South America (Part 7) - the penultimate SA chapter, Ecuador

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Cuenca

We spent three nights in Cuenca, one of them, as Tracy said last time, was arriving in at near midnight after 24 hours spent travelling on three buses getting there from Trujillo in Peru and waking the owners who seemed pleased to see us at such an ungodly hour. This meant really only two full days as on the third day to Tracy´s delight (and to be honest mine too) we stumped up the $50 to fly the 45 minute journey to Quito as opposed to the $8, 10hr plus bus journey. We have had enough of buses.

Cuenca is considered Ecuador´s prettiest or most colonial of cities and is in fact their third largest behind Quito and Guayaquil. I personally thought it was nice and not too large as some of the many other places we have visited, indeed it reminded me a bit of Sucre in Bolivia in its austerity and somewhat beauty.

We stayed in the La Casa Cuencana hostel in the old town of Cuenca, the hostel was adequate and nice with hot showers, the best bit though was that it was cheap. The area itself I thought was very pretty, cobbled streets, a lot of restaurants and cafés and quite the number of shops. As normal we visited the main square of the city, Parque Calderon, and the main cathedral, ´Cathedral de la immaculate Conception´. The square itself is very pretty with numerous trees, a centre statue and most of all its whitewashed buildings. The centre piece of all of this though is the cathedral, which from the outside looks nothing special, in that it looks as if it is made from red brick, except for its twin blue cathedral domes which give it quite a regal appearance. We did try and visit the Cathedral but it was shut this day so instead we ploughed on to the flower market and Plazoleta del Carmen. The flower market whilst certainly not large was quite pretty and the church of El Carmen de la Asuncion itself, again nothing too spectacular from the outside, was very pretty inside, decorated with quite a lot of gold and Christian paraphernalia.

Until visiting Cuenca I was unaware of the fact that Ecuador is famous for something that we normally attribute to another country, namely the Panama hat. Cuenca is considered the default home and birthplace of the panama hat and for many in Ecuador they refer to it, no doubt to ensure Panama doesn´t get any undue recognition, as a Montecristi named after the town in Ecuador where it was founded. It was the Spanish during their occupation in the 19th Century who started to export the hat from, yes you have guessed it, Panama and its because of this that it got the name ´Panama Hat´ that we all attribute to it today.

Anyway we visited a Panama/Montecristi hat factory in Cuenca to see how they were made. Basically its a straw hat made from a palm tree. The palm tree shoots are dried out and eventually used to make the hat through a long arduous task if the hat is to be actually worth anything financially. Many other countries have apparently tried to grow the same palm tree without success. The factory we visited had many hats on display for the public to try on, these were priced around the $20 mark. They did have some ´Fine´ hats in a glass cabinet that were priced at $120 each. To be fair you could see how much more tightly woven the strands were and the difference in quality with that over the $20 hat. Our factory assistant did also pull out a top of the range (in progress) ´superfine´ hat that was taking 6 months to make and going to cost $450 and apparently it would cost more than twice that in a hat shop in the USA. He wouldn´t take it out of the plastic wrapping for me to touch, no doubt not to leave any marks on it and despite his best efforts at explaining what a bargain it was, I wasn´t sold on the $450 price. The whole process though I thought was very interesting, especially that the traditional white we attribute to the Panama/Montecristi hat is actually due to bleaching and not the true colour at all which is more of a light brown or sand colour. Anyway we left after about an hour with Tracy purchasing one of the hats of the $20 variety, well we are travellers on a budget after all.

The following day we went on to visit the Museo del Banco Central Pumapungo and archaeological site. The most exciting thing about this museum was the shrunken heads on display. It didn´t do a great job of explaining how the process worked (and unfortunately we weren´t allowed to take any photos or video) but they were damn impressive to see. These heads had all the hair and features you would normally expect on human male sized head except they were about the size of a man's fist, perhaps a little bigger.

The museum did also have a Latin art display, paintings of the liberators of Ecuador (such as Simon Bolivar and Mariscal Sucre) and other displays, using mannequins, of Ecuadorian life. I think the museum would have been extremely interesting if only I could read Spanish as there were next to no English explanations, that being the case I left a little disappointed and to ease the pain I went for a beer to Wunderbar, whilst Tracy visited the landscaped garden attached to the museum (Editor´s note - this was actually ruins of a pre inca (then taken over by the incas as the city of Tomebamba) centre, all that´s left now are the terraces, including some tunnels under it though I was too chicken to go in by myself! But the museum has meticulously recreated what the grounds of the town would have looked like with the vegetable gardens and lake, and even a bird centre which apparently they would have had in those times. Actually very impressive and although small I really liked it.)

We had considered visiting Baños (south of Quito but north of Cuenca) but we were so tired with buses and tired generally that we decided just to get on to Quito and have a few days there before our Galapagos trip, so on the morning of August 5th we took the 40 minute flight from Cuenca to Quito.

Quito

Quito is vastly different from Cuenca, for one its a lot bigger and sprawls through a valley so looks like a big rectangle when flying in. Another difference is in the safety aspect. Quito has a bad reputation for thefts and muggings. Even our two different hostel owners/managers suggest when going out and about to take only what you absolutely needed and nothing more. They were also very adamant not to walk around the old town or Mariscal at night by ourselves, ¨take a taxi¨ was the consistent message. Apparently the police are either generally non existent or corrupt, what a sad state of affairs I thought. Thankfully enough we didn´t see any of these problems whilst we stayed in Mariscal and Quito generally but it did put us on edge a bit.

We spent four nights in Quito at three different hostels (which I´ll explain) and one night in Otavalo. Arriving into Quito in the Mariscal area around midday made me think it looked quite a nice lively area. We booked in for one night at the Backpackers hostel on Calle Juan Rodriguez as the following day (Friday) we were going to be off to Otavalo for the market the following day (Saturday). This day we pottered around the Mariscal area generally and went looking for a hospital for me to have a Tomography on my arm, we had partial success with this but the hospital we went wouldn´t do it without more information from my surgeon on exactly what he wanted, still at least we found a place to do the cat-scan.

The following day we checked out of the backpackers hostel and left our bags with them as we were going to be checking back in the next day, we were off to Otavalo via Mitad del Mundo.

Mitad del Mundo

Mitad del Mundo stands for the ´Middle of the Earth´, indeed Ecuador is very proud of the fact that the equator (hence the name Ecuador) line runs through the country. The official location of Mitad del Mundo, where the southern hemisphere crosses over to the northern hemisphere, or vice versa I guess, is about an hour north of Quito itself. We made it without much fuss using the Metrobus (blue line) and arrived around 10am. The site is where some 260 or so years ago a group of French scientists proved that the world was not a perfect sphere and actually fatter at the equator, more than this that the equator line runs through it. The also founded the metric system as well, not sure how they did that or how relevant it is to the equator line but their you go. The real hoot of all of this though is that some 260 years after the French scientists along came the American contingent proved (via GPS and other tools apparently) that the French scientists got it wrong by some 200 or so meters. As a result there is now a second official monument and park, though the new (and GPS accurate one) is a bit smaller than Mitad del Mundo. Oh well lets blame the French.

The two sites are quite different and both probably worth the visit, especially as they are right next to each other. One is a big official monument and site selling lots of Andean and Ecuadorian tourist items, the other one more of a small museum to Ecuadorian life with a few equator tricks thrown in, like balancing an egg on a nail or water running down a plughole counter clockwise on the northern side of the equator and clockwise on the southern.

Anyway all good fun and from here, in a roundabout sort of way, we made the two hour trip to Otavalo for the market the following day.

Otavalo

Otavalo is a very small town, very non descript and little to it, other than the market, the one thing I found quite surprising about the place was the number of stores selling western clothing brands, such as American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch etc. I guess they must get a lot of western tourists. Our first impressions of Otavalo were not the best. We arrived at our hostel, Rincon del Viajero, to find out the owner had decided to give our room away, he even had the cheek to send us an email (not that we got it in time) to tell us that he was cancelling our booking in favour of someone else. I was not impressed and gave him a good piece of my mind. He and his wife did find us somewhere else to stay eventually, Hostal Valle del Amanecer, which was adequate I guess, but damn how do you do that.

The thing Otavalo is most famous for, if you would call it that, is the Saturday market and to be fair it is enormous. It seems to cover half the streets of the town. It starts in the square Plaza de Ponchos, which is no small square and just branches off it in all directions. They sell everything from all types of food, animals, clothing, footwear, jewellery, tourist items galore, paintings, even a stall selling poor imitation shrunken heads. We spent some three hours wandering round and I swear we didn´t see the half of it, to be honest I thought it was too big but I am sure some people thought it was a shoppers paradise. We bought little, a few small paintings, an electric transformer as we are now is US voltage territory and Tracy bought a purse too, more than enough for our already overweight, heavy, bags.

Back to Quito

Around midday we left Otavalo and headed back towards Quito, we got back to the northern outskirts of Quito ok but jumped on the wrong bus when we got there that basically took us all the way round the city to the south side. Eventually we did arrive back at the Backpackers Hostel in Mariscal, just a bit peeved off that it took us an hour or so more (almost four in total) to get there. My frustration was not alleviated one bit. We arrived to find out that once again the room we booked when we left the previous day, they had given to someone else and all they could offer us was the room on the front of the street. Well having stayed in that room the night before I know how loud it was and how bright it was with the street lights and lights from the bar/night club right opposite. Once again I went mad and they found us a room at their sister hostel (Backpackers 2) on Avenida 6 December.

To be fair the sister hostel, though a little further out, is far nicer (and cheaper ironically) but it was a little weird in that it seems to have a complete family running it (mother, couple of sons, daughter etc.) and they all seem to be sitting around all the time. It felt like you were almost intruding as if you were in their house and not a paying guest. Still it was clean and it was quiet and we spent two nights there.

Having spent most of that day at the market and then getting back to Quito and messing about with hostel locations we were pretty knackered so we just ate in and went to bed early.

Our final two days in Quito were pretty much spent in the Old town and just killing time before the start of the Galapagos trip. We wandered the streets of the Old town taking in the main Plaza, Plaza de la Independencia, also the Plaza de San Francisco (they are every where in South America) and a few churches, namely the Basilica and the Iglesia de la Compañia de Jesus. The Old town is quite pretty I think and though it has a bad reputation for pick pockets and muggings etc. we didn´t see any of it. The main Plaza, Plaza de la Independencia, was pretty spectacular when we visited, there were processions on for the 200 year anniversary of the start of the war of independence against the Spanish. The processions were great to see, very colourful entertainers and pretty loud music, but it did mean the Presidential building and Cathedral in the main plaza were closed and we never got to visit them.

We did as I said however visit the Basilica and the Iglesia de la Compañia de Jesus. This was after wandering through Parque la Alemeda and viewing the reasonably impressive monument there erected to the great freedom fighter and father of independence in north-west South America generally, Simon Bolivar.

The Iglesia de la Compañia de Jesus church, just off the main plaza is draped (inside) in gold, literally the whole building from top to bottom is covered in gold plating. Personally I am not a fan of it, too over the top I think, but you had to be impressed with all that gold, unfortunately you weren´t allowed to take any photos or videos in the church so all we have are our memories of it. The Basilica del Voto Nacional however, at the northern end of the old town, I thought was most impressive.

Incredibly enormous from the outside, it was built I think about 120 years ago and where you would often find gargoyles on the outside of a church they instead used animals from the Galapagos (such as turtles, iguanas, hawks etc.) to give it a very unique Ecuadorian look. Inside was, I thought, as equally impressive. Little to no Christian paraphernalia that you find in many of the other churches in South America and really big Gothic style arches in the church with some amazing stained glass windows. You are also able to climb right to the very top of the building, though this requires walking and climbing outside on ladders which some I think find a little hair raising, but it did provide great panoramic view of Quito. The best bit I thought though was that they have two massive clock towers (unfortunately not working) but you can walk up and stand inside them and see the mechanics of the clock, magnificent I think, just a shame as I said that they haven´t got them working.

We did revisit the Mariscal bar area again and have some food there, I like the area, pretty cool place to hang if you´re not on your own and you just keep your wits about you I think.

Anyway this pretty much brings us to the end of it, during our final day whilst visiting the Basilica we did also check out of Backpackers 2 and check into our third location in Quito, Hotel La Cartuja, the Gap Adventures hotel (it was included in the trip price) from where at 6am the following morning we began (by flying) our final chapter of South America, namely the Galapagos islands and without doubt, having now completed it, we saved the best adventure in South America, I think, for last and Tracy will bring you that chapter in the next few days I am sure.

Cheers
Patrick

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Photos

The Basillica
You could climb up inside the clock tower