From the mountains to the beaches of Ecuador

Back again, finally!

It has been a whirlwind of travel this past week or so. Since that first day in Quito, things drastically improved. We spend a couple of great days sightseeing around the city and getting a lot of important business done. There are a great deal of very old churches and monestaries in the old town of Quito and we saw most of them, at least from the outside. Often it costs several dollars to enter a church so we had to pick and choose which to visit. The one we spent the most time visiting was the monestary of Santa Catalina where nuns live in silence except for 1 hour each day (from 12:30 to 1:30pm) when they can speak to each other about specified topics in the little courtyard outside of their rooms. The nuns also make candies, lotions, non-alcoholic wines and other goods that you can buy through a revolving window so that the nuns remain hidden. I bought a delicious candy called a turron which is made of honey and peanuts. We also visited the museum which has a wide display of religious art mostly in the Quiteño style which, the guide informed us, is characterized by an excessive amount of blood and gore. Most of the gruesome paintings featured fountains of blood squirting from Jesus´wounds with lambs drinking from the bloody rivers. The guide also gave us a look into a replica of a nun´s cell and as a finale, she led us up a windy staircase into the bell tower which gave us a spectacular view of all of Quito´s old town. In Quito, we also visited two outdoor stores where Brad bought a waterproof backpack cover, an English language bookstore with used books which was far superior to any book exchange that we have encountered in hostals, and El Guapulo, a bohemian neighborhood with roads that twist down into a valley that supposedly marks Francisco de Orellana´s journey from Quito to the Atlantic via the Amazon, the first such decent by a European. We also watched the Ecuador vs Chile soccer game in which Ecuador was disqualified from the World Cup.

Preparing ourselves for a backpacking adventure in Cotopaxi National Park took several days in Quito and a very interesting trip to the Supermaxi grocery store where we cobbled together a few days worth of meals suitable to be carried on our backs. We even found peanut butter! And then we were off on a southbound bus to be dropped at the El Boliche entrance to the park. As we hopped off the bus and watched it speed down the panamaerican highway we hoped that the directions we had photocopied out of the hiking and backpacking guide to Ecuador plus the topographical maps we had bought wouldn´t lead us astray. The first day was to be a 9 or 10km hike to a camp site at the Rio Daule where there was water and picnic sites. We hiked and hiked with no sign of a camp site and so we continued along a road that we knew would, and eventually did, lead us to the main entrance road into the park. However, instead of meeting the road somewhere in the middle, we emerged directly at the park entrance station, Control Caspi, and the guard looked at us like we had wandered off of another planet since, according to him, the road we had been hiking on is the old road into Cotopaxi and is definitely no longer used by anyone at all! So, we camped at the park entrance station and at 9 the next morning, we were packed and once again starting our hike toward the volcano, though the morning was cloudy and we could not see any sign of the 19,300 foot peak. We felt incredibly stong striding along that road, refusing all offers of rides toward the interior of the park. Even though we were at about 12,000 feet, we were very well acclimatized having just lived at La Luna for 2 weeks and walking felt great! Soon we came to Mariscal Sucre, where there is a restaurant, a museum and several cabañas. We passed a deserted camping area and it struck us as bizarre that nobody would be camping on a weekend in Ecuador´s most famous national park. We passed Laguna Limpiopungo, a high altitude lake home to many species of birds. And we kept on walking, starting up the road that leads to the climber´s refugio, where those attempting the summit start their climbs. As the slope increased and we started to feel tired, Brad and I scouted out a campsite in the dip between a couple of green hills and set up our tent. We had a sweeping view of the flat paramo that lay below with Laguna Limpiopungo, 2 volcanos to the east, several more peaks to the north, and as the sun set, Cotopaxi showed it´s glaciers and towered over us as we made dinner and prepared for bed. During the night it rained nonstop and there was plenty of lightning and thunder. I felt nervous about the flashing all around us but we were safe and our trusty tent even kept us and our packs perfectly dry. We emerged in the morning to sun and a clear view of the climbers descending from their morning summit victories. That morning we made it to the climber´s refugio at about 16,000 feet and we spent at least an hour enjoying the views, talking to the climbers who had been to the top that day, and drinking a beer and some hot chocolate. When the tourists started pouring in from their hired buses, we began our descent and walked almost all the way out of the park before hailing a pickup truck and getting a bumpy ride out to the panamericana where we flagged a bus to Latacunga. It was a stunning adventure!

It´s hard to transition from the serenity and crisp clean air of the mountains to a bustling city. I always find myself feeling a bit stressed out and slighly more irritable when making desicions. Latacunga has very little in the way of hostels and so we ended up in the Hotel Centro which is just as cheap as most hostels and had a private bathroom and a TV (the first one we´ve watched pretty much since we left Portland). It wasn´t the nicest room and unlike a hostel there was a serious lack of information about the city and the surrounding area, not to mention there were no other backpackers sitting around to relate their experiences and to give advice. We managed to get ourselves fed (although I did have to dodge chicken feet in my soup again) and to book a ticket on a bus the next morning to Chugchilan, a little town on what the Lonely Planet dubs the Quilotoa Loop. The Loop is a series of towns in the highlands that specialize in farming and in other crafts. Some of the towns are close enough together that you can hike between them and some require a bus or other transportation. When we arried in Chugchilan there was a thick fog restricting our views of almost everything but what was about 15 feet in front of us. I was worried that it would be foggy the next day as well and that our plan to hike 8 miles to Laguna Quilotoa would be threatened but the locals assured us it would clear in the morning. Brad and I camped in the yard of a beautiful hostel and spent some time reading in front of their nice wood stove. Sure enough when we woke up, the sun was out and it was a really warm day for our hike. Grabbing some bread and bananas for breakfast, we made our way out of town, into a steep canyon and then straight up the other side. We wound our way along a trail that is used by tourists and locals (as well as llamas) to pass between the little villages. I greeted a little girl in one village saying Buenos Dias and she definitely mocked my accent as she repeated the greeting back to me. We also encountered several children who tried to convince us that we were lost so that they could guide us back to town, earing a dollar or a gift for their services. Clearly, many tourists pass through the area and the local children have learned well how to get what they want from us. Laguna Quilotoa is a crater lake and it is incredibly striking, although I think that because I grew up near the Crater Lake in Oregon, I was slightly less impressed by it´s beauty. When Brad and I got to the crater rim, we were just sitting down to enjoy tunafish sandwiches for lunch when the clouds moved it, it started to rain, then hail, and pretty soon we were in the middle of a full blown thunder and lightning storm that crashed and echoed around the crater walls. We made our way around the crater on a tiny, trecherous trail that passed what looked like a couple of funeral pyres perched on the rocky cliffs on the way to the little village of Quilotoa. By the time we got there, the lake was completely obscured by fog, we were pretty well drenched, and we decided to hire a pickup truck to take us to the village of Zumbahua where we immediately caught a bus toward the warmer weather at the coast.

We had planned to stay one more night at least around Quilotoa but the beauty of not having an itinerary allowed us to spontaneously switch our schedule to match our needs. I really needed to be in the sun and warmer weather so we went west to the Pacific Ocean. But first, the bus stopped in Quevedo, a city that is not even mentioned in the guide book because it has no services for travelers. After a lot of asking around we ended up at a decent hostel for the night but it was on one of the busiest, loudest streets I have ever seen and all night we could not only hear but feel the rumbling trucks passing beside our room. From Quevedo, we got a bus to Portoviejo, from Portoviejo we got a bus to Jipijapa (pronounced hippihoppa), from Jipijapa we got a bus to Puerto Lopez, our final destination, which is where I am right now. Puerto Viejo has been both exciting and a bit of a letdown. First, it is a quiet beach town with dirt roads and a very clean beach in a bay that is loaded with blue fishing boats. We are staying in a bamboo hostel with beautiful plants and hammocks (and cold showers) and beds that have mosquito nets though they aren´t really needed they just look kinda cool. That stuff is all great! The only letdown is that the sun hasn´t really made a clear appearance since we got here almost 2 nights ago. Today was pretty bright and the breeze is definitely warm but I was hoping for some blue skies and sun! I guess you can´t have everything and we certainly do have quite a few very good things. Tonight we ate fresh fish for dinner that was caught by some fellow travelers who we met in Otavalo and who happened to be here too. They went out fishing today and invited us to eat some of their delicious fish! Tomorrow I believe we will be heading just a little way down the coast to another little beach. But now I think it is time to go read my book. In a hammock. With a bowl of fresh pineapple from the market.

Thanks for reading! More pictures are up in the Ecuador section of picasa.
Love,
Anika