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Published: July 17th 2007
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It was 10pm on Monday night and we heard that there would be a protest by the locals, involving road blocks, starting in 2 hours.
At this point we were settling down to a few beers and on to our 3rd round of shit head (a card game!). We had planned to leave the next day (Tuesday) at midday but things all changed very quickly. Some of our group had flights out of Quito on Wednesday and my flight to LA was on Thursday.
The locals are (the strike is still going on!) protesting against the the oil company drilling in the rainforest nearby. They want a further 200 locals to be employed as there is huge unemployment in the area and widespread poverty. These strikes have happened before and typically go on for between two days and two weeks - hence our concern that we would not be able to get out the jungle, and miss our flights.
So after 3 hours sleep we were up at 4:30am. At 6am we managed to get a lift down the river on the canoe to the main road in the area. Here we were lucky to find a
space in a mini-bus that was heading back to Quito - we thought our troubles were over! After half an hour we stumbled across the first road block. Three huge articulated lorries had been abandoned across the road blocking all traffic. There was no way through and this the only road (by road I mean rubbly dust track). So the 9 of us (we had bumped into several other travellers looking for a way out) put on our big back packs and started walking down the winding dust roads in the middle of nowhere. We walked for an hour, and it was getting very hot.
We then stumbled across the epicentre of the protests. There were tyres that had been set on fire, more truck blockades and then several hundred protesters that were still forming (by now it was around 7:30am). Nervously we walked through the masses, trying to smile and exchange pleasantries, and not get beaten up or robbed. We passed through and carried on walking for another half an hour.
A ute was heading in our direction and we managed the thumb it down. To our delight he agreed to let the nine of us hop
in. There was about 7 of us in the back of the ute with our bags. It was a squash and I had one leg hanging over the edge of the vehicle, but we had to take the opportunity.
20 minutes down the road and another ute full of angry protesters was coming towards us. It blocked the road in front of us and ordered us to stop and turn around and go back. The protesters in the ute got out and formed an line across the road and started shouting at us and the driver of our ute in particular. We jumped out and stood quietly on the side of the road and let our driver talk to the lead protester. Amazingly, 10 minutes later a deal had been done. It had been agreed that our ute would carry the protesters back to the protest line (where we had come from) and that the protester´s ute would drive us 3 hours to Lago Agrio the nearest town with an airport for a small fee. That fee was just US$20!! They could have easily got 10x that from us!
So we all squeezed in the back of this
second ute and sped at high speed down the rubbly roads to Lago Agrio holding on for dear life!
Then a further piece of good luck was to unfold. The 10:30am flight from Lago Agrio to Quito had been delayed and was still stationary at the tiny airport. We ran into the small building that was the termional and managed to get tickets for that same flight for US$50. Within 15 minutes we were heading down the runway and more importantly on our way back Quito.
It was so good to be back in Quito!
This morning I heard that a group of chinese backpackers had gotten into a spot of trouble at the protest line and had been robbed of their bags.
The other group that were staying at the same lodge as me that left one day later, having heard of the robberies, took a 12 hour canoe ride to as near Lago Agrio as possible and then got a 7 hour bus trip back to Quito.
This made me realise how lucky we were to get back to Quito safely, with our bags, in such a short time!
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