Savage, Stuffed and Steaming: a tale of two adventurers in the highlands of central Ecuador and the catalogue of hillarious events that befell them

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Here's a funny thing. Apparently a big problem for the church in South America is that the people here are more fixated on the Virgin Mary than Jesus. Certainly the number of statues and place names for that matter, back this up. If you didn't know your bible, you'd think she was what all the fuss was about and the little baby is just a bit of a nuisance. How unexpected!

But enough about that. What about us? We last left you in Quito, from where we made vague plans to check out a bit of central Ecuador known as the Quilotoa loop. Moving around Ecuador has been a joy compared with everywhere else, solely due to its size. It's miniscule compared with every other country in South America, so when you look at a map and decide to go somewhere, you can actually do it in under a day. Not only that but they're so efficient that often we're herded onto a bus before we've had time to buy some food and have a wee, making for some fairly uncomfortable journeys. And so it was, empty of bellies and full of bladders, that we found ourselves trundling off the Pan American Highway and immediately up into some magnificent hills. You can tell when you're heading off the beaten track when the bus is suddenly invaded by indigenous folk, their hats and chickens filling the aisle and in Ant's case, the buttocks of one elderly lady sneaking from his hand rest, to his unfortunate hand which had been happily minding its own business on his knee. This particular crisis seemed to be averted when the bus suddenly stopped near a bakery and everyone piled off, only to pile back on again, this time with seemingly greater numbers of old women's buttocks, which gradually heaved their way into our seats like a high tide of smoky bacon-scented hessian. Of course there will be those of you reading this who will declare that this is Ant's fault for not giving up his seat to an elderly lady, and normally, you'd have a point. But given the weight of numbers and the probability that, at the next stop, I'd be swept off the bus amongst the tide of people, it was all we could do to manoeuvre our faces, which were by now pressed firmly against the window, enough to breath.

Eventually, the bus finally spat us out in the unpronounceable town of Zumbahua. All of a sudden we felt a long way away from Quito - although it was only about four hours. It wasn't quite the charming little town we'd expected, and it felt like we were the only two people in town until we heard the uncomforting squeals of a man so unbelievably drunk that it was hard to imagine he would ever recover. Still, he was company and we managed to console ourselves that tomorrow we would leave Zumbahua; not the start we'd expected.

But leave we did, as we made our way towards Quilotoa itself - an ancient volcano and highlight of 'the loop'. We'd hired a guy to drive us in the back of his pick up, from where we had a fantastic view of the scenery around us and in spite of the fact we were sitting in the tray at the back, we were marginally more comfortable than the previous day's bus journey. Jumping out at Quilotoa we felt ready for a good hike, so it was a smidge disappointing to find the volcano was about 18 feet from the edge of the road. We weren't to be let down though, for having pottered down and splashed about in a pedallo in the crater lake (which would have once been a bubbling furnace of molten lava and no place for a pedallo), we found that the walk back out of the crater was a whole new challenge. The slippery, sandy sides which had been so much fun to skip down now took on the form of enemy and combined with the altitude, led to us crawling up the slopes only marginally ahead of a 200 year old shepherd and his straggly sheep. Never before have we been so grateful to climb into the tray of a pick-up and be driven at breakneck speed down a bumpy, dusty, perilous mountain road. We arrived at the Cloud Forest Hostel in Chugchilan coated in dust, much to the amusement of the woman who greeted us.

A planned one day stop soon became an unplanned three days as the combination of outstanding scenery and similarly outstanding hospitality combined to make us never want to leave. This was the first hostel we'd been to where a trust system operated, meaning we could help ourselves to coffees and beers, even clothes, and just jot down what we'd got and pay at the end. It also had a roaring fireplace to comfort us at the end of a cold walk, although Ant's wet walking boots soon succumbed to being left too close to the fire, ending up a long way from wet, and totally disfigured. That marked the end of an entertaining day in which we had set off on a walk to the cloud forest with a couple of Germans, Philipp and Nadine. We'd heard about the dangers along the way; dogs and low clouds, so armed ourselves with sticks and a homemade map and hoped for the best. After a good few hours in which we'd seen no dogs and been ribbed by the other two for continuing to carry our sticks, it all kicked off. First the cloud came in with alarming speed at around about the time we'd worked out that our walk would be nearer eight hours than the anticipated four. Then we heard the dogs. With bugger all visibility, we heard the barking before we saw them. But soon enough, six viscous bastards emerged from the cloud, charging towards us with their teeth intent on a section of our legs. Flailing with our sticks like stranded swordsmen, we just about kept the dogs away from us, and the four of us awkwardly tried to move on, encircled by a blur of sticks and snapping jaws. We carried on like this for five minutes until eventually we passed a group of barely interested farmers who between them probably owned the collection of savage beasts. The dogs calmed down and we hurried quickly on. By this time we could only see about ten metres in front of us, we were hungry, and a smidge concerned about meeting more dogs. But we had vague intentions to locate a cheese factory, which we thought might satiate our hunger. It was hopeless, and we were starting to remember the film American Werewolf in London. Wisdom eventually won out and we made for home, via one more rabid dog and an attack of pissing rain. Relief was ours, and the comfort and warmth of the hostel almost made it all seem worthwhile.

A couple of days later we forced ourselves to leave. Being a Sunday, we could get a 'late' bus, at 6.00am. On the other days of the week the buses go by between 3am and 5am. Why this is, is anyone's guess, but then we gave up trying to work these things our long ago. This meant we arrived at Baños (that's toilets in English) in time for lunch. But Baños is far from a toilet, it being a fairly pretty town in a stunning valley, parked precariously underneath a raging volcano which, from time to time, pukes fiery death and destruction on the town below. Bucking a trend, we'd heard good thngs about the Lonely Planet's top recommended hostel, Plantas y Blancas, and decided to risk it. Normally we've consulted our two books and cancelled out any accommodation which appears in the Lonely Planet. We base this snobbery on the fact that a LP recommendation almost always means the place has raised prices and lowered standards, or is just full of wankers. But Plantas y Blancas had a pulling point - steam baths. No sooner had we got ourselves a room then we were booking ourselves in for three morning sessions of sweaty, steamy, detoxifying action. These were the medieval looking boxes that you sit in with only your head sticking out while a jet of steam fills your cavity, as it were, and theoretically releases toxins. This is all coincidental to us though, as we just kept going for the novelty factor. The fun of sitting in a box for half an hour, interspersed with ice cold rinses and lying in a tub 'massaging' our bowels, was just too hard to ignore. It might have done us some good - Jen felt sick after the first one, which is usually a sign that something's happening - but we felt clean, which is an achievement in itself. Amongst all this pampering, we took ourselves off for yet more walks, scaling the hills behind the city and getting as close to the volcano as we dared. We spent a day exploring the waterfalls around Baños on bike, where Ant learnt that if you stand next to a 200 metre waterfall, you might get a bit wet. And we came across what can only be described as the most startling museum exhibit we have ever seen - a taxidermy collection so grotesque, with animals so mind-bogglingly far away from whence they began, that we weren't sure whether to laugh or cry. We think, but we're not sure, that priests in South America have a bit of a thing for taxidermy. It's probably because they've long since given up trying to tell people that Jesus is what all the fuss is about and not his mum, or because they get paid too much and don't really have much to do. Either way, it seems they take out their frustrations on their dead animals, choosing not to depict them as they once would have been in life, but to distort and disfigure, almost beyond recognition. When it came to laughing or crying, we had no option but to piss ourselves.

By now we were edging ever closer to Peru, and from Baños we continued south to Cuenca (emergency shopping, delicious cakes and fascinating shrunken head displays) and then on to Vilcabamba. Our mission was to use this stop as a place to recharge our batteries before the biggest slog of our South American odyssey so far. The thing is, our batteries didn't need recharging that much. Apart from a lot of walks, we'd hardly done any hectic travelling, and we'd just spent the past few days sitting in steam baths. Still, we knew what lay ahead - a gruelling journey across northern Peru and into Amazonia where we had no idea what to expect, other than discomfort. So Vilcabamba was an ideal place to hang out for a few days. It's known as being a fountain of eternal youth and is a thoroughly chilled out a place as anywhere can be. There was no difference between Sunday and Monday in Vilcabamba, with no more than a couple of cars, or people, visibly moving anywhere or doing anything. The average age there is somewhere in excess of 162, added to by a growing population of American retirees whose migration, like a herd of creaking wildebeest, has slightly tainted the town's vibe by risking turning it into a retirement village. Still, they don't make it into the hills, which is where we parked our bottoms, and yet again, kicked back for some walking and contemplating of belly buttons.

But we couldn't delay the inevitable, and besides, we were quite looking forward to the next bit of our trip. We'd had a very gentle but thoroughly enjoyable time in Ecuador, but were beginning to feel like retirees ourselves. We needed to get some miles under our belts again, get sweaty and dirty and tired and irritable. And we had a very good chance of all those things happening where we were going. Our first leg, from Vilcabamba to the border with Peru at La Balsa was a good start. Another 6am bus saw us trundle straight off the beaten track and onto a road, which took us right up and over the mountains. The scenery instantly went from stunning to spectacular, with jungle strewn mountains folding behind one another as far as the eye could see and clouds lying in the valleys, giving us the feeling that our creaky little bus was taking us to the edge of the world. And in a way it was, for Zumba, the last town before the border, felt like a place that doesn't get many visitors. We sat down to lunch knowing that the comforts of the past few weeks would have to be forgotten, and weren't let down when a bowl of 'consume' was plonked in front of each of us, complete with chickens feet and parts of their innards bobbing innocently about. Being typical Brits, we enjoyed the soup and chose to pretend that the body parts weren't there, and as we later waited for our next bus we watched the chickens walking amongst the piss and detritus of the bus station, and contemplated intestinal illnesses. The next bus had no sides, but it did have a reassuring mural of Jesus inexpertly drawn on the back which gave us some faith that he wasn't entirely forgotten round these parts, a fact made more pressing by the road ahead and the imminent need for divine assistance. And though the bus moved in mysterious ways, it got us there, even throwing in a biblical downpour which took full advantage of the side-less bus and soaked anyone that wasn't sitting slap bang in the middle. We made it to La Balsa, possibly the least used border crossing in the world. When we arrived, the Ecuadorian official was dressed only in a towel and we had to wait ten minutes for him to shower - he wasn't going to hurry for anyone. When he was ready, he duly intimidated us before letting us trot, trot, trot over his bridge, to a marginally less officious Peruvian official who couldn't believe the audacity we had, turning up and making him do some work. The deck of cards on his desk was a giveaway. We glanced at his book and saw that we were numbers three and four for the day. The previous days had seen about the same; threes and fours, that was all: it was a quiet border crossing. Next we had to see the policeman, and he just wasn't there at all. This place was priceless. The only things missing was a ball of tumbleweed rolling across the bridge. But slowly, slowly, everything got done, and we were on our way again. Back in Peru, and with a long, twisting road ahead of us.

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Photos

Trucking Hell
Feeling every lump and bump in the back oif a pick-up.

Wonkey Donkey
A pensive Donkey thinking about ending it all above Quilotoa.

Hill above Chugchilan
Julie Walters came skipping over the hill just moments aftre this picture was taken.

Ghost Walkers
When the clouds came down above Chugchilan. Note the sticks in hands - this was just after the dog attack.

Terrible Taxidermy
Make of this what you will. Observe the different coloured eyes. Hmmmm.

Erm...
Ant spent too long in the steam bath.

Out of Control
It's very easy to take a picture of Jen on a bike. Her cautious pace makes blurring almost impossible.

Where's Walley?
See if you can spot Ant. It was at this moment that he learnt how water travels sideways after a long fall.

Dr Doo-Syddall
She talks to the skinny animals about health issues.

Butterfly
Somewhere above Vilcabamba

Bridge of Death
Using an invisible line, Jen stares into the jaws of death on a makeshift bridge above Vilcabamba. She made it.

Christ on a bus.
With him on board, nothing could go wrong.