Final Days in Ecuador...

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Got back from the Galapagos and had a dinner with everyone from the boat. We all ended up in the same hotel which was great! After a week of sharing a cabin where only one person could be in the cabin at one time (unless the other was in bed!). I soon had all my belongs sprawled out all over the place and a huge pile to send to the wash. Had to continue to take motion sickness tablets as was now feeling land sick - no swaying was causing a problem! I was not the only one and we decided that the only thing to do was to go out and have a couple of cocktails with dinner. Strong cocktails, being up at 6 am and altitude effects had us all yawning and in bed by 1 AM - oh we are lame!

Got woken up at 9 am by Jessica, last seen in Cusco before we headed our different ways. We set off to sort out our respective tickets home. It has been a nightmare trying to decide what to do. Note to self: next time do not have the origin and final destination the same. Chances are you will not be in the mood for back tracking. I was even contemplating buying a ticket to Europe since traveling between countries in South America is so expensive when I managed to find a decently priced ticket back to Rio! Hurrahh! Now I could enjoy Ecuador without the worry of 100+ of busing back to Rio.....

So off we set off to Old Quito. All I can say is thank God I listened to everyone´s advice and did not go to my pre booked hostel in the Old town. Even within the day it was a seriously hassly. Ogled, leered, whistled, hissed at... There are some seriously annoying men in this place. Also as the jaded tourists we have become we felt we had seen better prettier places than the Old town. No photos as it was deemed to risky to take the camera.

Not staying in the Old town means that we are in the New town! There´s a surprise. Like many other cities deemed ´dangerous´ you ended up with Gringoland where all the tourists seek shelter and you find all the services required - laundry, internet, photo developers, book exchange and food catered for the Gringos - from American to Thai you are guaranteed to find it - at gringo prices of course. Even new Quito which is deemed safer has armed guards at most shops and restaurants, plus more patrolling at night....

One very touristy thing I was looking forward to in Quito was to go to the equator line. Set off on the bus - of course managed to take the wrong one but had the ticket inspector and several passengers setting us straight as to where we had to change to go to Mitad del Mundo. There is a village - ie an enclosed area you have to pay to get into! where there is a monument and the equator line..... only problem is with GPS they discovered that these scientists several hundred years ago got their figures wrong and the actual equator is 200 m away. So the person who owned the piece of land was thoroughly delighted because he could build an open air museum for everyone who wants to go to the real equator line. There are several experiments you can perform to prove that you are on the equator. The best is the water experiment: 1m on one side the water runs down the plug hole anti clockwise, 1m on the other side it runs clockwise and on the equator it goes straight down as the forces which create the vortex are canceled out. OK badly explained but you get what I mean! I also have video evidence of all this - I blame my excitement (and request to see it all happen twice on being brought up with too many scientific brains around - you know who you are!).

The museum also had some historical information on Ecuador and huts (supposedly authentic) with dummies and paraphernalia describing what life was like.... interesting to see and got to see my first shrunken head....

It was then time to head off to Banos a couple of hours away from Quito. Banos is a lovely little town surrounded by mountains and an active volcano. According to the UK government we are not supposed to stay the night there because of the danger of an eruption! Well considering there was not even a little bit of red hot lava to admire and a Code Yellow warning I do not know what they were fussing about! Unfortunately I arrived in the rain and continued to visit Banos in the rain.

Not willing to be put off and with limited time I booked myself on the Ruta de las Cascadas tour to see the Waterfalls. Apparently I was the only one willing to go so I got Jorge the driver all to myself. They decided my Spanish was good enough to cope without a bilingual guide - would be flattering if it was not for the thought that they wanted to save money on this one person tour! It has to be said that I was not jumping up and down about setting off on my own with him. First of all I had to deal with all the usual conversations of where is your boyfriend? don´t you want an Ecuadorian one etc? Then I was pretty sure he was on something which did not reassure me as he was driving a jeep which was o the brink of falling apart.... Nevertheless after a good hour of being standoffish he got the point and we managed to get on well though I declined his offer of another personal tour in the afternoon!

Despite the drizzle the waterfalls were beautiful. However what I ended up enjoying most was the garden adjacent to the falls with lots of tropical flowers. Feeling arty I took lots of photos and one of the gardeners took me round pointing out the different orchids they had....

As we headed back into Banos I caught a glimpse of a familiar face and sent an email off to confirm that indeed it was Miriam whom I met in Sucre, Bolivia and she was in my hostel! Such is the gringo trail you are bound to bump into people now and again and it was lovely to meet up again out of the blue.

I headed off the next day (just when the sun decided to make an appearance!) and headed off to Riobamba. Lots of gringos on the bus once again confirmed I was firmly entrenched on the gringo trail! We got talking and ended up in the same hotel. Again it was
fun to meet up with people, share stories and experiences and hang out together. Especially as Riobamba does not have much to offer. We were determined to get some ice cream to enjoy in the main square... we eventually found some - in a seamstress´shop. She just randomly happened to have a cooler with ice cream. Not the first time I have come across shops which double up in business!

We were all up bright and early, 5 am, for the train journey of El Nariz del Diablo (the Devil´s Nose) - which they have named the most difficult journey in the world. In the good old days of rail travel they were trying to construct a railway line from Guayaquil, in the south of the country and the second largest city, to Quito. No mean feat considered there are mountains in between. In 1902 they managed to get to a town called Alausi by using a series of switchbacks - ie getting the train to zig-zag a 45 degree gradient.

Ok I am not much of a trainspotter so I could hardly get excited about the switchbacks but all I know was that the drops were pretty sheer at some stages and I was feverishly hoping that the train would not choose one of those moments to derail! It behaved and only did so when we were on safer ground.
What adds to the trip is that the roofs are flat and so you can sit on them fenced in by a little rail. It is THE PLACE to ride and so we had to get on the train an hour before its 7 am departure to ensure we got a spot on the right hand side for a view of the sheer drops.

The trip is very well organized with cushions for hire, and vendors constantly running up and down the roof tops of all the carriages selling everything from banana chips to beer to lollipops to throw to the children along the way. That was certainly one of the most entertaining parts of the trip! The local kids wave and run alongside the train hoping to be rewarded with sweets from us on the rooftops. Some people complain that this is creating a dependency... my argument is that children are children and if they receive pleasure in getting a sweet or two thrown at them 3 times a week let them be.... there are a lot more acts touristy which create dependency.

The trip is 7 hours long and I loved every moment of it from watching the locals to the stunning scenery which changed constantly....

Shattered the next day it was time to head back to Quito. I was hoping to get some sleep on the bus but oh no! just my luck, a chatterbox seated himself beside me and did not stop chatting until his destination. Luckily it was not Quito so I managed to get some sleep. On the other hand I love chatting to the locals on buses as you get an insight into life in each country. Eduardo was into selling pirated CDs and DVDs. Better than selling drugs he pointed out to me. I nodded. It was costing him 90c to burn and was selling them for $10 each - not bad! He then told me how his sister who is a bilingual secretary in a large international company here takes home $250 a month. His wife, an industrial engineer takes home $220. Now it is easy to understand why pirated Dvds look appealing! The solution to Ecuador´s problems, according to Eduardo, is to go and work in Europe. Apparently 6 million Ecuadorians are doing so already and they send home on average $300 a month to their families. He loved Ecuador but had little hope for its future, something which made me feel very sad....

And so back to Quito.... I felt I had been a little harsh on this city and decided to give it more time. I am glad I did. I took myself off to some local markets to buy some last minute presents as well as going to the ´must see´museum in Quito. One last museum on this trip. It was a good one to finish on as it had an excellent pottery collection - the skills they had 1000 years ago still amaze me, plus and excellent gold section from ceremonial head pieces to earrings ...

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Photos

On the real equator line
A foot in each hemisphere!

Feeling Arty
It was a drizzly day but that did not detract from the beauty of the flowers

Tourist Mania
So this is where all the tourists are... Paying money to sit on the roof of a train!

Derailed!
Very reassuring that an iron bar is all that is needed to get the train back on its tracks! A common occurence on this trip

Curing my phobia of heights!
All there was between us and a sheer drop of hundreds of metres was an iron bar.

The Sweet Train
Scrambling for sweets... the local children (and adults too!) would wave at us hoping to be rewarded with sweets

Watching the locals....
This was one of most fun ways to people watch I have experienced....

Aside from people watching
The scenery was not bad either!