From the Ecuadorian Sky to the Sea: Sept. 9-13, 2011

La Compañia, Quito

Mitad del Mundo

Leaving Quito four days ago felt kind of like leaving a second home. When I landed there I knew nobody and next to nothing about the place. But after four days in an awesome hostel with an awesome host and even more awesome random friends I made, the city, regardless of its somewhat sketchiness, felt comfortable. Every day there was another tourist adventure with one of my random hostel friends. Checking out the old town, trekking out to Midad del Mundo, hiking volcano Pululahua, hiking a portion of Pinchincha after riding the TeleferiQo, or just wandering around La Mariscal in search of cheap Ecuadorian cuisine.

La Mariscal on a Friday night

Pinchincha atop the TeleferiQo

Pululahua Crater Geobotanical Reserve

On the morning of the 11th I got up at 7 am after five hours of sleep and ventured out to get some travel cash. Getting cash is always a bit stressful... carrying anything more than $50 on me always feels like I´m wearing a target on my back... more on hiding cash later.

I hadn´t been able to find a guide book on Ecuador at any of the book stores I checked out during my stay and returned the hostel copy I had been using after a quick perusal and some brief notes. I recalled some pointers other travelers had given me, finished packing my bags, and hit the road.

The night before I had decided to trek into the Andes before hitting the coast. I was on a mission to hike the volcanic crater lake of Quilotoa. The first leg of my journey took me to the southern bus terminal of Quito, this meant traversing the not-so-friendly poor quarter... or so people said. I found the locals very polite and helpful... perhaps showing them some respect by attempting their language and being polite had something to do with it.

Once at the bus depot getting a ticket to Latacunga was no problem. Only thing was, my destination´s name is about all I knew about. After the two hour or so bus ride through some very picturesque Andean countryside, I found myself at the "terminal terrestre" in Latacunga with no idea of where to go except the vague recollection of a conversation I had had with a German couple a few nights before. They had told me to cross the Rio Cutuchi using the Avenue Cinco de Junio bridge to get to the main city square where hostels were located. So I hopped into a taxi and gave vague directions in very bad Spanish. The cabbie drove me over the bridge, which was half a block from the bus station, then asked me where to go specifically... I responded with "Un hostal barato". So he turned around and drove the other way dropping me off a quarter block from the bus depot at a total sespool of a hostel.

Cotopaxi from the rooftop

A little bit of Latacunga

Now knowing where the river and Avenue Cinco de Junio were, I elected to explore some options. I trekked till I found an internet cafe and googled hostels in Latacunga (echoes of my arrival in Quito). The hostel I ended up at was a chill little place with a brilliant rooftop view of the local volcano Cotopaxi. It was a very mellow place, great after the party atmosphere of La Mariscal in Quito. I did a little internet research on my next day´s journey to Quilotoa and went to the roof to contemplate Cotopaxi in the light of a nearly full moon. It was at this point that I realized the difference in the sky from my home in B.C. The sun and moon always traveled directly above instead of to the south... a reminder that I am at the equator and not the 49th north parallel of latitude. That and the stars... not a single recognizable constellation... glad I brought a compass and a star book.

A chunk of collapsed road

The Ecuadorian owners of the hostel told me that the earliest bus to Zumbahua, a waypoint to Quilotoa, was at 7:30 am, so I got up at 6:30 to make sure I made it. A quick trek across Latacunga and some bad Spanish got me on the right path. Here is where my first true experience of South American road work and bus driving begins. Maybe it´s the torrential downpours that happen in a flash, maybe it´s shoddy engineering, or maybe it´s just overuse of infrastructure and underuse of public funds (read corruption here), but everything I expected on the fabled Camino del Muerte of Bolivia was presented to me here. Chunks of hill or cliffside collapsed into rubble obscurring half or more of the road, blind hairpin turns with nothing more than the bus´s horn to guarantee safety, and astonishing vistas of Andean agriculture.

Patchwork of hillside fields

The Ecuadorians farm on every square metre of arable land, even if it´s on a 60 degree slope. As the bus swerved past on-coming traffic on single lane portions of the "highway", it dawned on me once again that I was at the equator and not the 49th north parallel because farming was happening at 2000+ metres in September. As far as I know, the Golden Hinde (tallest peak on Vancouver Island) was unclimbable this year at 2,100 metres due to snow.

Entrance to the Quilotoa crater trail

A couple hours of bouncing out of my seat brought me to Zumbahau where, after disembarking the bus, I was in a pickup truck within 45 seconds heading towards the pueblo of Quilotoa. One thing about Ecuadorian transit... you rarely wait more than a few mintues for connecting transport. Upon arrival at the pueblo of Quilotoa I secured some hostel accomodations and

Laguna Quilotoa

headed for the crater. One of the cool things 

about traveling is meeting people you have met elsewhere on the latest leg of your journey. So I´m exploring entry points for a route down into the Quilotoa crater when I run into this Brazilian guy I met the previous night in the hostel in Latacunga. We decended into the crater and explored around a bit before deciding to commence the slog back up. Now, on Vancouver Island, or even many of the mountains surrounding the lower mainland, this would be a simple feat, even with 20 kgs on your back. But above 3,500 metres just getting yourself up a steep crater wall is a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other kind of meditative exercise. It was one of the first times in my life I had to consciously focus on fully expanding my lungs otherwise dizziness, headache, and muscle fatigue would quickly set in.

Approaching the bottom

Hiking back up with Llanas

At the top of the crater Cesar and I shared a meal before he headed off, I headed for the hostel. Once the sun went down, which is about 6:30 pm year round, the Andean winds picked up forcing myself and the Swiss couple I met at the hostel to huddle around a wood stove with the Ecuadorian family who ran the place. The Andean night is as beautiful as it is unforgiving, but fortunately the blankets were plentiful as the winds whistled me to sleep. At 3,850 metres, I think it´s the highest place I´ve ever slept outside of an airplane.

I awoke at daybreak eager to get my journey to the coast underway. As the sun crested the horizon I started walking out of town to meet the pickup truck the hostel owner said would get me to Zumbahua for the morning bus back to Latacunga. Nothing quite compares to riding in the back of a pickup truck, which doubled as the morning school bus, through the winding roads of the Andes with breathtaking vistas at neck breaking speeds.

Being 6´2" makes riding buses an uncomfortable ordeal, but it does afford one a great view of the countryside. As we wound our way along the "highway", Cotopaxi greated me through the clear morning air and the farmer´s fields speckled the hillsides in a thatchwork pattern of greens and browns. In Latacunga I transferred to the next bus which was headed for the town of Ambato where I transferred to yet another bus headed for Guayaquil. With about 5 hours of travel behind me and 9 more to go I was in rough shape... my back had siezed up on me as I got off the bus in Ambato, but I managed to hobble onto the next bus with all my stuff.

Back pain aside, the views decending from the high arid Andes into the lush landscapes of the coast were simply jaw-dropping. Immense valleys were bisected by bands of clouds, blue above, green below. For awhile it was like decending in an airplane as mists enveloped us and vehicles shot past like multicoloured phantoms rushing to the sunny solace of the peaks above, their passing marked by the doppler effect of their horns.

Once below the clouds we approached Guayaquil through about 100 kms of flatlands dominated by endless banana plantations and tracts of land burned out for agriculture. The city`s immenant presence became palpable as agricultural land turned to third world sprawl, then denser suburbs, and finally the racous roar of rush hour urbanity. The Guayaquil bus depot has to be one of the most massive structures of its sort I have ever seen. Three levels containing over 150 bus berths. As it turned out, I missed the last bus to Montañita by 15 minutes... fortunately I had a backup plan. Twenty minutes later I was on a bus to Puerto Lopez, just over 10 hours behind me and just under 4 more to go. Careening through the lowlands as the sun set and the smoke from numerous debris fires wafted through the bus, the landscape, being strange and unknown to me, took on an eerie Apocalypse Now flavour. I struggled to find a position in which pain didn´t shoot up my back and down my legs.

After nearly four hours a glow appeared on the dark hazy horizon and briney ocean air teased my nostrils... Puerto Lopez at last! Within about 15 seconds of getting off the bus I was in the back of a motorbike cab heading for the beach. I took the first room at the first hostel we got to without even haggling the price, I just wanted a shower and a stretch.

Just before 10 pm I exchanged my sweat laden Andean layers for shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops, found a late night food stand on the beach and soaked in the thick equatorial night time heat. Shortly thereafter as I was falling asleep in my overpriced room, it struck me as odd that they had installed mosquito screens in the windows when there were gaping holes in the mortar work of the brick walls. I had forgotten that the only reason I hadn`t experienced equatorial bugs yet was because I had been in the Andes to high, windy, and cold for bugs. My feet turned into midnight snacks for a variety of blood suckers.

Up at daybreak again, I packed my stuff and walked into the humid heat of the day. After about 15 minutes of randomly walking around Puerto Lopez, I found the bus depot where I met a swiss guy named Nedo. He was headed for Montañita too, so we hung out and spoke English. Turns out he is a teacher too, only in Denmark. An hour or so later we were exploring the party town of Montañita... that was yesterday. More on Montañita once I move on to the next place... time to hit the beach!