and it reminded me of the dam in Belize that caused all the controversy for being built on not very safe ground and making all the wildlife have to migrate. On our way back into Banos, the engine suddenly started making a really loud strange squealy noise. We got out and looked at it. Then got back in and set off again. Then stopped and looked at it again. Then decided it did not sound good, and we didn´t have an option to drive really slowly if we were going to be on the actual roads. So we decided to call the tour company we´d hired it from. But we had no phone credit so I went to get some. But there was no network for Danny´s phone, so we had to keep driving with me staring at the phone until some signal came along. Then we couldn´t get the phone numbers for the tour place to work for ages, and the signal kept coming and going. We got through and they said to leave it there and they´d come and pick it up. So we pushed it into someone´s driveway (which was quite funny as we had to kind of push it into the oncoming traffic to get it up on to the pavement), and told the people whose house it was that it would be picked up later. They were totally not remotely bothered or interested about this, but I found it all quite hilarious.Then we hopped on the bus and were back in Banos no problem. Amazing.
That night was the panpipe music in the square, which obviously I was over excited about and did some videos of. I tried to find online if there´s anywhere in London where you can learn Andean dancing as I´d love to do that when back. That´ll get me over my post-Ecuador blues, hopefully. I´m going to buy a wooden whistle too and play it all the way home on both flights. After the lovely panpipe music was the other band who played some other traditional music but it was too out of tune for me to handle. I did learn how to say out of tune in Spanish though, which is desafinado. I realised that I´m a bit lazy with Spanish, and need to be more disciplined if I really want to improve. I don´t think I´ll have time for more Spanish lessons whilst here, but am determined to do a class once back. I think I just assume that I´ll improve just by being here, and that isn´t really realistic.
I´m going to actually stop now as my hands are cold. I got an extra duvet as it´s really cold here at night. Wish me luck avoiding any more hostel chat until tomorrow when I leave. I´m off back to Quito to go see the Mitad del Mundo (middle of the world - ie the equator) and find a Panama Hat for my friend Melissa, and book train tickets for me and Kim´s trip on the Devil´s Nose train on Saturday. Exciting.
Ciao pepinillos xx
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)