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Published: February 27th 2016
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Before getting to Ecuador we had a few things to see in the south of Colombia and celebrate Alice´s 30th birthday!
Alice´s big day saw spent in the small town of Popayan which was a slight anti-climax after all the cool places we´ve been; but she got to have a good chat with her family - it was also a positive to have something of an enforced rest day which is something we´re not very good at giving ourselves.
The reason for being there is we were on route to the even smaller town of San Agustin way off in the hills and pretty far off the main tourist trail. SA was home to a per-Colombian civilization who built hundreds of statues of men, women, animals and animal-human hybrids deep in the Colombian cloud forest. A mixture of planning and luck has us staying at the same hostel at the same time as our friends Betsy and Jake who we had done the Ciudad Perdida hike with, as well white-water rafting a few weeks previous. The hostel was a beautiful place slightly outside town - all bamboo huts, good coffee, comfy chairs and humming birds frittering about. We spent
an afternoon wandering around huge stone sculptures, then the following day, climbed aboard horses. In almost 31 years it was my (Chris) first time on a horse, or on any animal at all probably. Whereas at home you would be lucky to get above a walk on your first lesson we hit full and sustained cantor through the Colombian countryside with our guide yelling and shouting encouragement, it was a teeth-gritting and exciting experience. The statues and views were incidental after you have just prayed to hold on, but it was a great day, and we finished happy and sore back in the centre of town moments before the heavens opened.
The next day Jake joined us on our long winded journey to the Ecuadorian border. Day one of the journey involved 4 pick up trucks and 10 hours of driving, including a high mountain pass known as the trampoline of death (trampoline for all the bumping up and down) the road used to be very dangerous but driving in a small pick up truck with a very careful driver felt safe even as we were passing through the cloud line and visibility was quite low. We finally arrived
in Pasto at nightfall and spent a quite evening and early bed all feeling like our internal organs had been rearranged by the combination of horse riding and bumpy jeeps.
Our second day of border crossing we set out in a minibus to Ipiales, the nearest town to the border. Here we took a slight detour to see El Sanctuario Las Lajas, a cathedral built in the gully of a valley. Here we also had our last ubiquitous Colombian lunch menu, consistantly cheap (1-2 pounds) for a huge portion of soup, rice, beans, fried plantain, meat and salad.
Having arrived with no real expectations we were both really sad to leave Colombia behind having found a country with huge variation of landscape and people so enthusiastic about their own country and very accommodating of our terrible Spanish. I am glad to be going back even if only briefly for our flight back to the UK in June.
After our brief detour to the cathedral we set back out on the road to Ecuador. One of the more confusing border crossings I have ever been through, it felt like there was nothing stopping us from just
walking into Ecuador without anyone checking our passports but I'm glad to say generally uneventful. We then managed to get onto the slowest bus of our trip so far, the journey which should have taken 2 hours being stretched out into 4 hours making it our second day in a row of 10 hours driving.
Our first couple of days in Ecuador were spent at a small town Otavalo famous for a huge market on Saturdays (which we by chance were in town for). We also hiked up to a bird sanctuary to see condors and a falconry display including a black chested buzzard eagle, a bald eagle and a barn owl.
Our next town was Mindo a small village on the edge of cloud forest which unfortunately lived up to its name with heavy down pours several times a day, with the strong equatorial sun between times which made it very hot and humid. We hiked out to a small cable car to the forest with very full and fast flowing waterfalls, we had been looking forward to a cooling swim but the river was much to high and fast. The next morning we managed to catch
some sunny hours to take a zipline course though the forest seeing lovely orchids and flying above birds.
To get to our next destination we had to cross the whole of Quito, we were told it was only two changes on the public transport system so we decided to save the $25 taxi fare and instead pay the 50 cent bus fares. However, our two changes of transport turned out to be four, luckily a friendly policeman on his way home and two trainee nuns (one from the Philippines) showed us the way and 2 hours later we had gone from the bus station in the very north of Quito to another bus station in the very south.
After a night in a fairly uninspiring town which was cold and grey and felt altogether too much like England in October we set out to the Black Sheep Inn in Chugchilian in the mountains. Thanks to a suggestion from Chris' friend we have spent a lovely couple of days at the Inn which is run on ecological principles, communal meals are included in the room rate and they are great at arranging activities - on our first full day
we walked around the rim of Quilotoa and back through towns and villages to the hostel, the lake in the caldera was absolutely breath-taking (as you can hopefully see). Today we walked up to the top of the ridge and had crystal clear views across to where we'd walked the day before.
Sadly we have to leave the Black Sheep tomorrow, but we have a lot of great stuff to look forward to before Chris and Eve fly out to join us on the 10th!
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