Otavalo and a bike ride to Puyo.

Hola! So for concerned readers I am not in the Amazon. Unfortunately the trip that I wanted to go on fell through in Baños. So, I took a bus back to Quito and spent the night there, in ´The Secret Garden,´a very nice, popular hostel next to Parque San Blas, right outside of old Quito. The Secret Garden has maybe three or four floors--you kind of start to lose track. At the very top is a metal spiral staircase that leads to the rooftop terrace. It has a wonderful view of the city, and they serve beer and food up there as well. There are loads of nice young folks there, and they provide internet and laundry (you have to pay for it, but its there). Past 9 o clock or so though I wouldn´t do much walking around San Blas, or Old Quito. The guidebook says that Old Town is actually safer then the touristy New Town...I´m not sure if I agree. Very late at night neither are really places you should be chilling on the street, but in the tourist district there are a lot more people around at night. For some reason that puts one at ease, even if there are some sketchy folks around. Take taxis after 10 though....

So...now I am in Otavalo, a medium sized city that is known for it´s huge markets, especially on Saturdays. I got here a little late today so missed the food market which is supposed to be the best part, but the city is bustling. Just about every street in the downtown district is lined with ´merchandis´for purchase. Lots of neat weavings, blankets, shirts, scarfs, hats, etc. Otavalo´s weaving tradition comes from their strong indigenous ties (I assume). There are a lot of highland indigenous folk. Most of the guys have pony tails, and the elderly men wear these al capone like hats, with a sweater vest. Al capone hats really don´t do these hats justice, but it´s somewhere in that family. Many women in Quito wear the same hats, usually accompanied by a dark shawl wrapped around their shoulders (often times they carry their kids in it, or produce..big loads), a long skirt and stockings with leather shoes--if they´re well off, many are in their barefeet. I don´t know any other way to describe them except they are exceptional, beautiful. Driving through rural areas you often see these women hunched over in their formal attire carrying what look like back breaking loads up hills that the bus is struggling with. I haven´t mustered up the courage to ask one of these women for a picture yet...but it would be way better than any landscape shot I´ve taken.

I intended to write about this bike ride I took from Baños to Puyo, and then I got all carried away with Otavalo and Quito...On Thursday I rented a mountain bike in Baños (5$) and rode down to a town called Puyo, about 60 km away. Most of the ride is down hill, but not as much as I wish. There is maybe 20 km of climbing, which on a mountain bike, is not the easiest task. But, reaching the top of hills and then getting some spectacular views of the beginning of the amazon basin while zooming down winding roads makes it totally worth it. I wore this ridiculous helmet that would always slide back when the wind hit it completely uncovering my forehead...it kind of looked like one of those old british cop helmets, except flattened down. The ride to Puyo is called Ruta de las Cascadas (Route of the Waterfalls)...I likened it, in a very crude way, to the cascade drive on I80 east outside of Portland. There are 8-10 quite spectacular waterfalls in a short distance, they are really cool in the beginning, but then, unless it´s really friggin big a waterfall isn´t that exciting. The beginning part of the bike ride is the one most common with touristas, there is a bungie jump like thing maybe ten km from the start--sadly I didn´t bring enough dough to do it. And there are a series of cable cars that for a buck or two will take you across the valley that is carved out by the river (the name of which I now can´t remember). After 30 or 40 km things of this sort really diminish and the change in the flora and fauna is very noticeable. Basically everything gets a lot bigger, greener, and hotter. And dudes on ATV four wheelings stop cruising by you. At one point I took a gravel road to what I thought was going to be a waterfall. This road sort of jutted off to the left before an iffy looking spot in the main road, so I decided to go for it. I never did see the waterfall, I think I was too busy sweating and fighting off flies while trying to ride up this gravel road. For a while I really thought I took the wrong way, there were abandoned houses, and at one point the gravel road just ended and I had to pick up the bike and forge a little shin deep stream. I was getting a little bit nervous...but it worked out. The only other time I was nervous on the ride was going through the first and only tunnel that you have to go through--I should say that for most of the ride you are on the main road with cars, but you would get re-routed around most car tunnels on gravel or paved paths to the side--the first tunnel you have to go through. It´s pretty long, and completely dark--going through these tunnels on a bus on the way back I thought it was the kind of dark where you go in and come out missing your pants or something, and maybe there´s some dude sitting next to you that wasn´t before....what I´m trying to say is that it was dark. What makes the ride through the tunnel exciting is when maybe half way through you hear a car behind you (this is a one way tunnel, fairly narrow). The car sounds really loud, and I can see the end of the tunnel, but it´s a ways away and you can´t go that fast on this mountain bike, the car keeps getting louder and I keep peddling harder and harder, and then it seems like it´s gotta be really close, it´s really loud. And then the tunnel ends and I start to wind up this hill, and maybe 20 seconds later this little truck creeps out of the tunnel going quite slow. The tunnel really exaggerates sounds. Anyway the last 10km or so are pretty much flat and you bike through little towns, lots of people check you out cause you´re some dude biking through their town, and then Puyo. I maybe spent 30 minutes in Puyo before throwing my bike on the bus and riding back to Baños. The next morning I woke up really early and went to the Baños of the Virgen de Agua Santa, and expected to see nobody. But there were a ton of ecuadorians bathing...it was a great way to start the morning.

One final note I want to make about Baños. If looking to do an Amazon trip, or really any thing where yo need a guide, shop around first. Not only will you get a better price, or at least figure out who is trying to rip you off, but it´s also sort of funny. All the guide services basically run the same trips, and for the most part have the same sales strategy. They like to use visual aides. From one Amazon trip I was interested in they would show a guy fishing for pirahnnas, a girl getting her face painted by some indigenous folk, and everybody lying down in hammocks. What´s funny is that many of them use the exact same photographs...the exact same ones. I don´t know if I would have noticed right away except that there is this one dude in a couple of the photos who´s wearing a cubs shirt...how am I going to miss that. Anyway I´m in Otavalo for a day or two then will probably go to Ibarra, 20km or so to the north, and then to the coast. I hope I can still get to the jungle, maybe in Peru, or maybe from Cuenca.

ps. Sorry for not putting up many pictures. It´s just not that easy on these computers...most of them are pretty slow so it takes a while per picture...I would try to put some up now but don´t have my camera. Hope all is well with you guys...

---

---