Ecuador part 2: 19-25 August 2008

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Amazon to Andes

I spent the day of 19 August in Quito with a nice English lady I met at the hotel. We went to a museum (Museo del Banco Central) with an extensive exhibit of artefacts and information about all the different people who have inhabited the various regions of Ecuador over the millennia, up until the conquests of the Incas and finally the Spanish. Afterwards we took a bus (these are frequent and only cost 25 cents per journey but be careful to keep you bag where you can see it!) to the botanical gardens in La Carolina park where we saw rainforest plants from the Amazon, cacti and orchid gardens. There's also a butterfly house there apparently but we ran out of time to find it as both of us had to go back to the hotel to meet people.


At the hotel I met up with Omar, our guide for the next couple of weeks. My mum and her partner Charles met Omar when he was their guide on their first holiday to Ecuador and have remained friends with him ever since. That day Omar was still sorting out the four wheel drive we were hiring to drive around the country so he kindly dropped me off in the old town so I could look around there some more.


The following day mum and Charles were due to arrive but not until late in the evening so Omar took me to a couple of places that they had already been to on the last trip. The first was the Middle of the World (the Mitad del Mundo) museum which is a short drive from Quito. The middle of the world is of great significance here - Quitsa-to, the original name of the Capital, means Middle of the Earth in the ancient tsafiqui language and Ecuador itself gets its name from the Spanish word for equator. Of course there are many other places in the world that lie on the equator but a lot of these are difficult to get to as the line passes through jungle or ocean.


An expedition of French scientists came to measure the position of the equator in Ecuador in 1736, and there is a large monument built on this line. There’s just one problem, it's about 250 meters off! The Inti Nan museum is built around the actual equator line (latitude 0'00") which was calculated a few years ago by GPS although it is said the native people knew the correct location thousands of years ago. The museum has exhibits about indigenous Ecuadorian life (houses, food, a burial chamber etc) and the guides take you through interesting experiments showing the effects of the equator. We saw the Coriolis effect by pouring water down a drain on either side of the 0'0" line, demonstrating how it spins clockwise or anticlockwise depending on which hemisphere you're in and straight down on the equator line. We had a go at balancing an egg on the head of a nail which is possible on this line as gravity is straight down. It's difficult to get it right at first but I managed it eventually. Also, trying to walk straight along the equator line with your eyes closed is almost impossible without losing your balance. I've read that these experiments are actually bogus but even if that's the case, it was still a lot of fun!


A few minutes drive from here Omar took me up to the edge of an extinct volcano that has a town built in the crater base below. Standing on the edge looking into the crater, the mountain peaks are green and fertile yet when you turn and look behind you the land and mountains on the other side are dry and barren. We got there at a perfect time as it was a clear, sunny day with just some cloud in the distance. In the half hour or so we were there, we watched as the clouds rolled rapidly in until the view was almost completely swallowed up by soft, white haze.


Omar took me to the hotel he had booked for us near his house in the north of Quito where the rooms were surrounded by large grounds with colourful gardens and in these gardens I saw my first hummingbirds darting swiftly from flower to flower. I had a lovely dinner at Omar's before we drove to the airport to pick up mum and Charles.


In the morning I raced out with my camera to photograph the hummingbirds only to find they were unfortunately not active at this time of day but Omar assured me we would see more hummingbirds during our holiday. Leaving Quito, we drove for 6 hours to see a spot in the Amazon rainforest in Napo province - named after the major river that runs through it. The drive took us into the Andes mountains past waterfalls and through constantly changing vegetation. We stopped for lunch at a spot where there's a natural hot spring and the small resort built there pumps the hot water straight into its swimming pools. Here I had a lovely meal of whole, fresh trout caught in the mountains nearby.


The common main meal (usually eaten at lunchtime instead of dinner) in Ecuador usually consists of meat, potato, plain rice and fried banana or plantain. Vegetable soup is also common. The soup I had that day had 1/4 of a cob of corn sitting in it but corn like I'd never seen before. The corn in most of Ecuador, apart from the coast is very different from what we're commonly used to. It is shorter but much fatter, almost white in colour and quite bland in flavour compared to sweetcorn. The kernels are about 4 times larger and you can pick them straight off the cob with your fingers. It's also usual practice to have this corn with Ecuadorian cheese, which has a texture like mozzarella and a very mild flavour, a bit like haloumi.


Further on into the mountains, we drove into thick cloud which made visibility very poor. A little further down the road and we suddenly drove out of the cloud. Further still we went back into cloud and rain. It was as though we were driving in and out of different weather every few minutes! We stopped at Jumandy caves near Tena (the capital of Napo province) where we were going to do the cave trek. There is apparently a large population of bats there which I was keen to see along with interesting stalagmite/stalactite formations but the plan was shelved when we were informed the trek involved swimming (mum and Charles had not brought swimming gear) as well as crawling through long narrow tunnels. I'm not claustrophobic but I'm also not keen on the idea of crawling through spaces so small you couldn't sit up in them.


So we continued on to Tena at the foot of the Andes - a small, rather ramshackle city which didn't strike me as a place you'd want to go out in at night. We barely got a wink of sleep that night as people living opposite the hotel decided to have a raging party with the music cranked up, lots of yelling and breaking of bottles. Our intention had been to stay there a second night but we promptly packed our bags the next morning and made the decision to stay the next 2 nights in a lodge in the Amazon which turned out to be a great plan. The lodge, located on the edge of the rainforest, was called Shangri-La and is run by a native man named Matildo and his family. Many native people from communities in the rainforest have faced a dilemma in recent years as hunting animals is now banned which has forced them to have to earn money to survive and give up some of their traditional ways of living. Apparently there is only one 'tribe' or community left in the rainforest of Ecuador that has almost no contact with the outside world and still lives as their ancestors did.


When we arrived at the lodge, we were told that a group of 25 people had just left and we were the only ones there so Matildo said we could choose any activities we wanted to do. After we dropped our luggage off in our bungalows which were right at the edge of cliff overlooking the rainforest and the Anzu river (a tributary of the Napo) we went on a short hike for a couple of hours to a lookout where we could see the Amazon all around. On our way back it began to rain so we took a short-cut to the lodge in case a heavy storm set in. The rain didn't last long and we had an hour break before our next activity so I lay down in one of the many hammocks on the deck and had a doze. Our next hike took us to Matildo's village in the rainforest. We crossed The Anzu in a canoe and trekked for about 1 1/2 hours along a small path with Matildo at the fore clearing any vegetation that had begun to grow over it with his machete.


Matildo's village is called Santa Monica, named after his mother, Monica who established the community with her husband years ago. They apparently came from different communities and already had many children (Monica had 15 and the man had 12). The village is populated entirely by their relatives. When we arrived, the young men of the village were playing a game of soccer and the woman and children were watching. We were invited into Monica's house which, while the largest and grandest in the village is still quite humble with a thatched roof, wooden floors and a fire in the centre of the main room for cooking. As far as modern comforts go, the villages wore regular clothing, Monica had a few metal saucepans and other cooking utensils and there was one power line that we could see coming into the village, though I didn't see lights or anything electrical in the house. Life otherwise seemed quite simple. We tried chicha de yuca (a traditional alcohol made from yuca root which is also a staple food in the rainforest) which apparently prevents prostate cancer and had a chance to buy some jewellery that Monica had made from shells and seeds.


We walked through the village on our way out and saw the small school they have there, taught by people from the village who studied in Tena then came back to Santa Monica. On the way back it began to get dark very rapidly, making the last 20 minutes or so of walking quite difficult. That night a tropical storm set in and what a torrential downpour it was! It was a lovely sound to fall asleep to though. The next morning the river level was had risen considerably and areas where there had been banks before were now underwater. We were told this was apparently the dry season and in the wet season a storm like that would last many days! By that evening, the water level had dropped back to how it had been originally, as though the storm had never happened.


That day, 23 August, we drove to the Napo river and took a motorised canoe to a native museum and an animal reserve. The Inti-Ñumi (which means survivors) museum is a native Huaorani community with a museum set up in a large hut showing various objects used by Amazonian people. There were models of traps the natives used to use to catch animals comprised of complex systems of ropes (made from plants) and triggers designed to either trap animals in wooden chambers, kill small creatures by dropping logs on them or catch birds alive using a noose attached to a bent sapling. There were also domestic tools along with plants, bark and roots that Matildo explained were used for medicinal purposes such as curing malaria. We had a go at using a blow pipe to shoot darts at a pretend toucan on a tree about 15 metres away. It's very easy to release the dart but aiming and actually hitting the target are not so simple!


Next we visited the Amazoonico - an animal reserve where monkeys, birds and other rainforest creatures who have been rescued (many were being kept as pets which is illegal) are cared for before being released in the wild. Some of the animals can't be released for certain reasons and are kept in large cages. Large parrots and macaws cannot be released as they will apparently 'tell' wild parrots about how humans can be a food source, leading the wild birds to come into human areas and risk capture. There was also a spider monkey who could not be released as he is very violent and had killed several monkeys when he was allowed into the wild. Around the reserve there were large colonies of monkeys such as capuchins, woolly monkeys and tiny squirrel monkeys living in the rainforest and hanging around the reserve where fruit is put out for them. Many of these have been released by the reserve and are living safely in the surrounding forest. Other animals we saw in captivity included toucans, capybara (the largest rodent in the world which looked a bit like a metre long guinea pig), a caiman (like a small alligator) and ocelots which are beautiful wild cats about 3 times the size of a domestic cat with exotic patterns of stripes and spots on their coats. Our guide in the park was a French woman who had been there for a month as a volunteer and also spoke English (it's the first time we didn't need to have Omar translate for us!)


After lunch we went on another rainforest hike near Shangri-La to a spot with primary forest (relatively intact natural forest which has not been modified by human activity) which was noticeably different from the secondary forest areas we had visited previously. The forest floor was thickly coated in leaf litter and everywhere we looked plant life was growing in amazing variety and abundance. We saw exotic coloured butterflies and very unusual insects and spiders, including the largest ant in the world which was about 3 cm long! Matildo also showed us some medicinal plants and climbed the long, hanging roots of a strangler fig (which grow downwards and strangle the host tree, slowly enveloping and killing it) to show us how strong they are. Back at the lodge I saw an amazing big grasshopper that looked exactly like a leaf, veins and all, near the toilets. We didnt' see many animals in the wild while staying there (apparently you need to go much deeper into the jungle for that) but the lodge was overrun with weird and wonderful insects. I saw the biggest cockroach I've ever seen which was not too pleasant (I thought the ones in Australia were big but this one was over twice the size of any of them!) though I must say I'm very pleased I didn't see any tarantulas!


It was a shame to leave the next morning but we had other interesting places to visit. Not far away from Shangri-La, we stopped at a town called Mishualli where monkeys lived in the trees by the river. They were being given (as well as sometimes stealing) drinks and tubes of frozen yoghurt from people. The frozen yoghurt was too cold for them so they would squeeze it out of the tubes, smear it on a tree branch and lick it off. Some people were also giving them raw eggs which they expertly cracked open just enough to be able to suck out the contents, making sure they didn't lose any (except the young, inexperienced monkeys). Afterwards we visited a butterfly farm where the owner and his family are trying to help conserve native butterfly species by laboriously collecting eggs in the wild and raising them at the farm for protection before releasing them back into the forest.


Our next destination was Baños (Tungurahua province), named after it's famous thermal baths with water that comes from a natural hot spring in the mountains. Baños is a popular destination for Ecuadorian holiday makers due to the hot springs, waterfalls and it's location in the Sangay mountains between the jungle and the highlands. The town is quite small but bustling with lovely shops and handicraft markets. Omar said it's also one of the safest places for tourists to visit in Ecuador. We didn't arrive until late in the day so we found a nice hotel run by a lovely German man and had an early night.


The next day was quite busy. First we took a gondola across a deep gorge (I'm afraid of heights so I was a bit apprehensive at first but ended up really enjoying it!) to a spot above a small waterfall where there was a family run restaurant. A little girl from the family took great delight in showing us around the garden and ponds where they farm trout for sale in town. We crossed back over in the gondola and drove to a spot where we took a short walk down to Balon del Diablo which is a magnificent waterfall. Afterwards we had lunch in town and bought some gifts at the markets before going to see a small canyon on the edge of town. We also visited a wildlife park which had snakes, fish, birds and caiman. That night I went to the thermal baths which were lovely but it was quite busy there.


The next day we had a fantastic breakfast at the hotel before setting off towards the highlands and the next leg of our adventure!

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Photos

Young boy weaving a rug
Middle of the World museum

Squirrel Monkey
Animal reserve in the Amazon

Toucan
Animal reserve

Woolly monkey
At the animal reserve

View from our bungalows
Shangri-La lodge

Bailon del Diablo
Waterfall near Baños