Ecuadorian Explorations

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Whilst my blogging has always been relatively up to date I seem to have fallen behind a bit in the last month or so - the travelling life is just too exciting! So instead of covering every bit of Ecuador individually in different blogs I am putting all of our Ecuador experiences into this one blog. So it may be a bit long...

Vilcabamba and Loja

Our first stop in Ecuador was the pleasant city of Loja in the south. I was immediately struck by how "western" the city was, with lots of fashion shops, wide pavements (sidewalks for you American readers) and a prosperous air. We just spent a couple of days in Loja, planning onward travel and introducing ourselves to the local cuisine. We had our first taste of Ecuadorian specialities including tamales, humitas and empanadas de verde (all very tasty). And we discovered that ecuadorians love bananas and eat them with everything - including steak!

From Loja we moved south to the small town of Vilcabamba, situated in the "Valley of Longevity". The valley is so called because a high number of its residents live to be well over 100 years old. A variety of factors apparently contribute to this including the good climate, clean air, fresh food and relaxed pace of life. Of course we had to see this for ourselves! We stayed at the excellent Hosteria Izhcayluma located a few kilometres out of town, which is described as a resort for backpackers. We had a lovely big room with amazing granite-panelled shower, the best breakfast in South America, a swimming pool, bar, restaurant, pool table, etc. In other words we were in heaven.

Added to these luxuries we also enjoyed a few days of hiking in the nearby area. When we checked into the Hosteria they gave us a booklet with a number of detailed maps and hike descriptions so we followed a few of these. One hike took us up towards Mandango Mountain, a famous peak in this area due to its funny box-shape. Unfortunately some drizzle came in as we were approaching the peak and we had to re-trace our steps back down to town as the ridge is too exposed to attempt in bad weather. Instead, that afternoon we visited the excellent Rumi-Wilco nature reserve. I was expecting it to be a bit tame but actually it turned into a big (should have had machetes) adventure. We were tracking our way through thick vegetation, hoping there were no snakes nearby, climbing up gullies and Barry even managed to cut his head on a tree at one point! On our penultimate day at the Hosteria we set off for a wonderful hike known as the "Izhcayluma Loop", which took in a variety of landscapes including excellent ridge hiking as well as scrambling down to a riverbed which was more like rock climbing. We had managed to lose the path, and other people we spoke to didn't have any of the climbing - I think they missed out!

Our last day at the Hosteria, we did pretty much nothing all day. This is a very rare occurence for us and I think it is only fair that we blame the hosteria. It was just too comfortable!

Cuenca and Cajas National Park

Cuenca is Ecuador's third largest city, full of colonial architecture, character and a great place to spend a few days. The historic centre is a UNESCO world heritage site and we spent lots of time just wandering around, marvelling at the buildings. We were also encouraged to wander more as there was a local festival on whilst we were there, with lots of stalls selling sweets, various firework displays and lots of locals out in the streets for a good time.

From Cuenca it is possible to take an easy day trip to Cajas National Park, known for its "Paramo" landscape (high altitude, lots of grasses and lakes). On our day trip we had mostly good weather (well, it didn't rain and wasn't too cold) and enjoyed a great hike. We started at Laguna Toreadora, which we circled, trying to avoid the very muddy patches and enjoying the excellent views. From there we moved on to more laguna views, walking through incredible thick forest and out on open plains. The day offered a wonderful break from Cuenca culture and I would highly recommend a visit to anyone in the area.

Baños

Baños is a pleasant town situated between Cuenca and Quito. We spent a fun few days there taking in the sights, although unfortunately low cloud made it impossible to see the famous volcano that apparently overlooks the town. Baños has a few good hiking opportunities nearby and we followed one of the lesser-known trails (the Sendero Sauce) to the north of town. Unfortunately we took a wrong turn which led us up a very steep path and eventually to some orchards. Despite being the wrong way we didn't mind as the views over the valley below were fantastic. We headed back down and got onto the right path, which had been difficult to see earlier on. The path led us along the mountainside, with more great views and eventually led down to a small footbridge which led us back to Baños. A very entertaining trek, especially with the unexpected diversion!

On another day we hired bikes to cycle the 60km from Baños to the Amazon-gateway town of Puyo. This sounds harder than it actually is as the majority of the ride is downhill and lots of the time we were just free-wheeling. But there were also plenty of attractions along the way to make us get off the bikes and do some more exploring. We hiked to some stunning waterfalls (Pailon del Diablo was particularly spectacular), stopped off for fresh-juice breaks, and took a tarabita (small cage contraption) ride over the river to see more waterfalls. Unfortunately after some 40km the inevitable happened and it started raining. We didn't mind to begin with, indeed it helped to cool us off, but soon the tropical downpour had absolutely soaked us and didn't look like it was going to stop at any point soon. So, with heavy hearts, we had to abandon the ride and flagged down a passing bus to take us and our bikes back to Baños. Damn this changeable Ecuadorian weather!

Baños ("Baths") is so-called because within the town are a variety of thermal springs providing fresh hot water to numerous pools. After all of our hard work it was only right that we should have a little relaxation, and therefore went along to the pool for a soak. There are pools of three different temperatures, cold, medium and hot. We tried all three but of course very sensibly spent most time in the perfect medium-heat pool. Ahh, bliss...

Quito

We found ourselves in Quito on various occassions once we had moved on to northern Ecuador. We enjoyed the city very much and found plenty to fill our time. We stayed at two different hotels there and had very different experiences in them. The "Secret Garden" is one of those places that backpackers flock to, with its various dorm bed / private room options, English-speaking staff, bar, etc. And this was the reason it didn't really appeal to us! I didn't come to Ecuador to spend my time talking to other gringos all the time but it felt like that was the reason Secret Garden exists. I have no problem if that is what other people want from their holidays, but it's just not us. So instead we went to the excellent Hostal San Blas one block away. It cost a ridiculously cheap USD$12 a night for a decent en-suite room and also included access to a great top-floor kitchen which no-one apart from us seemed to use. The family running it were also very friendly and full of helpful information.

Quito itself is a huge city but we always felt safe and happy wandering the streets. We also used public transport (buses, trolleys and taxis) with no problems, apart from the taxi drivers refusing to use their meters! We quickly came to realise that the taxi drivers were mostly evil and set ourselves up for complicated price negotiations every time we went to hail one.

Quito had plenty to keep us occupied. Often just wandering the streets of the old town kept us busy for hours, but some real highlights included:
* Climbing the Basilica. Located in the heart of the historic centre and visible from various points around the city, the Basilica is a key feature of the Quito landscape. Whilst the inside is beautiful and has a particularly fine stained glass window, the real fun is to be had when climbing inside (and outside) the various bell towers and steeples. You are allowed to climb various ladders and staircases pretty much unhindered and can get to the top of most of the towers. This was great fun and gave both views over the city and adrenaline rushes galore!
* Taking the teleferico to Cerro Pichincha. Quito is already located at a high altitude of 2,850m, but this teleferico takes you to over 4,000m above sea level. It was cold at the top but once again worth it for the spectacular views. We also trekked around a bit once at the top and would have hiked all the way to the distant summit but we were too hungry to continue!
* Museums. There are plenty of museums to keep even the most cultured people happy. Many of the churches are like museums within themselves, with paintings of the Quito-school and ornate altars. It is also possible to visit a variety of monasteries and convents along with more traditional art museums.
* The Mariscal Sucre. This district of Quito is where the majority of backpacker services are located, although we had decided against taking a hotel there as we had heard it could be dodgy at night. Instead we visited on a few ocassions during the day when we had the chance to go to nice coffee shops and visit the good English-language bookshop to do some serious book trading.
* The Meals. We found plenty of places to eat in Quito. One of our favourite meals was at the "Fried Bananas" in the new town, with the best salad I have ever eaten. We also enjoyed having our own kitchen again and cooked up some excellent meals once we found a massive supermarket in the north of the city where we had gone to watch the latest Indiana Jones movie!

One equator, two equator, three equator, four...
With a degree in Geography, part of the enjoyment of this trip for me has been visiting the places I once studied or seeing for myself the things that you usually only get to read about in books. It was therefore with great excitement that we spent a day exploring the various equatorial lines painted some 20 kilometres north of Quito. There are different locations for the lines due to inaccuracies in defining exactly where the equator is...

The first stop was to the "Mitad del Mundo" site. This contains a reconstruction of a typical Andean colonial city, with main square, church, etc. However, the main attraction is a large monument situated on the "equator", with a line running from it, showing the position of the equator through the entire town. This is the situation of the equator as determined by a French expedition that was tasked with calculating the diameter of the earth in the 18th century. Of course we had lots of fun taking photos and wandering around the town. But, it turns out that the French were actually a little (some 200 metres) off in their calculations. So after lunch we took a little walk to find the "real" equator.

This led us to the Inti-Ñan Solar Museum, which is said to be the correct equator, as established recently by GPS. This place offers an excellent mix of history, ethnography and science. We were given a guided tour of the site which included information on Ecuador and its indigenous communities. We were able to use a "blow gun" which is used in the Amazon to fire poison darts at monkeys as well as use guinea pigs to see if we had bad auras (I am sure you will be happy to learn that the guinea pigs liked both of our auras!). After that came the really fun part where we went to stand on the equator and our guide showed us some experiments which "proved" that we were on the equator. Both Barry and I were skeptical and I am sure he envied the other groups being guided around who were going "ooohh" and "aaahh" at the experiments they were seeing whilst we were going "really? Is that possible? But, ...."!! Some of the experiments he showed included water draining from a sink in different directions on either side of the equator (anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere), and that it was possible to balance an egg at the equator (which he said would not be possible anywhere other than the equator due to Coriolis effect). I know that Coriolis force is responsible for the directions of storms and trade winds but am less convinced it was having a real effect on our little experiments!

And, of course, it turns out that recently some clever folks with new GPS equipment came to the site and suggested it is not really on the equator either. There was a small sign stating that the line we were standing on was actually at 0° 0' 0.02", in other words, a wee bit off...! Add to this that the true location of the equator shifts by a little bit each year anyway (due to the wobble in the earth's spin axis) and it turns out that none of the lines is or ever will be correct. Still, we didn't let these minor details spoil our fun...

Otavalo

Otavalo is a great town, just a few hours from Quito offering a number of attractions to keep us busy for a couple of days. The main draw for us was the saturday market, reputed to be one of the best in South America. As we still have three months of travelling left there was no way we could buy all of the lovely things on offer, but we still had fun wandering around and trying on the panama hats!

From Otavalo we took two trips to nearby attractions and both were worth the effort. The first outing was a walk out of town and up a few hills to the wild birds sanctuary. This is the home of a huge variety of birds that have been rescued from the wild and are in various states of recovery from injury. We were very impressed to see two Andean Condors, who are sadly in serious risk of extinction, and are a spectacular sight up-close.

The other trip we took was organised very cheaply through our hotel (El Rincon del Viajero) to climb Cerro Fuya fuya (aka. Mount Cloudy cloudy!). Dennis, our American guide, drove us up to a lake at the base of the mountain and from there he led us on the nearly two hour hike up the mountain. The scenery ws wonderful and from the summit we were able to see Quito in the far distance as well as the surrounding valleys and the lake below. There was plenty of cloud blowing in and out but luckily no rain.

Mindo

Mindo is a small town a few hours from Quito surrounded by wonderful cloud forest (similar to rainforest!). On our first day we went for a great hike within the forest to a few waterfalls. The trail was a bit slippery and the weather was humid but the experience was worth the effort. Unfortunately a huge rainstorm came in during the afternoon and we ended up having to run for cover along with all of the other hikers.

Mindo is also home to a great butterfly and orchid farm and we spent ages one morning wandering around trying to take photos. The butterflies were difficult to capture on film as they were continually wanting to move on to the next flower! It was great fun though and we also got a chance to watch hummingbirds which were even more impossible to photograph...

A couple of difficult peaks to finish Ecuador

As any regular readers of my blog will know, Barry and I often find ourselves attempting to summit mountains. This was no different in Ecuador although we were hampered by far-from-perfect weather for quite a while. We decided against our original plans to attempt a very high summit (such as Volcán Cotopaxi) due to cost and timing issues and instead attempted a few slightly lower peaks by ourselves.

Volcán Imbabura (4,609m) is located near to Otavalo and to attempt the summit we stayed at the small village of La Esperanza near the trailhead. We stayed at Casa Aida, which is a slightly mad place where we chatted to the friendly owner (Aida of course) and shared dinner with the Mayor of the nearby city of Ibarra! We hiked up Imbabura in a day, getting a lift for the first few kilometres from Casa Aida to the trailhead. From there is was a fairly straightforward hike following ridges up towards the summit. The last part however inolved quite a bit of rock climbing and the poor weather started to roll in again. We got to a "false summit" and unfortunately had to leave it there for the day. We needed to get back down to base before it got dark but also more importantly before the cloud came any lower. I would say we were only maybe another half hour from the summit. Something for next time...!

Volcán Corazón (4,790m) is in a great location, about an hour south of Quito in the "Avenue of the Volcanoes". We attempted the summit in a daytrip from Quito, as we liked our hotel too much to pack up and leave! This meant we were up very early in the morning to get a bus south to the town of Machachi. From there we caught a local bus to take us 2km towards Corazón but the rest was pure walking. We headed up past small houses towards a large farm which we were allowed to walk through as we wanted. Quickly we were walking up a steep hill behind the farm and heading away from civilization. This turned out to be a very long hike which, coupled with the altitude, made for difficult conditions. However, we kept our spirits up and a few hours later found ourselves at the base of the final scramble up Corazón. This final stretch was one of the toughest I have ever encountered. The volcanic nature of the rock meant that we were scrambling up loose scree which was unstable and hard on the legs. Finally, after extreme effort we made it to what we thought was the summit. And this is where mountain hiking is one of the cruelest sports in the world.... it was a false summit and we were maybe 50 metres below the real summit. If we had had more time and the weather had not been closing in on us (again) we would have continued on to the top. But, that was not possible, and so we found ourselves turning away - "so close, yet so far" - for the second time on an Ecuadorian summit!

The end of Ecuador
All in all we had fun in Ecuador but our time was certainly marred by far from perfect weather. We often faced cloudy skies and sometimes these opened to rainy days. Of course we still managed to fit in plenty of activities and I have some great memories. But also I was not as "wowed" by Ecuador as I was hoping I would be. We have seen better countries in South America and it would not be my first choice for a return visit, although I'm sure I could be persuaded!

Next stop Colombia...

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Photos

Me with my panama hat, Otavalo Market
Of course, Panama hats are actually Ecuadorian and not from Panama at all...