Wales! Um, no Ecuador...the volcano was a give away I suppose

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A new year, a new country. We spent the best part of a day travelling into southern Ecuador from Piura. The ride was particularly scenic, with the landscape crumpled up like the front end of a Renault Laguna after a ram raid, there were plenty of valleys to navigate. It's all very green, some greens look a little surreal, like, they'd been added by a special effects team at a Hollywood studio. The whole place reminded me of Wales or Lake District, except on steroids and scaled up to gargantuan proportions. And there was't anyone called Dai with an abundance of sheep following him. And with sunshine and 25C heat. The border crossing was no problem which I'd not expected, and we got chatting to an Argentine priest who pointed us in the right direction at our interchange. As the sun was setting we ended our journey in Vilcabamba, and frantically searched for a place to stay. We got lucky with the beautiful Hidden Garden. New Year celebrations are different here. Everyone appears to make our buy some kind of mannequin, dummy or paper mache figurine which bares a resemblence to someone famous or a rubbish politician. These are displayed, alongdie humours messages and people go around viewing them. Everything was pretty relaxed, we could buy alcohol and consume it in the plaza, the police were laughing and joking with everyone and kids were having firecracker wars up and down the streets. It was a party atmosphere once the band came on, despite the fact that they had only one dance that they could do, and by midnight everyone was merry. Then it all went nuts. Crazy. Piles of the effigies were erected at each corner of the plaza and at every junction in town. Then they were set alight. Fireworks started going off everywhere and the music crancked up to 11. Just when it all started feeling a bit 5th November-ish, people started leaping through and over the fires. It apparently gives strength for the new year and it comes accompanied by a delightful BBQ fragance.



We awoke the next day, relatively better off than we had any right to be after consuming the local sugarcane/orange liquer punch. A walk through the local ecological reserve was in order and some napping followed. Vilcabamba is in a lovely location, but it's majesty and appeal is ruined somewhat by the abundance of American and British hippy retirees. They are attracted here by the "energy" or something, possibly they just want to get more for their money. They do however spout some of the most ridiculous nonsense I've ever had the misfortune to hear "Bi-Polar disorder is caused by birth control pills," "let the angels protect you" (seriously!), "Cuenca was so polluted, I was coughing up blood" there was also a gem of a one about cancer and Britain's "polluted" lifestyle which I can't quite recall. Plus they're tended to be huge hypocrits, lamenting the loss of the traditional character of the place, while buying up businesses, setting up absurd natural remedy stores, reiki and reflexology clinics (if they worked, medicine would be all over it, I can't abide this kind of non-thinking...engage your brains people!), only mingling with fellow expats and generally driving up prices themselves by being so numerous. It could have been a wonderful place, but it I was glad to be just passing through. Give it a few years and it'll be a full on hippy, new age, natural remedy nonsense town, like little 70's San Fransisco or something.

After escaping possible indoctrination and before breathing in too much dumbness we headed to Cuenca, a colonial town of big reputation further along the Andes. We spent a fruitful day trapesing around a host of muesums, ethnographical and historical in nature, with a genuinely fascinating array of pottery (Jeez that is sad to type). The whole place was generally lovely and rather quaint for a city. Plus it had a bar that did beer or hot chocolate (Cocoa Y Canela) which had amazing chocolate cake. Mama Negrita's had wonderful empanadas verde (fried corn things) too, a must really if you come here. Following al that culture we headed north again to Latacunga, a non-descript town but for it's proximity to the Cotapaxi Volcanoe. We paid a fortunte to go visit the mountain (US$40!!), an although it's always cool to climb the side of an acitive volcano, it wasn't worth the money. We literally walked about 200m in the snow to the refuge, looked at a glacier, had some hot chocolate and then climbed back down. I'd expected to do a bit more walking and to see more of the national park which looked wonderful on the internet. Lesson learned about Ecuadorian tours! Also the whole mountain was covered in cloud, no fault of the tour agency of course, but if you can't see it, what's the point really? Like knowing there is an amazing burger in the next room but the door is locked and a big bad man had just taken all your money from your wallet too...uncool.

At least Quito was pretty awesome. The food was abundant and amazing (steer clear of mexican though). There was an Indian restaurant in the new town which made pretty decent curries, and we'd been dying to have a curry for a few months! Expensive but decadent. Awesome T-bone steaks at the Fried Banana, perfectly cooked and delicious. Probably the second best steak I've had in South America. Street food, or local cafes are the way to go for lunch though. Two courses and a drink for £3. It's great. Usually some kind of rice dish with meat and fried banana. Mmmm. There is a cool museum at the Casa Cultura which is devoted to the gold found in Ecuador...plenty of it and very well made. The Basilica is awesome. It is huge and copies the style of early Medieval, European Cathedrals (looks a bit like Durham Cathedral inside), except it's made of concrete. It's beautiful inside and out. The climb to the roof, across the gables was pretty grim, but the view was worth it. We had a bit of a disaster trying to do paragliding, with the guy not showing up and leaving us in an unknown part of town (for info, if you want to do this with Fly Ecuador, make sure you don't pay up front, and know exactly where you are meeting, the guy seemed like a bit unreliable and unable to keep time). Then the tour we were going to take on foot around the town didn't start at all! Not a problem, we have feet and eyes so we could do it ourselves. Quito isn't too big so it was fairly easy. Some impressive architecture and history, although the Calle Ronda is majorly overrated. We met a German guy on our way up to El Panecillo, who was the spitting image of Mork from Ork, but who was running away from two would be muggers! We decided to take a taxi instead, safer and quicker. Luckily it wasn't us getting in to trouble! The view from the top was pretty, but that's about all I can say as it's literally a view point. For a real insight into Ecuador you just need to head to the park on the weekend. It's a crazy place to be, with native guys playing their version of volleyball, with their ridiculousl long hair tied back in plaits. Old guys play a game a bit like boules excpet the rules were unfathomable, except that the losers have to cough up some cash. Families are out in force and every blade of grass is given over to impromptu football games. It's brilliant, the atmosphere was wonderful and everyone just seemed to be enjoying themsleves.

Before heading to Colombia we made a stop off at the volcanic crater lake of Cotachi. This meant we'd be back in the northern hemisphere for the first time since August! There is a monument near Quito celebrating the Equator, but they put the monument and the line in the wrong place...probably making it the most pointless thing ever! But the crater lake is anything but pointless. It's terrific. The scale of it is hard to decribe, but it has two islands in the middle which are hills, ful size hills. Its about 15km around the outside of the crater, meaning that when this volcano went up back in the Days of Yore, it undoubtedly left a bit of a mess over half of Ecuador. They're used to it now though. Barely a year goes by without one of their hundreds (guessing) of active volcanoes deciding to cause a bit of trouble and dirty the place up, just as soon as they finished cleaning up the last disaster. Apparently a volcano was making a nuisance of itself when we were here, but it probably just wanted attention (good or bad, it really doesn't matter to them) so we figured the best way to deal with that kind of behaviour was to ignoe it completely in the hope that it would settle down and behave! Anyhow, the lake was ace. We hiked around it in a couple of hours, the path was fairly easy, even if the wind got up quite a bit, threatening to throw us into the lake 100m below. On the one side you looked down on the lake, on the other you had amazing views of one of two valleys and several volcanoes. All very cool, a nice way to finish Ecuador. We decided against the Galapagos islands, primarly on the grounds of cost and time, but we'll be back for that...onwards to Colombia (hopefully we get to have coffee and that Shakira isn't an ever present on the radio).

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Photos

Cotacachi Crater Lake
Northern Ecuador

Vilcabamba
From the Ecoreserve

Donkey Effigy
I think this sums up what we all feel about Bankers and Politicians...

Rituals
Fire jumping FFS! Like New Year isn't crazy enough...

Cuenca
Main Plaza

Cotapaxi
5897m in height!

Very Cold
At 5000m...snowing in the tropics.

Basilica Quito
A wonderful building

View of Quito
From the Basilica roof

Ecuador
Like Wales, only warmer and fewer sheep!