Advertisement
A lazy rest day in San Agustín after our epic ride into the Páramo and we're ready to say goodbye to Colombia after seven absolutely wonderful weeks - it's Ecuador's turn now. Despite our as-the-crow-flies proximity to the Ecuadorian border the broken geography of this part of the world means no fewer than five separate buses and two days to get to the border.
A short pickup ride takes us to the large town of Pitalito, where we climb into the very overloaded back of another pickup - complete with crazy crowing roosters in a special carrying case (see previous entry) - which takes us, at insane speed, to the small town of Mocoa. The road twists and turns for three hours and leaves us both a not so fetching shade of green. No
bolsas were required. Just. From Mocoa another pickup (normal buses can't really deal with the road) takes us to the city of Pasto, another five or so hours away. On this particularly journey we meet the exception (I reckon this is the only one in the country) to the Colombian rule: a careful, courteous public transport driver! He stops on narrow sections to let oncoming traffic
past (rather than just step on it, close his eyes and hope for the best), turns down his radio when other passengers (well, there are only four of us) make a phone call and everything! Like, wow! Our fellow passengers are very amused when their
gringo neighbour offers them very Colombian chunks of
panela sugar as a snack...
Pasto isn't really worth much time - we're only here to spend the night and savour a last Colombian
jugo de lulo before we leave. The following morning it's on bus number four to the border town of Ipiales and number five to the actual Ecuadorian border, where the formalities are quick and friendly.
¡Buenos días, Ecuador! Yet more buses take us to the first Ecuadorian town of any size after the border: Ibarra. It's a pretty town with two lovely, leafy squares and sits in the shadow of Volcán Imbabura, a 4,630 metre volcano. It seems like a silly idea to built a city right under the nose of a volcano, but in much of Ecuador avoiding volcanos would leave you nowhere to build! The real reason for coming to Ibarra, however, is of the
helado variety. Ibarra is
home to the Ecuadorian tradition of
helado de paila - this unique ice-cream and sorbet-making technique involved manually stirring a mixture of fruit juice, sugar, water (and sometimes milk) in a huge copper bowl over a wooden basin filled with straw, ice and salt. The best, and original, place to try it is at Rosalía Suárez, a lovely. quaint little institution in central Ibarra - they've been making
helado de paila here for over a century. The flavours are what you'd expect: oodles of tropical fruit. There's
guanábana (soursop),
maracuyá (yellow passion fruit),
taxo (banana passion fruit, what we've been calling
curuba in Colombia for the past few weeks),
mora...all the usual suspects. I don't know what the special technique does, but it's to die for. In the space of less than twenty-four hours we eat no fewer than 12 scoops, trying every single flavour except for the evil rum-raisin (we both agree on this one). Alex even likes the
lulo flavour (although it's called
naranjilla here). On our second visit the morning after our arrival, two lovely elderly ladies are making the
helado in full view. They can see we are transfixed and one lady offers Alex a go,
showing her how to spin the copper basin around on the ice while stirring with the other hand. We weren't expecting gourmet ice-cream in Ecuador - it looks like this country will be full of surprises!
Half an hour south of Ibarra is a much more famous place. The town of Otavalo is widely known as the home of the largest open air market in the whole of the Americas, and Saturday is
the day to be there.
Every Saturday, this huge market occupies the central Plaza de Ponchos, radiating out to fill up the entire town centre for many blocks in all directions. The market offers an interesting mix of locally-made crfats - almost exclusively for foreigners - and clothes, shoes, food and household goods very much for
otavaleños and the huge number of people who flock in from villages and hamlets for miles around. Each section has its delights: the "gringo" section offers a mind-boggling selection of beautiful alpaca wool blankets and clothes, jewellery in local designs, and a generous sprinkling of cheap, dubious items. The section frequented by Ecuadorians, despite the more prosaic nature of the merchandise - giant cooking pots, buckets, wellies, clothes -
has a far more interesting local flavour. One particularly fascinating aspect of Otavalo's market is the number of people in traditional dress. Hardly anybody under the age of fifty is in Western clothing, and most of it is certainly not for the benefit of curious outsiders. Such is the pride of
otavaleños in their sartorial traditions that, even in this large and modern city - bank and post office employees as well as many ordinary citizens (overwhelmingly women, the older generation aside) can be seen in beautifully embroidered white blouses, long straight skirts, elaborately-folded headscarves, long plaited black hair and jewellery. Many older men go about their Saturday shopping in calf-length white trousers, canvas espadrilles, dark blue ponchos and ponytails, all topped off with a fedora-style hat. The market is a market and not a zoo, so the photos I've included are those I managed to take discreetly from a distance.
For me, though, the highlight was the food market, a covered building bursting with activity. Tiny lunch stalls abounded, well a full meal might set you back $2 (interesting side-note - Ecuador has for some years used the US dollar, having unceremoniously abandoned the
sucre) if you splash
out. We made some tasty discoveries there such as
cevichocho, a delicious mix of roasted maize, hominy (great big fat soft kernels of white maize, treated with lye to remove the outer skin - a traditional American staple since precolumbian times), tomatoes, onion and lime juice. Whole pigs - their mouths held open not with an apple but a corn cob! - roasted everywhere. In the produce section, trestle tables heaved with dozens of varieties of
papa (potato), as well as grains, beans, fruit and vegetables of all descriptions. It was an absolute treat for all the senses.
Having spent hours perusing the vast variety of goodies on offer in Otavalo, on the following Sunday we headed south, crossing the Equator on the way (we were very disappointed to find it wasn't painted red...), to Quito - Ecuador's capital. Beautifully sited at 2,800 metres altitude and surrounded by mist-shrouded hills, Quito was, for us, the most attractive South American capital so far. The city centre is compact collection of beautiful squares, unbelievably ornate churches, monasteries and pretty streets with remarkably little modern architecture. It's a bustling place and a most pleasant place to spend a couple of days. Many
parts of the city - including its main hotel and restaurant quarter, Mariscal Sucre - have a reputation for being dangerous after dark, and certainly the number of heavily armed security guards (not just in banks, but outside restaurants and even some hostels) suggests the reputation is justified. Taking taxis after dark and watching your pockets on the trolley-buses, which are supposedly crawling with thieves, are a must. Still, we both very much enjoyed the city, which also happens to be a completely unexpected gastronomic hotspot: on our one full day in Quito we had Vietnamese
pho for lunch and an Indian curry in the evening. The curry was most authentically British - which is high, if paradoxical, praise!
Being in Quito has also given us a chance to organise our movements over the next week, the highlight of which is sure to be our trip to Ecuador's slice of the Amazon rainforest. Eastwards we go!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.098s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0264s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb