Ecuador

---

Quito

The journey to Quito was rather amusing. At the airports all the staff and most of the passengers were wearing masks to save themselves from the dreaded ‘swine flu’. We had already read that these do little to prevent the virus and opted to risk it. Landing in Quito felt much like landing in Heathrow, bar the mountains, grey and drizzly with patchwork fields. From the airport we took a bus and then a tram to the area where our hostel was supposed to be and then spent a good while looking for it. Once found, we were rewarded with hot showers and the first comfortable bed for a while.

The next day we took in the view of Quito’s old town from the church tower near our hostel and then spent the afternoon strolling around the new town in search of jungle tours and South America guide books to swap for our Central America one. We successfully booked a tour leaving the next night and returning 5 days later. We had an amazing lunch with Kristian’s uncle and his wife the following day before heading to the bus station to catch our night bus to Cuayabeno reserve.

Cuayabeno

After a long, bumpy and gruelling bus ride we met our guide for the next few days, Diego, and took a motorised canoe to our Zopilote style lodge and settled down to a large breakfast, accompanied by a squirrel monkey, Luis, and a Toucan which apparently had diarrhoea, Anton. We relaxed until lunch and at lunch met two German girls who had just arrived. We then took the canoe out to a spot on the river for piranha fishing. I was rather relieved, James disappointed, that we came back empty handed. That evening we went for a night hike, accompanied by Luis, and saw another coral snake worryingly close to Luis. Diego explained to us that the way to tell a real coral snake from a fake is by the size of the eyes. If the eyes are large, its a fake, if they are small its real. This ones eyes were definitely small. We also saw a largish mammal up in the trees which is apparently a cross between a monkey and an anteater. It began with ‘t’ but unfortunately neither of us can recall its name. We also experienced (largely by sound) a large owl hunt its prey and tracked it for a while which was very exciting. We returned to an excellent dinner and an early night.

The following day, joined by a Danish couple, we went for a long treck through the Amazon jungle. We were not quite as lucky as the night before but it was fun all the same. Highlights included seeing monkeys, a large reddish snake which even made Diego jump, some tapir footprints, jaguar footprints (James is sceptical about this one) and just missing seeing a deer run off although we did hear it. The day was also punctured by numerous mammoth jumps and precarious walks on branches over rivers. That evening we went on another hike and saw some more monkeys and a tarantula.

I woke up the next morning feeling rather sore and was grateful that the day’s activity largely consisted of sitting on the canoe. We took a pleasant cruise down the river seeing various species of monkeys arriving at the lake just in time for lunch. During lunch we watched a Caiman feeding (although unfortunately it was being fed and so not exactly ‘in the wild’). We then motored out into the middle of the lake in which we had just seen the Caiman, and reputably had piranhas and anacondas living in there, and went for a swim.

We were then driven down the small winding Amazonian rivers to an indigenous village and were shown how the Amazonian ‘fast food’ snack Cassava bread is made. First, James had to pull the Cassava plant out of the ground. Each plant has four of five tubers and we collected around ten in all. We all helped to peel the tubers which were then placed in a bucket of water to soak. A large wooden boat shaped dish, at least 5 foot long, was then produced along with a homemade grater. We took turns grating the tubers on the A4 sized grater. Once a sufficient amount of cassava was grated, the gratings were put onto a leaf woven piece of material the length of the boat. This was wrapped around the cassava and then hooked onto a nail on the wall and slowly twisted using a stick effectively wringing out all the water from the cassava. It was incredible how much water came out. The dry gratings were then sieved into a bucket and now had a consistency similar to that of parmesan cheese. They were then poured onto a large round pan and cooked on both sides as one would cook a pancake. After around 5 minutes of cooking it was ready to eat. It tasted quite dry but with syrup added was a great treat.

Then it was back to the boat for pink Amazonian dolphin and anaconda spotting. Unfortunately we didn’t see either of these, but, as we motored back to our lodge in the dark James was adequately startled by a tarantula falling on his head from an overhanging branch.

The final day was spent doing another long trek although all we saw was monkeys. We all ran out of water and were really exhausted and thirsty by the time we returned but it was rewarding all the same. It was a little disappointing that we had to keep changing direction as we kept dead ending into oil fields. Perhaps this is why we saw so little?

We took a different route back to Quito as we had heard that the week before several of the night busses had been hijacked between Cuayabeno and Lago Agrio. We got an earlier bus to Lago Agrio, therefore, and got on our night bus back to Quito where it was safe.

Quito

We didn’t spend long back in Quito, just enough time to buy a new camera as mine had been slowly dying for some time. We then collected our bags and returned to the bus station to catch a bus to Baños.

Baños

In Baños James took me to a spectacular hostel called ‘Petit Auberge,’ which had chimneys in each room. We decided to treat this as a belated anniversary dinner as our one in Panama was not quite what we had in mind and so took ourselves off to the connecting restaurant and had a fabulous French meal with a great bottle of Chilean wine which we finished off in our room in front of the fire.

The next day we moved to a more affordable hostel which had a great atmosphere. We bumped into some friends we had made in Zopilote and spent our first night hitting the bars for the first time in a very long time. We spent a ludicrous amount of money but it was great to experience the nightlife given that we’re usually in bed by 9pm.

The next day James and I got up early and punished our hangovers by having a steam bath. This consists of being put in a small wooden box with a hole for your head and being heated up until you almost faint, then being taken out and taking a towel out of a bowl of running ice cold water and rubbing it up first your right leg, then your left leg, then both legs together and up to your head and down your back, then your right arm, then your left arm, and then back in the box. This happens about three times. On the fourth occasion you are taken out of the box and made to sit in an ice cold bath while the man splashes cold water all over you. We then returned to our boxes and were finally hosed down with ice cold water by a high powered hose that nearly made us fall over.

As soon as we had recovered and breakfasted we hired bikes and cycled the 35 kilometre ride to Rio Negro. I got off to a bad start as I was wearing sunglasses and cycled into a pitch black tunnel , completely lost my sense of balance and started swerving all over the place until I crashed into the tunnel wall, quickly picking myself up to avoid being run over by the incoming cars. I was still shaking hours later. The cycle ride, however, was beautiful and well worth risking the ‘tunnel of death’ as we named it. We saw an abundance of waterfalls, one of which James was crazy enough to swim in (the water was very cold) and finished our day off with a fantastic lunch before loading our bikes onto a passing bus and returning to Baños.

The following two days consisted of Spanish lessons and a home stay which was a great refresher for us. Unfortunately I had come down with a bad cold (probably due to the steam bath) and thus didn’t relish the home stay as I otherwise might. The family were great though. They spent a long time chatting to us and the kids were remarkably well behaved. We ended up staying an additional night which we arranged with them independently. In those couple of days we took ourselves to two separate baths, after which the town is named, and enjoyed the first hot water baths in 7 months. It was heavenly.

We went white water rafting on our final day in Baños. It was terrific and much harder work than I had anticipated. One of the rafts even capsized at the end and we had to paddle as quickly as we could to rescue the stranded in the rapids.

La Costa

We departed Baños early the next morning and took a bus to Guayaquil which took much longer than expected. From there we took another bus to Puerto Lopez. It was dark by the time we arrived so we took a rather strange hostel which was relatively close. We inquired about Isla la Plata (apparently the poor man’s Galapagos) and found we were too poor for even that.

The next morning we took a stroll to the beach and saw all the fish being hauled in and sold. It was pleasant watching the local fisherman go about the work and admiring the circling pelicans and other preying birds. That is, until we saw that among the fish were baby hammerhead sharks, rays and other questionable catches. I swiftly walked off in disgust and left James to take the pictures.

Later that day we took a painful bus to Manglalta. James had a bad neck from the previous days bus excursions and my stomach had started to play up and the roads were very windy and the driver was driving ridiculously fast. We were thus elated to alight at the quiet seaside town of Manglalta. James found us a hostel and spent the remainder of the day at the beach.

The following day we took a bus to a nearby village and James had a great lunch on the beach (I was still suffering) where the staff pulled out all the stops bringing us chairs and a parasol each while we were sitting on the beach waiting for the lunch and then a separate table and chairs for lunch. We then took a bus to the nearby party town of Montanita to buy a bus ticket to Guayaquil for 5am the following morning. From Guayaquil we took an overnight 27 hour bus ride to Lima and thus ended our Ecuadorian adventure.

---