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Published: December 10th 2008
Dancing Queens
At the Banos ParadeAndean Ecuador - From Cotopaxi down to Vilcabamba
Sometimes I wonder if Im actually in Scotland and not in Ecuador at all. The scenery here is gorgeous - dramatic isolation and quite spookily barren in places, very Scottish, and some parts of would even remind you a bit of Ireland. That is, apart from the fact that every time you try to climb a few steps or a go up a wee hill your lungs fail to work properly and your heart feels like its about to burst through your ribcage. Altitude and me are not friends! The further south you go, the more beautiful it becomes and the more 'South American' it feels - the jungle aside, of course.
After Sani Lodge, we headed to Cotopaxi, an active volcano about 1.5 hours south of Quito. There were about seven of us heading up altogetherm, and we´ve been travelling together pretty much ever since. There is Bernhard & Lisa-Marie from South Africa, Linsey from The States, Darren from Oz and Izzy from the UK (who :-( has gone home now). We stayed in the middle of nowhere, in a lovely hostel called The Secret Garden, which was fantastic
- apart from the whinging kids that is (kittens over kids any day). They are an eco-place with a few hours electricity every day, a stone for hand washing your clothes, veg gardens, compost heaps, sheep, pigs, chickens, guinea pigs and rabbits (yes, for eating Eimear, but dont worry, we didnt sample any Bonny!). We went horse riding, which was by far Simon´s favourite experience of our entire trip to date and will be hard to top...he specifically asked for the equine equivalent of Driving Miss Daisy, and he got a fat, short-ass little horse, that was so slow he christened her Thunderbolt. It was very funny, the only time it would even try to trot, was when my horse took off and it didnt want to be left out. Otherwise, she completely ignore Simon, his heels and the branch he resorted to using to giddy her up! He was a tad frustrated by the end of the day! I, on the other hand, started out on Horse-Of-Satan, who within a two minutes of me sitting on it, reared up into the air, walloped me on the head twice with its head and then threw me right off onto the
flat of my back. I was a bit shook, had a bit of a bump and graze, but was actually fine. But I switched horses for the second slowest house of the lot. I kind of enjoyed it, as it has to be said I´m not the mae-west at horse riding, and my arse was in ribbons for about two days afterwards.
Once we´d recovered from the horse-inflicted pains, we decided to hike up the volcano to the glacier, which is at 5000m, higher than any moutain in Europe apparently. Well my jaysus, it was unbelieveably difficult! The altitude utterly kills you (well, me anyway) - your lungs gasp for air and just cant get enough, and your heart feels like its about to explode and your legs are like lead weights. I had to keep stopping every 10 meters or so. And we only started from about 4200m, so its not like we had all that far to go. On top of that, the volcano was cloud covered, so we were shrouded in mist and at times you couldnt see your hand in front of your face. At one point, I couldnt see Simon up ahead, or the
Swiss girls behind me (I wasnt last, yay!), and the path dropped away on either side of me. The altitude kind of makes you fuzzy-headed as well, so it was a bit disorientating. But as we reached the glacier at 5000m, the clouds lifted and we could see nearly all the way to the summit at 6000m (no way was I attempting that) and down into the moon-scape valley below. Despite the difficultly, it was really worth doing.
After Cotopaxi, the seven of us, did a short day-version of the Quilotoa loop en route to Banos, in a pick-up. Quiloto is another volcano, but not as high up and the crater is filled with this green James-Bond type lagoon. Once again, the top was hidden in clouds and we couldnt see nothin´! As we descended below the cloud line, the lagoon came into view. It was really cool, almost like being on a coastal cliff, but completely hemmed in. There was even spots in the lagoon where the water was bubbling, presumably from hot springs at the base of the crater. It was just as well the descent was misty, because if Id had seen how far down, and
Horses & llamas
This is the horse that didnt throw me! therefore up again, we´d have to climb, I may have chickened out! The climb is from 3600m to 4000m, and this time, while the others scampered up the hill, I had Izzy to keep me company and make me feel less inept and unfit! It was our turn then in the back of the pick up all the way to Banos.
Banos (Baths) is a nice, albeit touristy, town, nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains. One side of it actually sits on the edge of a canyon. So its a pretty dramatic location and we all ended up staying there for about 6 nights - eating, drinking and even managing to be active. Simon threw himself off another man-made structure, we went mountain biking, quad biking and climbed one of the town-side mountains in an attempted to get fit for the Inca Trail. Luckily, we avoided the angry cow that had charged Izzy and tried to gore her the day before on the same path. It was a cow, not a bull. Seriously. Have you ever heard of a cow-attack! She was fine, just a bruised leg and possibly ego. But she´s a great story to tell now!
I was tempted to go paragliding in Banos, but bottled it again! We went up to the cool place, Casa Arbol en Ciel (Treehouse in the Sky) where this old dude owns a sloping field on top of a moutain, where this tree grows right at the edge and he´s built a tree house with a swing. When you swing, it feels like you are about to fly right out over the valley. I was squealing with fear, but it was like being a child again! There was also the Banos Anniversary parade on while where there where which was pretty cool. All the locals out in their finery, the teenagers all getting pished, trying to score one another. It seemed like every child had a role in the parade from belly-dancing (inappropriate for an 8 year old much?) to sitting on floats trying not to cry. They had a rake of beauty queens including some not-so-young ones, which was great to see! There was traditional dancing and gaudy outfits to beat the band. It was great!
Myself, Si and Linsey headed on then to Cuenca for two nights. Well, Cuenca beats Quito hands down in the attractive city
stakes. It´s lovely - full of beautiful old colonial buildings, tree-filled squares and of course, buckets of churches. Quito can stick its world heritage status! And what is more, you dont feel like you are about to be mugged every 10 seconds in Cuenca. For anyone doing a bit of research - skip Quito, spend the time in Cuenca instead. About an hour on the bus from Cuenca is Parque Nacionale Caja, so we went for a day hike. Its a landscape known as the paramo, again at high altitude, with lots of marshy land, lakes, and misty valleys. It was a desolate but very beautiful place, and we spent a good few hours hiking around, me paddy-last as usual (there´s a theme...). Darren arrived down tthat evening so we left Linsey in his capable hands and headed down to Vilcabamba.
Aaahhh, Vilcabamba! It was fabulous! My favourite place in Ecuador by far (not including the jungle, I think). Now its really feeling like South America! The further south we got on the bus, the more gorgeous the scenery got, and the situation of the town itself is just stunning! Its a really small town nestled in the hills
and moutains, and it just feels so chilled and authentic (even though its full of gringos!). Horses randomly meander across the roads. South American music escapes from open windows and doors. Weathered old men try to sell you stones. Really, just regular stones.
Its close to Podocarpus National Park and there are buckets of walks and hikes you can do. We were there for a day or two on our own before Linsey, Darren, LM and Bernhard arrived. We trekked in the Rumi Wilco reserve close to town - a cool little place with tiny, half grown over trails that go up into the hillside and overlook the town. We did this twice, and unfortunately the second time, Linsey slit her ankle open on a rock coming down one trail, so we needed to make a trip to the local hospital where she got four stitches. It was gross - her ankle, not the hospital, and I nearly lost my lunch, but I managed to hold her hand through the stitching without puking on her! As if she didnt have enough to cope with! The day before we had narrowly avoided (I may be exaggerating a wee bit here)
being struck by lightening when we climbed up the mountain on the other side of town to the big crucafix on the hill (they do that alot here, put crosses on hilltops), when a big thunder storm rolled across the valley from Podocarpus N.P on the other side. We had nearly reached the top, but Linsey with her outdoorsy knowledge decided we were too exposed and might be a convenient target for lightening! The view from up there was amazing, although I didnt bring my camera due to ´multiple agressions´ that had happened up there in the past. At the end of the day, no harm, either by opportunistic locals or mother nature came to us.
And so the time came to leave Ecuador...we headed across the border to the Peruvian town of Piura. We´ve all gone our seperate ways now, but are meeting up in Cuzco to spend Christmas together - all except Izzy whose gone home :-(
I dont think I´ve ever seen such a dramatic change between countries by just crossing the border. Peru is WAY poorer than Ecuador. You can see it instantly in the houses, and even the landscape seems much poorer. We
came down from the mountains to scrub & desert, tiny adobe houses, many half built (half fallen) lining the roads in the middle of no where. And also, there´s a lot of rubbish strewn along the sides of the road. When you see wild dogs, vultures and even some children picking through the rubbish, you think to yourself ´this is going to be interesting...
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