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Published: December 18th 2006
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Is it a bus, it is a train... it´s a bit of both
Here is the "train" (or rather more like a converted bus) that we jumped on top of... it looks nothing like the pictures in the guide books! Guayaquil... hot and humid
Not to much to say - we flew back into here from the Galapagos - large city with some lovely areas but mostly just another big city... so conscious of time we headed out the next morning for Riobamba (which was a nice town from what we saw - we only spent a night here because we wanted to head down to the Devils nose... the train only runs every second or third day... )
Train ride through the Devil´s Nose
This would have to be the weirdest activity that we have done to date. We jumped a train (a bus modified to run on the railway) with about another 50 odd tourists for a loop around the famous Devil´s Nose train track. You have a choice of sitting on the roof of the train or in the carriage........its a fight to sit up top. The switch backs on the mountain side are so tight that the train ends up running backwards for section section of the journey. Below are some shots of the train and the conductor collecting our tickets (while the train was going down hill - it was so packed up top... he
Tickets, tickets please?
You can run but you can´t hide from the ticket collector even when sitting on the roof of the train. We guess that the health and safety officer hasn´t paid a visit here yet! edged down one side of the train and back down the other!).
Cuenca - Churches, Churches and more Churches
This must have been one of the most organised backpacker activities we´ve seen so far.. buses met the trains and either headed north or south to Cuenca. Cuenca is the third largest city and is famous for it´s churches. To be fair there are more in this city than in most European countries!! Cuenca has recently been given a bit of a spruce up so everything is newly painted and restored. It has also recently become a UNESCO world heritage site (is it just me - or are these things springing up all over the place now?).
To be fair the city is a backpackers paradise... it´s a great place to chill with loads of cafes, cheap but decent hotels and pretty decent weather all year around.
Some trekking in Loja
From Cuenca we headed south towards the Peruvian border to a city called Loja (pronounce Loha - which always reminded me of the Lord of the Rings movies). The city it´s self wasn´t much to rave about but we decided to go there for some exercise and trekking in the Podocarpus National Park. We organised two day tours with a guide who was one of the best guides we´ve had since arriving in South America. Our guide could tell us what each bird was just from it´s song! He did some English practice and Naera did a little Spanish practice. He was also illustrating a book on the birds of Loja - and had painted some incredibly life like pictures.
The two days were split between one day in the cloud forest (and therefore at altitude) and the second in the tropical forest. The actual number of birds we saw was a little disappointing as we heard alot than we saw! However, we are hoping to spot some more in Peru!
We also had some great empanzadas (small, pasty like things filled normally with cheese or chicken). Our hotel was basically next to the restaurant and it was packed with locals (one of the first times we were able to put our "population test" into practice - the test is simple, if it´s packed with locals then it is probably pretty good and the food is not likely to have been sitting around for ages, if it´s packed with backpackers its probably good, if there is no one there - we don´t want to be the first to try it!). It was so good we went back the next night and only as we were leaving on the second night did we discover that we should have paid and ordered at the counter, then sat down and given our waiter a ticket with our order on it. We did it the completely wrong way around - but our bill did have ´Gringo´s written at the top (instead of a table number). We think they were as amused by us eating there as we were impressed by the food!
... and onto Peru
From Loja we headed further south... to Peru (which is where we are currently). The temperature changed quickly and we have gone from altitude (which is generally warm but not hot and humid) to incredibly hot and humid. But enough about that.. more on Peru in our next blog...
Take care,
Naera and Jeremy
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