El Angel and the Golondrinas Trail

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El Angel has a reputation of being one of the coldest places in Ecuador. However, I found it to be sunny, warm and relaxed. For days I was the only tourist in town and enjoyed the laid back atmosphere of this little place inmidst rolling green hills. Internet was hardly ever working and there is no bank or ATM where one could get money from a VISA card. I stayed in the Hosteria El Angel which is now one of my favorite hostals in Ecuador. It is German managed, and thus clean and organised and, guess what, the hot water tub is RED, so no trial and error this time (normally in Ecuador you have to open one of the tubs for about 5 min to find out if there might be some hot water coming from it, and then, if not, the other one for again 5 min and if you are lucky one of them will indeed have hot water; on the other hand, you may not be lucky). It has a beautiful garden, with orchids and freshly cut grass and I could just have staid there, sunbathing and reading books for days.

And indeed I was staying a couple of days, as it proved difficult to organise my trekking to the Golondrinas. I didn't want to do this 3 days trek by myself, as I was a bit sick of trekking alone and also as some guidebooks had recommended the local guides in the area of Moran. Problem is that Moran has no phone connection. I had arrived on a saturday. Upon my question re the trek the hostal owner told me that he would tell the lechero (milkman) who drives up to Moran every morning at 6.30 to ask the next morning one the guides in Moran to come back with him to El Angel, so we could talk about the trek, the prices and how to organise it. I found it a bit much of an effort for the guide to spend a day coming to El Angel just to talk to me about it, but the hostal owner assured me it would be no problem and he would come.

I was told that the guide would arrive on the Sunday around 11.30 in El Angel. So it meant I could not go on any day trip that day. Instead, I borrowed the hostal owner's bike and went for a trip around El Angel. It proved difficult, though, as it was hilly and the bikes gears were too rusty to be of much use. Anyway Ithe landscae was very enjoyable and I was back in time at 11.30. I waited. It was 12.30. I asked the landlady why the guide was still not there. She said he had called and would arrive between 12:00 and 13:00. I fell asleep in the sun on the lawn and woke up at 14.15. Still no sign of a guide. So I headed for a restaurant to have lunch and then for a walk up in the direction of the Voladero. When I came back at dusk I was told that the guide never showed up. I said 'well that was one day wasted for me then' and the reply was 'yes, sure' (implying 'what's a day more or a day less in El Angel'......).

The next day (Monday) I went to the tourist office (which is not open on the weekend), and the same game started all over again. I was told one of the guides would come to El Angel with the lechero that day and I should meet him at 11.30. I was wondeing what I could do that morning in the meantime, and as El Angel must be the place in Ecuador with the highest concentration of peluquerias (hairdressers), I decided to get a new color for my hair. I was ensured it could be done within an hour. When it was 11.30 and I still had the color on, I was getting nervous. The hairdresser however told me it still needed some time. As at 11.45 I was still not done, I called Arturo at the tourist office (which closes at 12.00) and we arranged to meet at 12.15 in a restaurant. However, when the color was finally washed off my head at 12.10, it turned out it was all yellow on top....horrible...Now I had to run to the restaurant with the yellowy, wet hair....Arturo was slightly surprised, but did not comment. However, he told me the guide had still not shown up....We arranged to meet at 14:00 in his office. I went back to the hairdresser. She admitted that something had gone wrong, and the whole procedure started from the beginning again.... Just before 14:00 (after nearly 4 hours), I was ready and I must admit the result was significantly better than the first time. I ran down to the tourist office: nobody! I met Arturo 15 min later, but he had not seen any guide. So we walked to a house of some relative of the guide: nobody opened the door. Just as we wanted to leave again, a guy arrived and: he was the guide! Arturo and Humberto talked about something, too rapidly for me to understand, there seemed to be some issue with the trekking. Anyway, we all went back to the tourist office, and after 2 more hours of phone calls, negotiating of costs etc. we had it all sorted out. Then Humberto and I went for some food shopping for the next few days and agreed to leave with the lechero the next day at 6.30.

On Tuesday we went up to Socavones with the lechero and stgarted the track from there. We first headed to the Mirador from which we had a magnificent view into the valley of Moran, to the Golondrinas and over to Columbia. We then hiked down through the Paramo, with loads of frailejones again (this is the second place after Guandera with frailejones), but I found Guandera more impressive. We reached the Agua Blanca waterfall. And from there the adventure started: as the trail had not been used for months, it was completely overgrown. If I had not had Humberto with his machete there would have been no way for me to get through the thicket. Humberto, however, was so brave and strong and fought with the plants for hours and hours until we reached the village of Placer from where there were good trails again. We walked that day up to Cortadero, the village where Huberto lives with his family. They invited me to stay in their house for the night. It is a very basic wooden house, with even more basic toilet and shower outside in the garden. However the family is lovely. Humberto and Amparo met when she was 15, married when she was 19, had the first child at 20, the second at 22 and the third at 23. This is quite normal in Ecuador. However, what's not normal is that they are still together, and, as it seems, very happily. In lots of the families I have met so far, the father does not live any more with the mother of his children and the men exactly conform to the latino macho cliché, i.e happily dating a number of women next to having a wife. It may be a particular phenomenon of those working in the tourist sector (and that's whom I'm meeting mostly), but I am not sure that it's not a trait of the male Ecuadorian population in general. Anyway, it was a great pleasure to see this happy family and to watch how affectionately Humberto was dealing with his kids.

The next day started fine, hiking up towards the Pailon waterfall. However, soon heavy rainfall started and it would not leave us until the evening. Already after a few minutes we were completely soaked and stayed so for the day. In addition to the path being even worse than the day before, we had to wade through deep mud for the whole day, and I regretted deeply not having rubber boots. In the late afternoon we reached the Corazon which was supposed to be our hut for the night. As arranged, we were met by Oswaldo, a guy from the Golondrinas foundation. However, it turned out that it was impossible to sleep in the Corazon: the place is quite run down, with just a few old mattresses, no blankets, no water. We had been told by Arturo that we did not need sleeping bags, but it would have been definitly too cold to stay there. So we hiked down another 45 min to a place called Santa Rosa which was marginally better, at least it had a couple of blankets. However, it also had no running water, and we cooked on a fire on the floor of the basic kitchen. Oh well....at least we were happy to be dry again and not to be cold during the night.

The third day was easier as there was a good path out to Las Juntas and from there a dirt road to Guallupe. In Guallupe we met Dona Eliza of the Golondrinas Foundation who invited us for an almuerzo at 4pm which we happily devoured after the many hours of hiking.

The problem with this trail is that there are a lot of politics and different parties involved. Originally the trail was managed by Piet Sabbe, Dona Eliza's ex-husband, and he ensured that it was always in good shape. However, since their divorce things seem to be falling apart. Also she seems to have different interests than the guides in Moran and Arturo in the tourist office. Although there seem to be some faint attempts by various of them to get together and get the trail going again (which would also be a very welcome income source for the people of Moran and La Cortadera), it looks like it is some time away. I am not really sure at this stage whether I can include this trekking in my book. Anyway, it was a great experience

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