Wow–we are in Peru. One country down and several more to go.
After two full days of travel, we have spent the day relaxing in Chachapoyas, Peru, otherwise know as Chachas. What a border crossing. I’m not sure if they’ll all be as crazy/tiring/long as the one we just completed, but we shall see.
There are three border crossings between Ecuador and Peru. One is on the coast and is the most traveled, and also rumored to be the most rife with pick pockets. The second (Macara) is inland in the mountains, and quite simple because you can take a single bus from Loja, Ecuador right through the border (getting off for a few minutes for the border formalities) and then back on the same bus to Piura, Peru, a sizable city on the coast.
We decided not to do either of these borders, but instead to cross at La Balsa, which might, MIGHT see about ten foreigners go across it per day, and a handful more Peruvians and Ecuadorians. Why did we go for this one? No good reason. But we are definitely off the Gringo Trail now.
The journey began with a 9:30 am bus out of Vilcabamba, Ecuador. The bus crossed through beautiful mountains, tiny towns, lots of cloud forests, and waterfalls. We met a very friendly Ecuadorian man on the bus who had tons of questions, more so than most–what religion we are, how we are able to travel for so long, what we think about the world economic crisis (yes, people are talking about it everywhere). We were probably some of the few foreigners he crosses paths with, unlike other places more heavily visited in Ecuador, and he was therefore quite curious. The vistas on the drive were incredible, as were the remarkable drop offs on the side of the road. We are definitely in the Andes.
We arrived in Zumba, Ecuador at about 3 pm, where we had planned to wait for a truck to take us the the border. Unfortunately, we were informed that the next truck would not be there until 5:30 pm, bringing us to the border by 7 pm when it would already be dark. Some guys hanging around in pick-up trucks offered to bring us for $20, but we passed. Here we met one of the three foreigners we would cross for the next two days–Jeremy, from Colorado.
Jeremy is one of those Americans that freaks me out down here. He’s totally jaded by the U.S., believes thousands of people will be dying of starvation in the U.S. in just a couple months due to the economic troubles, government watching up with “chips,” etc. Well he’s come down her to “start a ecotourism business” but he’s having “visa issues,” meaning he’s not really legal in Ecuador anymore. I get the sense he may actually be a fugitive from the U.S. Anyway, he’s also headed to Peru (just for a couple days to throw the Ecuadorian visa police off his path), but he’s not waiting for the truck to take us to the border and decides to start walking.
Pat and I start start a card game when two other foreigners show up - Xavier and Matthew from France. Xavier and Matthew are all about paying one of the pick-up trucks to take us to the border and approach us to see if we’ll share the cost. I manage to get the price down by five dollars and we’re off. Xavier and Matthew are SUPER bottom dollar travelers. They’ll stay anywhere as long as it costs $3. By this point, Jeremy has managed to make it quite a distance down the road but we pick him up as we pass.
We make it to the border by about 5:30 pm, which is great because it’s still light outside (I hate arriving new places, particularly borders, in the dark). On the Ecuadorian side, we show our passports so they can mark down that we’ve left. It’s basically just a bunch of boys, about 20 years old each, guarding the border—with machine guns. It takes two of them to make any sense out of my passport even with me showing them where my name and passport number is. I have a feeling they haven’t done this too many times.
I should back up and explain that this border crossing has only been open since 1998. In that year, Peru and Ecuador signed a peace treaty ending a decades long aggression over who controlled that particular bit of territory. There actually may still be landmines in the area, which was sort of crazy for us being the first places we’ve traveled like that. [Note to the moms: we checked on the safety of passing and everything is totally fine to do so. The only concern would be if you got really off the road, which we didn't.]
Anyway, we made it over to the Peru side, and these border guys were totally different. They all seemed like they had enjoyed the afternoon with a few beers, wanted to let me know that I was pretty–several times, and wanted to know whether or not I was married. By this point, I was full up on all day with the men—all men on the bus to Zumba, our pick up truck with crazy Jeremy and the Frenchies, and now these less than professional border guards. Thank goodness at least for one man though—Patrick.
We all got our passports stamped and had to take yet another taxi over an hour and a half, bumpy as anything dirt road to San Ignacio, Peru where we would finally spend the night. We arrived by about 9:30 pm—12 hours after starting. Jeremy had some “friends” to stay with so he bailed, while Patrick, the Frenchies, and I stayed at Hostal La Posada for $2.50 each. It had walls that were literally paper thin, made all the more obvious when some small Peruvian children started playing soccer in the hallway at 6:30 am. You pay for what you get.
The next morning (Tuesday), Patrick, Xavier, Matthew and I got into a colectivo (sort of like a big van with a roof rack for luggage) for a three hour drive to Jaen, Peru. We arrived in Jaen and I thought I was in South East Asia. There were barely any cars on the road, but instead the roads were completely filled with moto taxis with covered two seater wagons in the back like one would imagine bringing you to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We got some awesome lunch in Jaen (also heavily Asian influenced), and then took another colectivo to Bagua Grandes, about an hour away. In Bagua Grandes, the four of us piled into a taxi (after taking moto taxis to get us to the Chachas taxis) for the remaining three hour drive to Chachas. By 5:30 pm we had finally arrived—the border crossing was over!!!
In summary, one bus, a border, two regular car taxis, one moto taxi, two colectivos, and a lot of dudes. God bless any females who attempt this route solo.
We had the greatest dinner of the entire trip last night at Restaurant Chacha–I had real filet of chicken with a sauces of tons of onions and tomatoes. And again today we had good food with a lot of veggies. The food is so much better here–and even cheaper! A full lunch today was just $1.15 each. It makes me want to just keep eating.
So why did we come here anyways? Chachapoyas is surrounded by lots of forest with pre-Incan archaelogical ruins that are just now being discovered. The biggest is called Kuelap, which I have understood is on the scale of Macchu Piccu and some have said could end up to be the most important ruin site in South America. And they are literally still discovering new sites in the forests around here. Very few tourists come because the aforementioned trip is not the most comfortable, and there is no alternative (no airport here). I can´t wait to get out there in it. I imagine jungle ruins covered with orchids and vines, with monkeys holding court.
It looks like we´re going to have a dead zone over the next week or so. Pat and I will take off on a five day trek on Friday to go check out some of these ruins, including Kuelap. We´ll have copious stories and pics when we get back, so until then…
Tonight is our last night in Ecuador, which has been a fabulously hospitable country for the past 3 weeks. Tomorrow, we’ll head about 6 hours south from Vilcabamba o Zumba and cross the border into Peru. We arrived in Quito exactly three weeks ago and have spent time in the capitol, went North to Otavalo, saw the Equator, rode over to Cotopaxi, bathed in Banos, tried the train from Riobamba, checked out Cuenca and hiked in Vilcabamba. It did take a little bit to shake off the feeling of being on vacation and to become comfortable with the lives of travelers, but we feel good living out of backpacks and are really looking forward to our continued adventure.
Some thoughts that I have about Ecuador, before we part for a while:
Every meal comes with a huge pile of rice. If you don’t like rice and chicken, I don’t know what you could eat.
Change for a $20 bill can be hard to come by when your dinner costs $1.75. Small change is highly valued.
4 Shirts and 4 Pairs of underwear is plenty.
Upon arriving at any bus station in the country, you can find a bus that’s either pulling out or leaving in 3 minutes for the exact town you’re travelling to. Quito? Right over here. Riobamba… Gate # 17. I’m completely convinced that you could throw your bag on a bus and catch a ride to Paris, France without waiting.
Toilet paper goes in the wastebasket and does NOT get flushed. Also, carrying your own is a grand idea!
It will rain today and you might get caught in it. Do not worry, it will also be nice and your shirt will dry. My guess is that the rain will come in the afternoon, but be ready.
It gets hard to breathe above 3000 meters. I don’t know what this means in the US, but (now) know very well about the Andes.
WiFi is everywhere… FREE WiFi does not exsist. So stop asking.
When making soup for a Merienda, it’s expected that one uses the feet and head of the chicken… these will eventually wind up in the bowl, but don’t worry, the soup’s delicious!
Caught a WiFi signal here in our hostel and have been able to upload 3 videos of our final days in Ecuador (below). Also, I added 66 pictures to our flickr photos under the Ecuador 2008 set. Some of my favorite photos (from the new additions) are the ones where we’re on the train and then the train off the tracks:
Also, Mary + Patrick in front of a huge, hidden waterfall (also seen in the third video below):
With just over two weeks into the the trip, we decided to start covering some actual distance.After looking at the map and just how far away Patagonia is – the farthest goal of our South America leg – we now have a new imperative to cover distances greater than the one to three hour bus rides we had been doing thus far.
So as they say, every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single derailed train (is that how it goes?).We stayed in Riobamba Tuesday night at the bare, but perfectly adequate Hotel Imperial.We awoke early Wednesday morning to take the train from Riobamba through the steep terrain between Alausi and Sibambe (el nariz del diablo), arriving at 6:30 in the morning to scramble for a seat on the already full roof of the train.The first two hours of the ride were enjoyable, passing through beautiful farms.They definitely know how to do sustainable agriculture.Then, before we even reached the steep part of the ride, the train started really jostling hard and ground to a halt.Everyone got up and started looking around, and some even got off the the train.I used the opportunity to crawl over four train roofs to the back to use the baño, passing our friends Fleur and Alain along the way (of course they were on the same train, they’re like our Ecuadorian twins) who informed me that they heard that the train derails frequently but it will get back on the tracks and keep going! They had a friend who rode it while it derailed three times during the trip!!It turned out that our trip on the train was ending - three of the train cars were totally off the tracks.We would not be going anywhere for a while.Luckily we were right next to the Panamerican and were able to catch a passing bus back to Riobamba for a refund.
So our first attempt to cover some real distance got a little bungled up.From Riobamba, we took a bus with Fleur and Alain to Cuenca, about 6 hours to the south.Cuenca is a very pleasant colonial city that is a UNESCO World Heritage site – same as old town in Quito.The most beautiful building was the Cathedral, built in the early 1500s by the Spanish.We stayed in the relatively upscale Hotel Milan that had some of the hottest showers Ecuador has to offer and cable TV so that we could watch the last Presidential debate.This was an interesting experience because CNN en español was live dubbing the debate, so it was very different to hear about the problems our country is facing in another language.
Thursday morning we got on another bus to head further south to Loja.The ride was supposed to be five hours but due to the fact that they are still building the road, we got caught up in some construction traffic that delayed us an additional two hours.Oh, and I can’t forget to mention that between the bus rides on Wednesday and Thursday, we watched a total of three kung fu movies (one movie was on twice) – they love their Jackie Chan here.We arrived in Loja after dark, grabbed some dinner, and decided to continue onto the final hour and a half bus to our destination – Vilcabamba.
Vilcabamba is about seven hours north of the border with Peru.It’s relatively off the beaten path because you likely have to be backpacking to even be here, given that it’s about 16 hours from Quito and 20 hours from Lima, and the majority of people who do cross the border with Peru on foot do so via the coast, whereas we are still up in the mountains here.We rolled in around 9 pm and immediately liked the town.It is the smallest town we have stayed in thus far with just around 5,000 inhabitants and walking through the town at night was very comfortable, with lots of families hanging around outside.We’re staying at Le Rendevous, an awesome hostal owned by a French guy (thanks for the rec Jeremy from NC!).It is tranquilisimo here.Lots of hiking and biking trails around here.Off to have some fun!
We’ve just wrapped up a great stay in Banos, a town about three and a half hours south of Quito. We stayed there the longest of any town yet (5 nights), but it was a great place to heal up from our colds and get into some outdoor activities at a much lower elevation (3900 feet).
We arrived on Thursday after fleeing from a hairy student protest/riot in Quito. My cold was so bad that by the time we arrived, I had no voice and the rapid 4,000 foot change of altitude resulted in me not being able to hear anything. Deaf and mute – not a good start to things. This did give Pat the chance to take on more of the Espanol interactions, which was the positive side. The town of Banos has just about 10,000 inhabitants and is nestled in a beautiful valley surrounded by peaks, including a 15,000 foot Tungurahua volcano that is currently active. The volcano is being monitored so we weren’t at any risk of major explosion, but we were told they have small earthquakes about once a week (we never felt one while there).
The town was gearing up for Dia de la Raza (their less colonialist spin on Columbus day) and Ecuadorians were pouring in from all over the country to take part in the festivities. We were lucky to grab a room at Residencial Rosita, a cheap, central, slightly run down hostel owned by a pleasant Ecuadorian woman named Claudia, who, along with her sister Laura who owned the internet cafe next door, had a big crush on Patricio.
We took it easy on Friday so that I could recover. By the end of the day, I had regained my voice and hearing, and we were able to get together with new friends we had met on the mountain in Cotopaxi who we had just happened to run into on the street in Banos, in particular our new Swiss friend Adrian and a Dutch couple, Fleur and Alair. In fact, by the time we left Banos, we had bumped into seven people we had met elsewhere in Ecuador. We took this as a sign that we were exactly where we were supposed to be (Celestine reference). We can’t seem to walk outside in Ecuador without bumping into Fleur and Alair, or our Aussie friend Will.
Banos is a great town because there is so much to do there for free, or very cheaply. I would recommend it to anyone. With health regained, we took to the mountain, hiking up to a huge statue of the Virgin Mary overlooking the city and on up to a place where we could view the volcano. When we were almost to the top, we heard the sound of thunder so had to turn around before being able to see the volcano (and then proceeded to go downhill at the same time as a mountain bike race was passing through - scary). We tried the hike again yesterday (a little crazy to do twice in three days but we have to prep for the big Machu Piccu hike), and were able to make it to the top but the volcano was hiding behind a set of clouds. We could see old lava flows though. It was eery because the volcano was shrouded in mist and cloud, but we knew something very powerful was hidden behind it. The way back down passes through a small indigenous village called Runtun that is full of beautiful farms in the volcanic soil.
We also took a bike ride with our new friends Fleur and Alair that goes from Banos to a town called Puyo 60 km away. The ride goes through a valley with beautiful waterfalls marking the way every ten minutes or so, including the massive Pailon del Diablo waterfall. It was great to be on bikes again, and we´ll definitely look for more oppurtunities to do so throughout the trip.
Today, we´ve arrived in Riobamba. It´s a fairly large city with beautfiul colonial architecture. We´ll just stay here for one night at the Hotel Imperial before leaving at 7 am tomorrow morning to take a famous train ride down el nariz del diablo (the nose of the devil). You can ride on the roof and it´s one the of the steepest trains in the world. We´ll be holding on tight!!
We’ve done better getting up pictures, and we’ll be adding them into posts like this as time allows.
From the reading corner, just finished Into the Wild. A great story, though we’ll definitely keep ourselves out of situations like that. Now I’m going to attempt to tackle The DaVinci Code (which I’ve never read) in Spanish – anyone have a Spanish-English dictionary?
We are moving through Ecuador and have posted (to date) 150 pictures and 18 videos of our travels. To see the pictures of our adventure, thus far, check out the photoset on Flickr:
We were hiking down from La Luna Hostel into Otavalo when we witnessed some indigenous, Ecuadorian, honest-to-God, totally free range, organic, if-not-but-totally-wild, cage free, yes-we´re-cool-with-the-street-dogs chickens. We´d just read the blog comment from Rick and Mary Sheils asking for some sweet pics, and here those bueuties are:
Enjoy!
Mary and have bounced back from our days Cotopaxi via Quito for a single night at the Secret Garden, Quito. While we were near Cotopaxi, we stayed in the other, possiblly more lovely, Secret Garden hostel. We arrived via bus from Quito in Machachi and found the bus up the mountain, which let us off at the end of the hostel´s driveway. From there, we hitched a ride with Roberto and got in with time for lunch.
The place is super cozy and the indoors revolves around the large fireplace, with couches and a huge dinner table. The outside has hammocks, a composting toilet and several outbuildings for cabins and the dorms. There was a distinctly European crowd and we made fast friends with some brits, swiss and dutch folks. On the second day, we went horse back riding to a cool river, where we attempted to pull fish directly from the stream (seemed alot easier when Vera, our guide, described it). Our horses were very gentle and we had a blast being out in the country-side for so long.
I´ve just uploaded a video of Mary and I on the horses about 3km from the hostel:
After a nap and dinner, we played cards and laughed with our neighbors. The next morning, a bunch of folks trekked up to the glaciers surrounding the Cotopaxi Volcano, but we opted to stay back and rest. Some colds we´d picked up from the nights in our hostels needed some tender loving care. We banded together several people to share a ride back into town and caught a bus towards Quito. We arrived back at the Secret Garden and got some time in an internet cafe before dinner time. We attempted some Skype calls, but have struggled to find a good connection or computers that have working microphones.
At the moment, we´ve been in Baños, Ecuador for almost an entire day. Our colds are on the mend and we may get out for a hike tomorrow. Yesterday was a bit crazy, but are glad to have found such nice town, at a good elevation (1200m or 3600ft) where it´s warm and sunny. On our way to the internet cafe yesterday, we crossed paths with a student protest that seemed to surround their desire to have free bus fare to/from school. When it became apparent that the internet cafe was unavailable, we hoped in a cab to the bus terminal and took off for Baños, which is about 3.5 hours south of Quito. The town is prepping for Columbus Day weekend, which they call Dia de la Raza.
A final note, some pictures from our first week are posted on our flickr account, here are some favorites:
These posts are slightly out of order, but before we went out to Otavalo, there were videos from Quito. The Quito set includes the Belfry of the Basillica, Guayasamin Museum, the teleferiQo and more. They are embedded here, but you can also view our videos directly from YouTube, via:
We have staked out position in an internet cafe in Quito´s Plaza Grande, where I´ve had mild success with the uploading of videos to our youTube account. Check out these 4 videos from our hike up to 3950m near Otavalo, Ecuador on Friday, 10/3/2008.
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