Blogs from Riobamba, Centre, Ecuador, South America - page 4

After packing up our backpack and putting our other stuff in storage, we moved out of our apartment and hopped on the bus 6 hour bus to Riobamba, the fourth largest city in the center of Ecuador. We got there in the late afternoon and had hopped to go to a soccer game that night, only to find out that it was actually an afternoon game and it was already over. I was extremely disappointed but it turned out to be ok, because we ended up going to a soccer game in Quito at the end our trip. So we check into a hostel and walked around, the dirty, noisy, not exciting town. We had dinner and then went to bed early because we had to wake up early to catch the famous “Devil’s Nose” train, ... read more

The bus from Cuenca dropped us off on the highway overlooking Asuasi and after feeling lost for a few minutes we trudged down the hillside to try and find the hostal Europa that we were booked into. Alausi is a small town with its fair share of gringo visitors as the Devils nose train ride was running from here instead of Riobamba due to a mudslide or something! There was a great Chineese restuarant next to the hostal which for USD 4 provided a hearty meal of stir fried vegetables, rice, chicken with special fried rice and an orange fanta. The devils nose train ride itself was great fun with fantastic views of the beautiful countryside, the devils nose ( can you see it in the picture?). It was an early start though at 6.00am to ... read more

Nach unseren 4 Tagen Dschungel adventure kehren wir zurueck in die Anden, nach Riobamba. Das kleine verschlafene Staedtchen erwacht am Samstag Vormittag zum Leben, so geniessen wir das Markttreiben und bummeln durch die Gaesschen. Wir kaufen hier Obst, dort Gemuese und Nudeln fuer unser erstes selbst gekochtes Abendessen, denn unser tolles Hostal hat einen wunderschoenen Innenhof mit Kueche. Doch unser Aufenthalt in Riobamba ist nur sehr kurz, denn bereits am naechsten Morgen geht die Fahrt weiter mit dem Bus nach Alausí zur Teufelsnasenbahn, eine der Hauptattraktionen Ecuadors. Dort warten bereits jede Menge Touristen und die kleine Lok ist schnell gefuellt, ohne uns. Doch aufgrund des Andrangs wird ein zusaetzlicher "tren de prueba" (Probezug) eingesetzt, der entweder entgleist oder nicht - er tat es nur ein bisschen! Mutig wie wir sind nehmen wir das kleine Abenteuer auf ... read more

Casa Cóndor is a community-based tourism project in the village of Pulingui San Pablo at the foot of Chimborazo. About 240 indogenous inhabitants live here. They have a great system of hiking trails, with sign posts along most of them, as well as an excellent map (to be purchased for 1 USD at Casa Cóndor), based on an IGM map, with the GPS tracks of the senderos displayed in different colors on the map, very similar to how I make my maps. It is a nice place to stay at, I just encountered a couple of minor problems: I had not been able at all to reach Casa Cóndor before I went there, the phone numbers I had did not work, there was no reply to my emails and their umbrella organization was not any more ... read more

Hmmmm welll not much pics but a few things will either make you cringe or sigh... So coming up from Cuzco...a nice 21hr bus ride through mountains and desserts...past Nazca (note the giant highway built straight through the middle of one) on the coast and the panamerican highway north.... leaving the dessert lands of the westcoast we visited the excavated tomb of the king of Siam, wow how much Gold can you put in the ground....(sorry no photo´s gringos) but im sure you can google them... Gold,silver, copper, turquoise,red corral amaising fabric still in ok condition...burried lamas (dismembered) the guard the wife the mistress all dug in together....hmmmm happy familys...(although a burried one) when extracted the tombs had a toxic dust throughout as a booby trap...hehe cool huh... In Lima we saw the new indiana Jones....and ... read more