Aug 08

We arrived in Quito Sunday afternoon and decided to stay in the old town. After finding a hostel we tried to find somewhere for lunch. The town was surprisingly quiet, the roads were closed to cars and there were a lot of people walking and cycling, but almost everything was closed. Apart from that we liked the old town, a lot of nice squares, impressive buildings and it seemed very quiet and easy to get around for a capital city. For once it wasn´t completly overcast and raining so we decided to make the most of the weather and spent most of the afternoon in La Carolina, the main park in the city. It was obviously the place to be on a Sunday as it was really busy but it was still a really nice place, until it started raining and we back to the hostel. In the evening, it was even quieter and the only place we could find that was open was an internet cafe.

The next day we decided we should go to the Equator which is marked by a monument and a few museums just outside of the city. Although its not far we had a few problems working out the public transport system and it took us nearly all morning to get there. When we finally arrived we ended up going to what is probably best described as the alternative museum. It was set up by a small group of people who have proven that the equator isn´t where the monument and official museum are, but 240m away. They are investgating a pre-Inca arcaeology site which they think was built to mark the true equator. the guy running it told us a lot of interesting information about archaeology, geography and astronomy in the area, he also talked a lot of rubbish as well. After that we deicided not to even bother going to the official museum and went back in to town, a slightly better route than we had taken. We spent the rest of the day looking round the town and doing a few jobs that we had to get done before our flights the following day.

It was an early start the next day as Cathy's flight home was at 9am. My flight to Costa Rica wasn´t until 2pm so I just spent most of the day at the airport.

From Latacunga we decided to go to Otavalo for a few days as several people had told us it was a nice place to see. We arrived Friday afternoon and spent a while looking around the market in the main square, a big crafts market, mainly aimed at tourists but used by locals as well. There was a lot of really nice stuff and if I didn´t have to carry so much, I could have ended up spending a lot of money. As usual it started to rain so we gave up and spent the rest of the afternoon indoors. After dinner we went out for a drink and discovered that here you could even barter over a bottle of wine in a bar. This happened completly by accident, we asked what wine they had, were deciding whether to risk it as Ecuadorian and Peruvian wine is really bad and the bar women just started decreasing the price for us, after that we decided to have it and luckily it turned out to be Chilean wine, which they had to go out and buy specially for us.

Otavalo is famous for its Saturday market, so we were expecting it to be a bit bigger than we what we saw the day before but were suprised to see that it almost completly takes over the town as it spreads to all the streets around the centre. People come from all over Ecuador to buy and sell anything and everything. We spent all morning looking round, buying a few things, trying different types of food from the stalls. It has to have been one of the few times I have actually enjoyed shopping for anything.

In the afternoon we decided to go to Peguche, a small village nearby where they still maintain a very traditional lifestyle. The village was very quiet because everyone was at the market but we had a nice walk to a waterfall, until it started raining, so we went back to Otavalo.

THe following morning it was time to go to Quito as we only had a couple of days left before our flights.

The bus from Puerto Lopez to Latacunga took longer than expected, after leaving at about 5am we finally arrived in the evening and went to the first hostel we saw. Then we explored the very limited choices of places to eat and ended up back at the Chinese across the road from the hostel. As everything in the town seemed to be shut by 8pm we had an early night to get ready for another early start the next day as we had decide to spend a few days travelling between small villages in the surrounding countryside.
We got another bus to a small town in the middle of nowhere and then got a lift in the back of a truck to the village of Quilatoa. The village actually only consists of a couple of basic hostels, a shop and a small market where locals sell handmade crafts. But the village is in a good location right at the top of a volcano crater. We spent the afternoon walking down into the crater where we hired a kayak and paddled round the crater lake until as usual in Ecuador, it started raining and we walked back up to the top.
Early the following day the weather had improved a bit and we had better views from the top of the crater, across the surrounding countryside to the volcano Cotopaxi on the horizon. We spent the morning doing a nice walk to the village of Chugchilan. It was a good walk that went half way round the crater, down the other side and then into a canyon, which we had to cross. In the afternoon we decided to go horseriding into the cloud forest. Unsurprisingly being the cloud forest in Ecuador we ended up in the clouds yet again, but it was still a good afternoon.
The following day we decided to walk to the village of Isinlivi. The evening before we had met a French guy who had done the walk in the opposite direction and gave us a set of instructions that he had been give. The walk was supposed to take 4-5 hours and he said he had got a bit lost so it had taken him 6. Once we read the instructions we could see why he had got a bit confused, but we thought there would be enough locals to ask if we got lost.

All went well for about the first 45 minutes until we reached a village that was mentioned mentioned in the directions, but on their map it was shown so we carried on. Just to check we asked a girl that we passed, turns out the map was wrong and we shouldn´t have gone as far as the village so turned round. In the village we asked around and found an alternative way to get on to the path we had previously missed. Things went well again for a while, we found the path, went down to the river and followed that for a while and it seemed to fit with the directions (except we didn´t see the small dog that they mentioned). However once we crossed the river the directions got even worse. we were stood in a small field surround by trees and bushes and the instructions said something like walk through the bushes, turn left at a tree, take 2 steps, walk past a bush etc. After wandering round for a bit and find nothing useful we went back to ask another group of people, who told us we should walk back along the river and cross at a different bridge, the bridge that it siad not to use in the directions. We thought we should try it anyway, crossed the bridge and found ourselves surrounded by a barbed wire fence. We spent a while looking for paths in the area and found a few tracks which soon just disappeared. Having already taken us about 5 hours to get what we assumed was less than half way to the village (the walk was suppossed to take 4-5 hours) we admitted defeat and decided to turn back. When we reached the main road someone offered us a lift in the back of a truck to the next town. We spent most of the journy trying to see where the village was or find any route up from the river, but to us it looked virtually impossible, whichever way we could have gone we would have ended up at the bottom of cliffs. After a very dusty and uncomfortable journey we made it to Sigchos where we waited for the evening bus back to Latacunga.

After our experiences in Riobamba we decided to change our plans, have a break from the mountains and the bad weather and head to the coast. We decided to go to the small town of Puerto Lopez, about half way up the coast of Ecuador. Our first day here we went on a day trip to Isla del Plata. It took all morning to reach the island as on the way we stopped several times to see humpback whales. At this time of year a lot of whales migrate to the area for breeding. We saw a group of them that came really close to the boat and spent a while swimming around the area where we were. For a while we also were near a mother and a very young calf that were swimming together. Despite only being about 1 month old the calf was huge and incredible to watch as it was playing and kept jumping completely out of the water. When we arrived at the island we had lunch on the boat and sat watching turtles swimming around us. Then we went for a walk across the island where we saw many species of birds nesting, including blue footed boobies and albatrosses. The final part of the day was snorkelling at a coral reef by the island. This was another really good experience with so many different types of fish to see, and it has been something I have missed doing since I left Australia. We finished off a very good day with a good seafood dinner and bottle of wine on the beach. The only problem with the day was that it made me really want to go to the Galapagos, but at the moment that's just far to expensive for me. An excuse for another trip.

The following day we went to Agua Blanca, a small village a bit further up the coast, where we had a nice walk in the cloud forest and a swim in a natural pool which is apparently supposed to be very good for you, but it just stank of sulphur. The village itself was also very nice, with a small archaeology museum and local people selling crafts.

The next day we decided to go to the surfing town of Montanita. Unfortunately our bad luck with the weather in Ecuador continued. When we arrived the tide was out and there were no waves for surfing, but we were promised it would be better in the afternoon. After looking round the town we went to sit on the beach for a bit. Then it started raining, we tried to stay for a bit but soon gave up and went for lunch instead. In the afternoon the weather got worse and the waves didn´t look any better, so we gave up with our plans of surfing and went back to Puerto Lopez.

After a good few days at the coast we decided to head back in land and got the bus to Latacunga.

After an overnight bus to Riobamba we had a lazy day looking round the town, organising stuff for the next few days and catching up with things like doing the laundry. The following day we went to Banos a small toursity town about an hour away. It was a nice place to go for the day but that was long enough. It is in a valley by a river surrounded by waterfalls and overlooked by an active volcano which last erupted about 2 years ago. We went for a bit of a walk up to some viewpoints but unfortunately it was cloudy so we couldn´t actually see the volcano.

The following day we set off on a 2 day trip to climb a 5000m volcano near Riobamba. Unfortunately the weather still hadn´t improved and when we set off it was still overcast and we were yet to see what we were going to climb. The first day was just a walk to acclimatise, as we spent most of the day walking in the clouds, rain and sleet, it wasn´t great and by the time we reached the refugio where we were to spend the night we were all cold and soaked through to our underwear. We got up at 4am the following day and as it was only snowing a bit we decided to try and do the climb. But yet again the weather deteriorated and we spent all day in the clouds and snow. The climb itself wasn´t too difficult, mostly walking, with the top section being a bit steeper, and in the conditions we had it got quite difficult so we were relieved when we finally reached the top. Coming down the top section was as difficult as going up but once we had done that it was relatively easy going back to the refugio. Although the weather did improve slightly for the last hour of the walk, the volcano remained in the clouds so we never actually saw what we had climbed.

We had a relaxing evening in Riobamba with a nice dinner and bottle of wine followed by an early night, or so we thought. When I closed my eyes to sleep they started hurting a lot and this just got worse and worse. After about an hour I realised that I couldn´t even open my eyes anymore as they had swollen up so much. So I woke up Cathy who then realised her eyes were hurting, she went to speak to the guy who owned the hostel and he took us to hospital. Although I couldn´t see anything and didn´t have much of an idea what was going on, the hospital seemed well organised and we were soon diagnosed with snow blindness and given a prescription for eyedrops and much needed painkillers. After visiting many pharmacies we were able to go back to bed and actually got a bit of sleep.

In the morning I could half open one eye and had a bit of limited blured vision. Luckily Cathy wasn´t quite so bad and could still see relatively well, so we were able to go and get breakfast etc. I then spent most of the day blindfolded and by the evening I was a lot better, I could open both eyes and see enough to get by without too many problems. A couple of days later everything is about back to normal again and we have continued with our travels having learnt an important lesson about wearing sunglassses even when its not sunny.