Ecuador

Quito

Downtown Quito

I arrived at The Secret Garden Hostel in Quito half an hour after Clare and Marc and half an hour before Carina, the woman I sat next to on the flight from Madrid.  Clare and Marc had arrived shortly after Alex the young American they’d spent time with in Columbia. Clare said at a later date to a girl at a similar seemingly co-incidental meeting ‘of all the hostels in all the world you had to choose this one’.  It becomes less of a co-incidence when you realise that all the back-packers and budget travellers are using The Lonely Planet as their  tour bible and there is only a limited amount of hotels and hostels it has the space to recommend.

I don’t know whether it was the altitude (Quito is 2,880 metres above sea level) or just my general lack of fitness (two sessions of Acqua Zumba were not adequate preparation for coping with the Andes)but the haul up four flights of steep stairs to the reception area and terrace were exhausting.  Yet when I got my breath back and my vision returned to normal the view from the terrace was stupendous. The thousands of lights of Quito spread along the valley and sprawled up the hillsides, the towers of The Basilica del Volta were illuminated beneath us and the dark shadows of mountain tops loomed above.  The crawl up the stairs was worth it for the view, although in the next few days I might have crawled up their steepness less often if it wasn’t for the fact that the bar was also located up there. Each time I arrived at the top, dizzy and panting for breath I knew I deserved the beer.

That first evening, sitting on the terrace in the cool night air looking at that view I fell in love with Quito.  The next morning muzzy headed from a combination of jet lag, beer and altitude I ventured out to find if ‘the love at first sight’ euphoria would survive in the harsh light of day, and the light at altitude on the equator is harsh. It did. Quito is wonderful. Quito was one of two cities (the other was Krakow) designated as a World Cultural Heritage site in 1978. It’s Old Town has the most complete examples of Spanish architecture in Central and South America, it’s churches, cathedrals, public buildings and convents are perfectly, colourfully preserved.  Its squares are tree-lined and well kept. But it is not a museum it is a living and vibrant city. The buildings in this part of the old town give a feel of a European city although the volcanic peaks that appear at the end of every street belie that image. The Spanish started to build here in 1530 and there remain no sites of the pre-Spanish (or pre-Columbian as it is known) Inca period. Yet it is untrue to say there are no signs of the Incas or the pre-Inca civilisation, it is there in the smooth brown planed faces of the indigenous Indian population. They are the other indicator that I am not in a European City, these poncho clad, trilby hatted indigenous people, selling street food and scarves and alpaca blankets, carrying babies wrapped so snugly you could think we are in the Artic not on the Equator.

We went for lunch in a restaurant that had occupied the same space for over fifty years.  We were served by elderly well dressed waiters and ate amongst local Quito residents, although this place was recommended in the Lonely Planet the back pack contingent weren’t here, they were probably in the KFC down the road. I had a lunch of garlic prawns with rice, roast potatoes, vegetables and salad, bread and a glass of wine.  That finished me for the day. I left Clare and Marc to explore and crawled back to my room viewing every incline with trepidation and the stairs with complete horror.

On the Sunday when Marc and Clare were having a Spanish lesson I wandered back into the Centro Historica.  The muzzy head and the feeling of not quite being in the real world had cleared and I was no longer finding the steep slopes such a challenge.  On a Sunday a number of roads throughout the city and most of the roads and squares in the Old Town are closed to traffic and only used by cyclists and public transport.  It is actually more hazardous crossing the roads on a Sunday because Quito’s horrendous traffic means that for most of the day vehicles are at a standstill or crawl along.  On a Sunday with the streets free of traffic the bikes zoom passed, emerging from side streets, from across squares and bombing downhill.  To venture across the road on a Sunday in downtown Quito is to risk serious injury.

 

Everybody was out this Sunday, families and lovers, hawkers and shoe-shine boys, old men sat chatting on the benches in the squares.  The churches were doing a roaring trade, I was encouraged to visit an Evangelical Church and the music and dancing were so lively I nearly got religion and joined it.  The cafes and ice-cream sellers were busy, the street stalls sold roast corn and roast bananas and empanadas. In one square a band played and couples danced in front of them, mainly older couples dancing to the salsa beat.  I ventured away from the main squares into the area were the local people lived, bravely (although slowly)tackling the steep inclines.  I looked at the food cooking in large pots outside of cafes and couldn’t identify anything except a pan of liver and onions. Children (all well wrapped up) were playing in the traffic free streets, well cared for dogs lounged in doorways. The sun was out and it was getting hot, I was grateful for my sunglasses, the glare of the sun against the white walls was blinding.  I meandered back to the main square.  The guards at The Presidential Palace were swopping shifts with a lot of stamping and pointing of spears and clicking of cameras.  I thought I would try and find somewhere to sit at the shady side of the square and have a fluorescent pink ice-cream that a Panama hatted, long woollen sock and high heeled shoe wearing young lady was selling.  But there wasn’t a shady side to the square.  At noon on the Equator there is no shady side to the square.  At noon on the Equator even my substantial form didn’t cast a shadow.

Onwards towards the Amazon

Transport in The Amazon Basin

Marc had the address for the night bus to Lago Agrio so we checked it out on Sunday afternoon.  It was in a quiet back street, not the sort of street we wanted to hang about in on a sunny Sunday afternoon so we definitely didn’t fancy standing there at midnight carrying back-packs and with our money and passports secreted about our person. The directions also said the bus might be full and advised pre-booking but failed to give any information about where and how to pre-book.  Marc went into overdrive and after much internet research, telephone calls and speaking to other people who were heading towards the Amazon Jungle and he found us an alternate bus service.  Clare and I lounged on the bed, drank beer and offered words of encouragement.  At about 9pm we arrived at the offices of the alternative bus service, reserved our seats and then sat in the waiting room watching the television.  I didn’t need to understand Spanish to follow the program.  Three judges listened to the claims of the contestants and then bet money on the ability of the contestants to do the tasks they had set themselves.  The man who swallowed needles and then regurgitated them threaded onto a length of cotton won.  The girl pulling a van by hair was second, the Amazon tribesman harpooning fruit with his blowpipe was third.  It was so naff I’m sure it will be appearing on a TV in your living room soon, although the blow-pipe wielding Amazon Tribesman may have to be replaced with a knife wielding gang member from the Isle of Dogs.

The bus left almost on time. It was comfortable with seats that reclined so far that the passenger in front practically had her head on my lap.  The on-board TV showed a film with a lot of noise and a high body count.  We shot out of Quito and when the racket from the film came to an end I and most of the other passengers slept.  We were woken abruptly sometime in the early hours of the morning when the bus stopped, the door slammed open and a policeman in a black rain-cape came aboard and proceeded to address us at length.  My Spanish is limited, I can do menu Spanish I have no problem translating all the ingredients of a paella and I can tell a goat stew from a chicken stew. From a childhood watching Westerns I also do cowboy Spanish.  I can say a cheery ‘Adios Amigos’ or even ‘Manyana Hombres’ with the right degree of menace.  Sadly, I couldn’t understand the majority of what our voluble policeman was saying apart from the repetitive ‘Manyana’ and ‘Cinco Horas’ but  I did think he had a nice smile.  Clare and Marc didn’t think he had a nice smile they thought he looked threatening.  They had heard travellers tales and read in guidebooks about fake policemen who boarded tourist buses and robbed the passengers.  Rudely awoken by this unscheduled stop Clare imagined we were about to be robbed, Marc thought the policeman was about to produce a machine gun and mow us all down.  I hadn’t read any warnings about fake policemen I’d only read warnings about night buses attacked by criminal gangs and terrorist organisations.  We were nearing the Columbian Border and the Equator/Columbian border region is not an area that tourists are advised to linger in.  Members of the FARC organisation, an organisation renowned for kidnapping and extortion, are being pushed out of Columbia and are taking up residence in the remoter border areas.  There has also been a clampdown on the drug barons and gangs in Columbia and again they are taking refuge in this area.  I thought maybe the policeman with the nice smile, who diligently repeated his words of wisdom individually to all the pretty girls on the bus might be warning us about gangs of criminals or terrorists.  When the bus set off and then, half a mile further down the road, stopped, switched off all lights and sound and stayed put I was sure that we had been told of potential attacks and advised it would be safer to stay there for another five hours when daylight would make it safer to continue our travels.

The passengers mostly went back to sleep, the silence only broken by snores and whispers until one passenger decided to share his iplayer playlist with us, a selection of banal pop songs.  Eventually there was a shout from the back of the bus which I took to be the Spanish equivalent of ‘switch that bloody noise off’ and the music stopped and silence returned. I peered out of the window but the black bulk of a mountainside obliterated all views. Craning my neck to look behind I could see lights approaching, snaking their way up the tortuous road. Eventually as the lights rounded the last bend they blazed into the bus and then were abruptly switched off. The vehicle drew level with our bus and stopped, the engine rumbled for a while then it was turned off.  Once again silence and darkness reigned.  I could see the shadowy lorry and it seemed to be full of men, moving around, talking quietly. My imagination went into overdrive, it could only have been a lorry load of armed men who had managed to locate us in the dark: should I wake Clare and tell her to hide her precious engagement ring?  Should I secrete my passport and spare cash card somewhere safe?  I sat awake with ears tuned for the slightest noise, nerves on full alert with no chance of being able to get back to sleep. 

When I awoke it was dawn and the early morning grey light revealed a queue of buses and lorries.  There had been a landslip about a mile ahead and the truckload of workers who were stopped next to us were donning high vis jackets and helmets and preparing to go ahead to clear it.  It took a lot less than the predicted five hours to move the landslip and as the sun dispersed the mist from the deep valley below our queue of vehicles inched forward up the mountainside, bumped over the fallen mud and debris and went on their way.  The good thing about over-night buses is that they give passengers a chance to sleep on long journeys, the downside is that you don’t get a chance to gaze out of the window at the passing landscape.  I was quite pleased we were now travelling in daylight and I could see where we were going, I became less pleased as I looked down into precipitous drops into deep valleys only inches away from the wheels of the bus.  At the road sides, particularly at sharp bends, there stood a disturbing number of shrines and crosses.

Two hours later we reached Lago Agrio a town at the centre of Ecuadors burgeoning oil industry.  President Correa of Ecuador has asked for (and being refused) $3.6 billion over a 12 year period so as not extend oil exploration into the Yasuni National Park. The Yasuni National Park is thought to be the area with the most bio-diverse species in the world and at least two tribes of uncontacted tribes.  On leaving the coach the heat and humidity hit us, a huge contrast to the cool clear air of Quito.  We found our next meeting point, a hotel with tables on the busy main street where we were sat in front of a late breakfast, told to eat it quickly and were then loaded onto another bus. This was a rather more downmarket bus than the previous and we rattled along for another two hours through lush tropical vegetation.  The grass topped houses raised above the ground with chickens and pigs scratting in the ground around them, the banana trees and the yellow flowers all reminded me of The Philippines. There was an election in the offing and the frequent posters and billboards advertising the candidates could have been superimposed on Filipino election posters.  In common the faces of the candidates were pale and well fed and didn’t seem to include the indigenous population, the only difference was that in The Philippines there would have been more women standing for election.

We headed towards the Cuyabeno National Park, stopped at a bridge where our luggage was loaded onto a boat. We all donned life jackets and sat in long outboard motor driven canoe.  Two hours down river, with the driver skilfully avoiding fallen trees and hidden sand banks and with us passengers oohing and aaahing at the most beautiful butterflies and birds we arrived at our home for the next five days: Samona Lodge.  All the grass roofed houses and rooms were set on the raised walkways surrounding the communal areas are named after the local wildlife. Clare and Marc were in Toucan Lodge, Alex is in Tapir Lodge, our new travelling companions Suzie and Terry are in Jaguar Lodge.  I am in Room 13 Tarantula Lodge.

Tarantula Lodge - Room 13 is the penthouse suite