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In Ecuador we spent an intensive week in Quito, learning Spanish, and living with a local family. We were robbed at the bus station, which involved some excitement with gun carrying special agents.We stayed on in Quito a week longer than planned in an attempt to recover our stuff, and eventually travelled on the rooftop of a train for five hours, south to Ambato. We climbed up a 5023m volcano in Banos and went clothes shopping in the Indian markets in Cuenca.
Quito is one of the highest capitals in the world at 2800m. It takes your breath away both figuratively and literally. The setting is fantastic, crammed in between imposing Andean peaks, Pichincha and Cotopaxi (the highest active volcano in the world). Modern Quito , the new city, is clean and busy, acres of office blocks, posh hotels and swish shopping arcades. Ostensibly it seems a very prosperous place - by far the most advanced city we've seen south of the US border. The old city to the south is grittier, a maze of dirty old streets, crumbling colonial buildings. Successive earthquakes have taken their toll, but the Ecuadorians have managed to preserve many fine churches in the area. We visited the church of San Francisco in a plaza of the same name. As with all Latin churches, idolatry featured heavily - Jesus with a wig!, chapels to various saints, and gold everywhere. A large market spreads up Imbabua and the hills to the west, selling mostly clothes, rip-offs for $10. Scattered amongst the food stalls, Indians sell food from decrepit braziers, fried plantain, boiled figs, sweetcorn, kebabs and pork crackling with the pigs head still attached to its skin, as it roasts over the coals. Just south of the old town is the Panecillo, a monument of the Virgin of Ecuador on top of a hill, seemingly waving down at the city. This statue, 45m high can be entered for a few sucres, but it's best to take a taxi to it for a few more, since the streets leading up are notorious for robberies.
One of the first things we did in Quito was sign up with a Spanish for foreigners school. There are dozens to chose from, and Quito is one of the best places in South America to do this. Whilst studying at the Spanish school, we asked to be fixed up with a local family to further improve our Spanish. We were a little sceptical at first, imagining we'd be sleeping on a mud floor with the chickens and eating daily meals of potato stew for a week with some trilby hatted Indian and her grubby kids. After our first day of classes, we delayed going up there, preferring to watch Brazil vs Holland in a bar. They had a TV set up on some old beer crates outside. It was a superb game, and every time there was a shot, the table next to us would erupt into screams. On the opposite side of the street, a VW beetle drew up, and someone set up a portable TV on the roof. By the end of the match, there was a crowd of about 80 people watching it.
After the match, we took a cab up to the district of La Gasca to meet our family. The house was about as far up the side of the mountain as it's possible to go without crampons. The views of the city stretched out below were great. The house was not a mud hut but a modern five bedroom place, elegantly furnished and spacious. Irmi the mother immediately invited us in to her kitchen and fed us rolls and coffee. We went through the usual questions; "where are you from, where are you going, how long are you staying in Ecuador etc". Irmi is married to lawyer husband Luis, who we didn't meet until the second day. He takes his work very seriously, a vocation almost, and has never lost a case in 15 years of practice. Irmi obviously worshipped him. She wasn't the only one. Luis is a bit of a local hero. He works for the 'people' workers who've been mistreated by their employers, overworked, underpaid and downtrodden. His office on the seventh floor downtown is adorned with brass plaques and medals of thanks from people and workers' committees he has helped. He also has a picture of Che Guevara and one of Lenin leading the people. Luis is a short man with a noble face, mild mannered and self effacing. It's easy to understand why he's so popular. Luis needs to win all his cases, since otherwise he doesn't get paid, and his family have expensive tastes. His three children, Luis Antoinio, Julian and Nadia all go to private school. They have a live-in negro maid, a cheery girl just 16 years old called Veronica, who studies when she's not working, a part-time chauffeur and a washer woman who comes twice a week. Veronica comes from a small town near Esmereldes on the coast. There are many blacks in this area. It's one of the hardest hit by the El Nino weather phenomenon. Their house has to be reached by boat now. She has 5 sisters and one brother. Her mother came to visit for a few days whilst we were there, bringing her 14 year old sister with her. She was hoping to place the other sister with a family too
In the evenings, after eating, we'd spend hours chatting with Irmi before Luis got home. The first evening, we spoke about some of the social problems in the country. Ecuador has 60% unemployment, and rampant inflation. The El Nino damage will run to 2bn US dollars on infrastructure alone. Ecuador's foreign debt is a colossal burden. Some 80% of GDP is required just to service the interest payments. It's hard to imagine what measures any government could take in the face of such adversity, what kind of people would be attracted to such a task. Corrupt people, unfortunately, people interested in lining their own pockets. The last president of Ecuador, Bucaram, was ousted in Feb 1997 and was forced to leave the country after a debacle of mal-doing. His nick-name "El Loco", in his three years he embezzled over $80m and bestowed countless favours on family and friends, whilst doing nothing to haul the country out of the mire. His family used to come in to the senate and throw abuse and even objects at his opponents. Finally the country tired of his behaviour, and with the backing of the military he was forced to leave. The weekend we were in Quito, was election weekend. It was a very quiet and peaceful affair. Neither of the candidates seemed to be particularly attractive. Noboa, a multimillionaire and owner of some 105 business was considered more likely to feather his own nest. Jamil, his opponent was an ember of a previous government that had been very bad for the country. Worse still, in the eyes of many Ecuadorians, he was suspected of being a maricon, a homosexual. This fact sent Irmi and her friend Peti into fits of laughter. Apparently, Jamil's ex-wife cited the fact that he was a poof in the divorce proceedings. Jamil actually won, by a very small margin. It took a week for all the votes to come in from outlying regions. I wander how many naked Huarani indians voted from the depths of the Amazon. The vote count was well over 4 million, quite impressive for a country of only 12 million. Maybe some of those were falsified - who knows?
On Monday, 12th, we graduated from our Spanish school. I really feel it helped. On Tuesday, we planned to leave for Otavalo, a town north of Quito which is reputed to have one of the best markets in South America. We never made it. Irmi's chauffeur dropped us at the Terminal Terrestre, Quito's main bus terminal, a nasty concrete edifice in a dangerous part of town. We bought our tickets and went through the barriers to the bus where we were welcomed by the driver, a cheery man in a tropical shirt. He helped us to our seats and put our rucksack on the rack. Normally we keep it below, between our legs, and I thought about moving it, but stupidly left it. Other passengers boarded and we felt safe in the fact that the bus would be leaving in a couple of minutes. Then, strangely, the driver and other passengers left the bus. Our pack was gone, along with diaries, camera, films and various other items, including tampons. It was only a matter of seconds before I realised what was going down, and I ran off the bus after the ladrones, but they were nowhere to be seen. Katie was in tears, and I was gnashing my teeth. How could we have been so stupid, lulled into a sense of false security. We took our other packs off the bus and returned to Irmi's house, hoping they might be able to help us. Irmi wasn't there, she was in the beauty salon having her nails done, with her feet in a bowl of water. When she returned she was very annoyed at what had happened, and we all set off for the terminal a) to look for the robbers without the encumbrance of our big packs and b) to search the bins to see if they'd discarded stuff they wouldn't be able to sell. We quizzed lots of people at the terminal, the fruit sellers, cleaners and drivers. They admitted to knowing who the crooks were but feared for their lives if they opened their mouths. We were so lucky to have Irmi and Luis to help us. We had to fill in a denuncia, a special sort of police statement which demands an investigation. This probably would have taken days without their help. In practice, the police won't investigate unless you dangle a big enough carrot. The next day I went with Irmi to check out a market in the old town that sells 'used' goods. Our stuff wasn't there, but there were dozens of other knock-off items, especially music centres.
That night I bought a bottle of Johnnie Walker to drown our sorrows. It was the first whiskey I'd had since leaving the UK, and it was wonderful. Luis, Irmi and I finished the bottle. Then Luis, I and a couple of his friends went to his office for another bottle. We rolled into bed at 4am.
The day after, I went with Fernando, a colleague of Luis' who used to be an OID (Officina de Investigation de Delito) agent. We sneaked around a while, and then I spotted him, the robber. We stalked awhile, peering from behind kiosks, then got the police down. They dragged him off into a room inside the station, and the last I saw was one of the agents following with a huge club in his hand. Latin American justice. The guy denied being the robber, but said he knew who the gang were. I offered the agents a lot of money for recovery of our stuff, so we live in hope.
The same week we were robbed, Irmi's mum got robbed twice in her house. She lost all her jewellery, and her telephone. We went to play cards there with the family. There were about a dozen brothers, sisters and spouses. It was very raucous, and great fun. We had another fun night out with Irmi and Luis, salsa dancing at the 'Royal Horse'. They bought bottles of vodka, and we got steadily drunk, shouting "salud" a lot and knocking back the drink.
It was very sad to finally leave Irmi, Luis and their lovely kids on Saturday. They were very good to us, treated us like part of the family, and said we were the most special guests they'd ever had. Aah.
The train only runs once a week, on Saturdays. For all of the passengers massed at the station, it was an exciting occasion. Teenagers climbed onto the roofs of the cargo wagons at the front. We climbed aboard the first class carriage, an ancient wooden wagon, and secured our packs with coil locks to the overhead rack. Food sellers plied their wares, throwing things up to the kids on the roof. The train left a few minutes late, and jerked it's way through the backstreets of Southern Quito, passing a colourful Indian fruit and veg market which stretched for about a mile alongside the track. We eventually broke free from the outskirts of Quito to the lush valley in the Avenue of Volcanoes.
Either side of us were towering mountains, their peaks often lost in clouds. This is by no means a fast train. It averaged about 18mph, and took 3 hours to reach Cotopaxi, one of Ecuador's highest mountain, which is visible from Quito. Quite a lot of people got off here, which meant lots more room on the roof, so we clambered up and staked our turf. It was much more fun up there, the views were much better, and there was a festive atmosphere. With the train running so infrequently, it's quite an event. In every town and village people stopped to wave. Kids ran up to the track, dogs chased the train, cars hooted. Katie compared it to being on a carnival float. At times it was uncomfortable, like when it started to rain. Sometimes it was scary, like crossing rickety bridges over gorges, and at times it was dangerous, dodging low branches and telegraph wires. One girl lost her hat - knocked off by a wire - lucky it wasn't her head. The 7-hour journey seemed to pass in no time, and it was sad to finally arrive in Ambato.
Ambato is an ugly town, a sprawl of concrete. The old town was completely destroyed in an earthquake in 1949, it looks like they could do with another one. We looked for a bar for hours - couldn't find one and had to drink at a fried chicken joint. We looked for a restaurant. Couldn't find one - ate greasy fried chicken again! We took a room at the Hotel San Ignacio - pleasant enough - apart from the wedding party above us that went on until 5am. We had thought about staying on for the market on Monday, supposedly quite spectacular, but couldn't face it, and caught a bus to Banos.
The bus journey to Banos goes through the colourful and affluent Indian village of Salasaca, renowned for it's fine rugs. Here, even the men wear traditional costume, a black poncho over white trousers and a cream hat.
The next village, Pelilio is the jeans capital of
Ecuador. It's here that all the fake Levis and Wranglers are
made. Everyone with so much as a garden fence to spare was
selling jeans. Cuy, or guinea pig is a local speciality here, and
we passed several restaurants with gruesome looking spits with
guinea pigs roasting over hot coals, heads still on! Banos is a
lovely town at the bottom of a steep valley. It attracts a lot of
tourists for the amazing climbing, trekking and horse-riding on
offer. It also has a selection of hot baths fed from natural
mineral rich spring water.
We found lodgings at the Hotel Orquideas,
which has clean rooms, own bathroom and a beautiful garden for
just $11 a night. We explored the town and went into the Basilica
to see the shrine to the Virgen Rosario of Banos, a local women
who reportedly was seen in the street with a straw ht on,
performing miracles. Outside the Basilica, stalls were hawking
all manner of tacky religious paraphernalia. Katie bought a
£0.50 pendant, and I bought a plastic gear knob with an image of
the virgin embedded in it.
Banos sits at the bottom of a spectacularly steep sided valley high up in the Andes. On one side is the 5023m volcanic peak, Tunguruhua. It's a formidable climb, so we engaged the services of a guide to take us up it on a two day expedition starting the following day. We spent the morning getting our supplies together, and built our own mini mountain of chocolate bars. In the afternoon we thought we'd better get our legs used to the idea of severe exercise and took in a four hour hike up the side of the valley, climbing over 800m up to the 'eagle's nest' village of Runtun behind the town and across to the statue of the virgin of Banos. On the way back down, we stopped in at an upmarket hotel perched behind the town, called the Luna Resort, where we had a couple of very welcome Irish Coffees. I doubted we'd get such luxuries in our mountain refuge 3800m up Tunguruhua tomorrow.
I was right. There is no Irish coffee up Tunguruhua, but there is coca tea. At 9am sharp, we hefted our pack containing sleeping backs, spare clothes, 12 bars o chocolate and 8 litres of water along to the Amazonias expeditions office, where we'd booked the trip. Here we picked up an awesome array of climbing stuff, balaclavas, mittens, rope, waterproofs, wellies and crampons. This was going to get quite serious. "These er crampons, they're just a precaution aren't they?" Katie asked nervously "No, you must wear them to grip in the ice" was the straight reply. I think Katie thought she was going for a Sunday afternoon stroll - wrong! We bundled ourselves and our expanding bag into the back of a camionetta - essentially a pickup truck with bench seats and pretensions of becoming a bus when it grows up. It was a rough journey of over an hour up bendy mountain dirt tracks. We were starting at an altitude of 2800m, and already, the views were superb though somewhat ominous with clouds swirling up the valley below us.
Our guide, Miguel Rodriguez Sanchez, was an ox of a man with legs like telegraph poles and a barrel chest. He was a nice man, a bit of a joker and one of the most experienced guides in the town. Though only 25 years old, he's been guiding for 10 years. His father was the first guide in the region. We were to ascend to a mountain refuge at 3800m where we would rest for several hours to become acclimatised to the altitude before making a push for the summit at 2am. The path up to the refuge used to be an old logging trail.
The whole mountain used to be swathed in tropical cloud
forest, but it's all gone now, chopped down for fuel or
construction. Ox trains used to drag the logs down the trail we
were walking on, which accounted for the fact that it was like a
giant rut with 8ft high mud walls for much of the way, and
unfortunately it was very muddy. This made it tough going,
especially with the altitude, we found ourselves gasping for
breath. It meant that the views weren't too great either. We did
see a mule in a small paddock at one point with an erection as
big as a parking meter, which was quite a laugh, but otherwise it
was just slog slog slog, gasp, rest and more of the same.
It's important to pace yourself carefully in the thin air, since
overexertion comes on fast and can lead to serious respiratory
and circulatory problems such as odaema requiring a hasty return
and hospitalisation. We took a long three and a half hours to
reach the refuge a basic hut impossibly balanced on a muddy ledge
3800m high.
I hoped the foundations were good. I was stunned at how anybody could have managed to construct such a house in this remote inhospitable place. There was no heating however, and it was bitterly cold. Clouds crowded around below us, occasionally clearing to provide tantalizing glimpses of the towns and hamlets far below, as if viewed from an aeroplane window. Miguel prepared us some rolls and some coca leaf tea. The coca leaf helps the metabolism to adjust o the altitude, slowing the heart rate down. We went for a snooze upstairs, wrapped in seven layers of clothing, and inside our multi-season sleeping bags we were still cold. We had to hang around for eight hours minimum to acclimatise before making the final 1200m push to the summit. Miguel woke us at nine, and we ate more food, a delicious supper of thick vegetable and chicken soup.
We played some cards drank tea and rested some more. At 2am we arose and carefully checked our gear into the pack. Katie was very nervous about carrying on. She'd struggled getting up to the refuge, and that was in daylight. Now it was very cold, very dark and the weather had closed in. An icy cold drizzle was falling outside and the wind was now upto a force five. After considerable discussion, she decided to join us, so we donned head lamps and crept out into the dark hell outside. The incline went from steep to ridiculously steep. It was murderous. The only way to handle it was to count out the steps one to ten, and rest at ten. We were now well above the treeline and the wind was whipping across the gravelly slopes unhindered. Katie groaned "I just wish we could go back". Shortly, her wish came true. After climbing just a few hundred metres Miguel advised us that it would be stupid to go on. "If the weather is like this here, it will be much worse on the summit - too dangerous." I was gutted, "Chucha Madre!" I swore, "Que verga, que mal suerte", but I had to accept the decision. Katie on the contrary was deliriously happy. We turned back, and recovered the ground in about a fifth the time it had taken to climb up.
It was 4.45am by the time we got back
soaked through, cold and dejected. "More tea vicar?"
"Yes please." We grabbed a bit more sleep then at 8am
we packed up the gear and started the rest of the descent.
The overnight rain had turned the trail
into even more of a mud slick, a foot deep in parts. It was like
a bobsleigh run in mud - you just had to resign yourself to
getting plastered in the stuff. It only took an hour and a half
to get down and annoyingly we had to wait for two hou rs for the
camionetta to leave, along with a group of campesinos; a man who
looked like Fidel Castro, another chap with a pot belly and no
teeth, and Papi, a watery eyed old man in a busted trilby hat
with trousers held up by string and a 4ft long machete. We shared
our remaining chocolates with them - after all you don't want to
make enemies of a bloke with a 4ft machete.
We slept very well last night, and didn't manage to crawl out of bed until ten - this is one of the undoubted joys of travelling. We had breakfast at an arty farty place called the café cultura. The muesli had the consistency of vomit. It tasted like it too!. It was raining quite persistently in Banos, so we mooched around looking for postcards as we waited for the mid day bus to our next destination Riobamba.
The bus took a circuitous route around impossibly steep mountains. The bus was full of locals travelling back from the market. Buses are used as a means of goods transportation by the poor. An indian man in a trilby tried flagged us down and tried to load up twenty crates of onions, but the driver wasn't having it, In several places the road had been washed completely away by recent rains, and the bus had to edge precariously around a makeshift muddy ledge.
Riobamba is a much larger town than Banos, slightly slummy. The best time to come here is on a Saturday for the weekly market, supposedly one of the best in the country. Today was a Thursday, and there wasn't much happening. There are surprisingly few places to eat and drink here. In fact the only restaurants in town are rather nasty greasy fried chicken joints with plastic seating and bright striplighting. We opted for an establishment called 'Chicken Dog' which amazingly is recommended by the South American handbook. We watched the telly as we munched our chips.
Did you ever wonder what ex Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson is up to these days. Well she's an Ecuadorian TV star, compering a programme called Sorpresa Sorpresa. Well we were so surprised we didn't stop laughing for about fifteen minutes.
We had more luck finding a good restaurant for breakfast the following day. There were some places outside the back of the bus station that do a mean breakfast. Local indians were tucking in to enormous plates of rice and stew. I opted for a fried egg and steaming cup of coffee. We were off south to Cuenca, a five and a half hour trip through fantastic Andean scenery. There are reckoned to be over 45 separate indian tribes in Ecuador, and we spotted subtle variations in clothing and facial features. In the village of Canar, they wear minute bowler hats, like party hats, adorned with ribbons. As usual the bus was used by locals as a goods transport. One family was moving house, and loaded several items of furniture onto the roof, including a chest of drawers.
Cuenca is Ecuador's third largest city. What it lacks in sophistication it more than makes up for with its colonial charm. There are many markets, but to our disappointment, the locals seem to me more interested in 'ropas americana' - cheap jeans and t-shirts than traditional alpaca jumpers. I eventually found a stall selling great wool jackets, and haggled with the owner a while before buying one. It's very itchy, but Katie assures me it looks very 'cool' - so that's all right then. The local speciality for breakfast is a curious mixture of popped maize with scrambled eggs. I decided to give it a go - but found it to be pretty revolting. It was raining in the streets and we spent the morning trudging through puddles on errands, developing photos, changing money, collecting laundry.
We had a flight booked the following day from Tumbes in Northern Peru to Cusco. We had to think about leaving Ecuador. We felt a bit cheated here - spent too long in Quito chasing after robbers. It was an arduous bus journey out of the Andes. We descended for a full five hours - a massive 2800m drop to the coast. The temperature and humidity rose spectacularly as we dropped. The road had seen better days and was heavily pot-holed. Unfortunately, the bus had no suspension and it was very uncomfortable, so much so that the bus conductor had to rush up and down the bus with bags for people to be sick in. As usual, we were the only gringos on the bus, and people stared at us like we were from the planet zog. A scrawny old man sat had a sack with him which he placed on the floor. I nearly jumped out of my skin when it started moving down the aisle. It was full of chickens, who were very lucky to survive the trip given the crush of people on board. The bus stopped briefly in a mountain town called Santa Isobella, where market traders were basting whole pig carcasses in large streetside braziers and hawking pork crackling and deliciously tender meat. I bought some coconut from a negro with no fingers. As you get closer to the coastal plains, the negro population increases. These are the garifuna, descendants of slaves brought here by the first white settlers. After four solid hours of descent we reached the muggy coastal city of Machala where we had to change buses to take us to the Peruvian border.
The conductor on the new bus was a young woman in tight fitting red suit with long painted fingernails. She's asking for trouble I thought, and sure enough, she was hissed at all the way by an evil looking foul smelling drunk. We were dropped at immigration, a concrete bunker some 6kms before the border. There was a long queue. The immigration officials were still out to lunch - it was gone 3pm by the time they returned. We got chatting to Damian, an American surf dude from Georgia with a straggly beard and floppy hat. He was being hassled by a money changer. "I'm awful confoosed" he confessed, as the hawker bombarded him with numbers. Arithmetic wasn't his strongest suit. "Where y'all from?" he drawled. We agreed to share a taxi with him across the border. After finally getting the necessary stamps in our passports, Damian climbed into the taxi with us "Didn't you have some bags?" I asked. He'd left his rucksack behind in the immigration office. This guy was going to have an interesting 'holiday' if he carried on like this.
We cruised up to the border zone, where there were more money changers here - a bit more choice, so we bargained a reasonable rate of exchange and changed our Sucres into Nuevo Soles. You have to walk into Peru, across a bridge. Nobody actually checks your passport at the border. Immigration is 3kms away, and we were running out of time - it shut at 4pm - and we really didn't want to be left in this limbo land. We hired another cab, a wonderful supercharged f86 Oldsmobile with seats as big as my house. We just made it to immigration in time. A few more stamps in the right places and we were in Peru. The cab took us on to the border town of Tumbes, where we were to stay the night.
You
are reading the story of Adrian and Katie's travels through the
Americas between May and August 1998.
Adrian and Katie put the rat race on hold for a year to travel
the world.
Adrian & Katie's World Tour News - Ecuador
Last Updated: 29 May 1999
Web Page by Adrian Ball (email: [email protected])