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Published: September 2nd 2006
Sorry its been so long in writing this but as you may have already read I have been very busy since I arrived in Quito, Monday 7th August 2006.
On arriving in Quito, I was plagued with a combination of jet lag and altitude sickness straight away….not a good start! But the different smells, sights and general cultural differences in Quito proved that my South American adventure had well and truly begun!!
I decided to leave Quito asap so that I could find a nice quiet place to acclimatise and sort my head out. I booked an 8 day Galapagos cruise starting Thursday 17th August on a boat called the Angelique. This meant leaving Quito and travelling to Guayaquil to catch my flight.
So………. I left Quito firstly for a place called Latacunga, a smallish town about 2 hours south. It was an improvement but still not nice enough for me to relax and adjust to South American life. The only things to do in Latacunga are to climb Cotopaxi volcano (which at 5000+ metres would have been a little too much too soon!) and the Quilotoa loop (which consists of catching buses to various little places for
Cotopaxi
closest Im getting to it!2-3 days, and seeing the Quilotoa crater on the way).
Having decided the second option to be more preferable, early Friday morning I jumped on a bus - what an experience that was! I had to stand up for an hour and a half with more and more people jumping on until the bus was bursting at the seems! The bus climbed through the mountains on tight and twisty roads with the altitude affecting me more and more as the trip went on. I managed to get a seat a while into the journey, only for a little boy behind me to be sick in a bag and then throw it on the floor.... not nice!
When we finally got to the top of the Quilotoa crater I felt like an old man hardly able to walk the 20 or 30 metres to the view point - I never expected altitude sickness to hit me to such an extent! I spent an hour there admiring this beautiful crater filled with emerald green water then caught the next bus down to Latacunga as I definitely wasn’t going to be able to carry on with the rest of the loop!
smoking Tunguruhua
closest I want to get to it! I left Latacunga the next day and arrived in Baños. Wow, what a difference, felt so happy and chilled when I got off the bus. Baños is surrounded by green, green and more green! oh and some waterfalls. Found a nice little place to stay with its own garden with hammocks....nice, and to top it off there were Coleus growing everywhere!! I thought I was in heaven!
The next day I decided to take a leisurely 8km walk up a mountain (as you do) only to hear a deep roar and thundering. The Tunguruhua volcano opposite was smoking!! Was fantastic to look at. On my ascent I also saw my first wild mushroom in Ecuador!
That evening I was relaxing in the hammock at the hostel and saw a hummingbird just a few feet away from me. Mushrooms and humming birds all in one day - I was truly getting down with nature!!!!
Next day I was pretty stiff and decided to go to one of the local thermal pools. They are like small swimming pools, hot and very cloudy, nice and relaxing apart from the constant spitting from the locals over the edge of the pool! Stayed in Baños a couple of nights and just left in time to avoid the eruptions!! Volcano Tunguruhua, not mine!!
Next stop Riobamba. It sounds nice, but it was a little too busy and noisy for me but was going to be my last stop before Guayaquil. I asked at the local tourist information about bus times to Guayaquil, and the man informed me that there were no buses going to Guayaquil because of a landslide (he had to get his dictionary out to tell me the word for landslide)!! So I immediately grabbed my things and caught the first bus to the next town, Alausi! A small and very quiet town with nothing to do except catch the Nariz del Diablo train and of course a bus to Guayaquil! Now, the situation was that there are 3 buses a day from Alausi to Guayaquil, 5am, 9am and 2pm and I had to be in Guayaquil the following day to make sure I would catch my flight to the Galapagos early the next day. The train left at 11am and the tourist information said "the train returns at 1.30pm, you´ll have no problemo catching the LAST bus of the day!". So I was debating whether to risk it or not, when I met an Englishman who said he took the train the previous Sunday and it has many problems and didnt return until 3.30pm!! The decision was easy at that point, miss the train or miss my flight to the Galapagos??
So…..I left Alausi bright and early the next day and arrived at the hot, busy, noisy, smelly and polluted city of Guayaquil. I arrived at the airport the next day, checked in, and was sitting in the departure lounge watching the screen fill up with ´cancelled´, not my flight I was thinking! Then it happened, ´cancelled´. I asked the airline what was happening and through various explanations it seemed that the erupting volcano had been blowing smoke for about 100 miles and planes could not fly from Quito to Guayaquil to pick up passengers before going to Galapagos! The airline was giving mixed information, some were saying "come back tomorrow and you will be given priority" and others "the flights are all booked for tomorrow". I contacted the agency I booked the cruise with and they said that I might have to get a bus (an 8-9hr jouney) to Quito later that night! However later that night, I was told to just sit tight and get to the airport tomorrow to try and catch a flight. I arrived at 6am thinking I would beat the rush, and I did beat the rush, because there was no rush…i was on a plane to the Galapagos at last!!!
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Liz
non-member comment
So far so good!!
You've got it all - adventure, local colour, volcanos, buses, hammocks in quiet oases and now the Galapogos! What an experience. Don't forget the famous local tea when you get back to those high altitudes. I know from experience that it really helps.