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Published: September 20th 2007
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In this chapter of my blog, the last one from Ecuador, you will hear about hair-raising adventures, including how I got hit during rafting (and by who...), how 50 Israelis can get into a quite small dining room, how we got lost in a national park at 4000m height with rain and fog, and much more!
So how was Rosh Hashana? I hope you all enjoyed a good meal and some rest. I haven't written for a week now, so let's start from the beginning - Baños, the city in which all our plans kept going wrong.
We got to Baños on Sunday noon, found a very nice and cheap hotel, walked a little bit around and immediately started thinking that we want to stay there more than the 2 days that we were planning to stay. Baños is such a lovely city! It's quite small and very touristic, and it gives you a very pleasant feeling. It is located in a valley between mountains (one of them is volcano Tungurahua, among the highest in Ecuador), streams and waterfalls, and also has some hot springs. One of the features of such a touristic place is that
Flowers
On the mountain next to Bañosthere are many tour agencies that offer many kinds of atractions - rafting, horseback riding, biking, jumping from bridges (like bunjee), snepling through waterfalls etc. (all agencies offer the same variety of course). So on our first day there we booked a rafting day in the Pastaza river for the next morning - Monday.
On Monday morning Erez got some stomach problems. It's not very clear why (and why I didn't get any), but he suspects the sugar cane juice that we tasted in some stall in the street. I took only one sip and didn't like it (too sweet), while he drank some of it and even bought a bottle (which he didn't drink, luckily). He intended to go to the rafting anyway, but then the agency called and said they had to postpone it to the next day, so we happily agreed. The rest of Monday was spent doing basically nothing. We cooked simple white rice for lunch (it was disgusting!), sat a lot in internet places and in the evening went to some hot baths that were nice and hot but quite crowded.
On Tuesday morning it was raining. We called the rafting agency but
they said it was OK to do rafting in the rain (you get wet anyway), so we did. We had a nice surprise when we found out that one of the other people in the rafting was a Canadian girl who sat next to us on the plane to Galapagos. The rafting (level 3+ out of 5, which is considered for beginners) was quite fun, except for some unexpected misfortunes. It consisted of some ¨rapid¨ parts (in other words - obstacles we had to pass like whirls etc.) and calm parts between them. We had two boats, 4 people + guide on each of them, and another guy accompanying us with a Kayak. Before we started the guide taught us the commands that he's going to give us during the rafting, like "forward", "back paddle", etc. and the funniest - "lean in", which means that everyone should lie on the bottom of the boat immediately (AREMAT YELADIM). While not leanning in, the four of us sat in the front of the boat, two on each edge, and the guide in the back. The guide also explained what we should do in case we fall into the water, in case the
boat flips and so on, and I hoped we wouldn't have to use these instructions.
And now for the list of misfortunes (the interesting part) -
It started when we met face to face with a cable that was streched closely above the water, right in the beginning of the rafting. The guide shouted ¨lean in¨ but by the time I realized what he meant (it wasn´t the ¨forward¨ I was expecting) it was a bit too late and I got hit in my hand, nothing serious.
Next, I managed to hit myself during one of the rapid parts with my own paddle, right above the eye. This wasn´t very serious, you couldn´t even see it, but it still hurt for a couple of days.
The worst thing happened in the last rapid part, when we all (including the guide) fell into the water in a place that was quite shallow but the current was very strong. This was quite scary! I found myself carried away with the river, floating thanks to the life jacket, with my knees touching the ground all the time. The others managed to swim more or less back to the boat, but I was
The basilica in Baños
As seen from our hotel window already far away and couldn´t really swim that way. After some floating I recalled what the guide said - in case we fall into the water we have to float on the back with the feet in the direction of the current, and wait till we are rescued by the boat. So this is what I did eventually, with an addition of some screaming (but I think no one heard), until they pulled me back into the boat. During the whole thing I probably swallowed some river water and I was afraid it will make me sick, but luckily it didn´t.
For desert we managed to sail right into a tree that was leanning low above the water, and I got a scratch on my neck, again nothing serious. This happened because the guide shouted ¨left forward¨ but we just heard the ¨forward¨...
After the rafting we took a bus - Erez, me and Michelin the Canadian girl to Riobamba, in order to go on a touristic train ride. This is the last part of the train between Quito and Guayaquil that still works, and it´s supposed to be an impressive engineering project, because there´s a big ascent in
Rafting - before
Our mighty boat team. From right to left - Dave from New Zealand, Michelin from Canada, me, Erez and our guide Patricio. that part. The train now serves as a tourist atraction, and it works only 3 days a week, Wednesday being one of them. I´m writing ¨supposed to be¨ because unfortunately when the three of us came to the Riobamba train station at 6am on Wednesday to buy the tickets, we (and all the other tourists) found out that the train was cancelled for that day. So Michelin took a bus to Guayaquil and Erez and I got back to Baños, to celebrate Rosh Hashana in the Israelis hostel. Before that (and after waiting till it stopped raining) we went horseback riding for 2 hours which was not very comfortable but very scenic, and I even managed to have a whole conversation in Spanish with the guide.
Rosh Hashana celebrations took place in the common room of the Israelis hostel in Baños. The room was quite small, but IM TIRTSU EIN ZO AGADA, so we managed to have dinner there with something like 50 Israelis. In the beginning it wasn´t very nice - I didn´t like most of the food, and there were some guys there that got a bit drunk and tried to play their loud music on the
stereo while the others tried to sing together (there was even a SHIRON!). After a while the annoying guys went and some of the others too, and only the people who wanted to sing remained, so we sang many nice songs and it was fun. It really reminded me of the Bubizemer :-)
On Thursday the weather was still quite bad, so we decided to leave Baños and head toward Cuenca, which meant 8 hours in a bus that day. In Cuenca we went to a hostel that was recommended to us by our German friends from Galapagos, and it turned out to be quite a dump. Later we found out that there´s another hostel with the same name and address nearby, so maybe this was what they meant. Anyway, our dump was not too bad (at least there was a hot shower), and it had one very good quality - a shared kitchen and some other very nice tourists who came to cook there. This is how we met on our first night there a nice German girl called Wiebke, who came to Cuenca to study her 3rd year in biology.
On Friday we took a bus
Stalls in Baños
All the stalls sell the same thing - sugar cane for chewing, sugar cane juice and local toffee. to a nearby inca site (only 2.5 hours away) called Ingapirca. It is the most important inca site in Ecuador, even though it´s quite small. The ticket there includes guidance in English which was interesting and definately added to the experience, otherwise we would have just been looking at the stones. In the evening we cooked pasta in the hostel and Wiebke joined us for dinner, and she also decided to join us the next day to Cajas national park, which was also recommended to us by the German friends.
In fact our friends recommended on a specific route that they took, from the higher refuge to the lower one, which means most of the way is a descent. The higher refuge is 4000m high, and climbing in such heights is quite difficult. They also said that we should take a compass because the paths there are quite confusing. They were so right... We got to the higher refuge by bus at around 7:30, put on all the clothes we had (it was freezing!), took a map (and a compass) and started walking happily between beautiful mountains and lakes, and some clouds. We took the right trail as the
Ingapirca
The ruins of the Cañari area. guy in the refuge explained and walked along it until... it ended, and we were left with many paths going to many directions, appearing and disappearing, and a basic idea of the direction in which we should go. We tried taking some of the paths that seemed to lead to the right direction, and eventually we found one clear trail that might have been the right one, but we couldn´t know for sure. Needless to say, the map only shows the few paths in which people should go and not all the others, and none of the paths is physically marked, so you can´t know on which path you´re going.
We decided to follow that promising path for a while and if we don´t find any evidence that this is the right one - we´ll go back to the higher refuge (at least we knew our way back). At that point it started raining a little bit but it didn´t bother us too much, and we started walking in that trail. After 45 minutes of walking in the rain, we were wet and still didn´t know if this was the right trail, so we decided to climb back. The way
Ingapirca
The temple of the sun (from the Inca period). back wasn´t very nice, to say the least. The rain didn´t stop and we were soaking wet and cold, including our shoes that became small lagunes. The trails were muddy and slippery, with occasional swamps that we occasionaly put our foot in (sometimes it was up to the knee). And above all - we had to climb a couple of hundred meters up to 4000m, which is quite difficult in any weather. Anyway, we managed to do it, and were very happy to reach the higher refuge again and sit next to the fire inside. The hot shower that evening was another very happy event, and for dinner Wiebke made us vegetable soup. In that dinner we also met a very nice Polish couple and a French couple, who made crepes for everyone.
That was Saturday, and on Sunday we (Erez, Wiebke and me) went to walk around in the city. Cuenca is the third biggest city in Ecuador, and it has a well preserved colonial center, which is very beautiful. It reminded me a lot of a european city. We went to the main church (it´s huge!), saw some strange street show and the local inca ruins, had
Cajas national park
The lake next to the higher refuge, when we just got there. lunch and then said goodbye - Erez and I took the bus to Loja, our last destination in Ecuador, where I started to write this entry.
Right now it´s Monday evening, and we´re in Piura, Peru. We took a bus today from Loja to here, and it took almost 9 hours, including crossing the border from Ecuador to Peru on a bridge, which reminded me of the border with Sinai. Apparently this part of Peru (the northern coast) is a desert, and it´s very hot here and looks like the northern part of the Negev. But I´ll leave Peru for the next entry, I think this is enough for one time.
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Another update - it´s already Thursday now and I´m in Huaraz, one of Peru´s trekking capitals. I finally managed to upload photos for this entry, so I´ll publish it now and write soon about the last couple of days.
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Bye for now,
Efrat.
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