The bus journey back to Riobamba from Candelaria made me a bit sick for a few reasons: 1) It was a hot day 2) I`d dropped about 2500m in 4 hrs 3) I saw again just how well the Ecuadorian landscape had been trashed, including incredibly steep mountains devoid of trees in places on very marginal soils anyway. My physical funk continued for the (as usual) arduous bus journey back to Quito, consequent transfer to Mariscal. The only note of note was a rendition of Don`t Dream It`s Over en Español on the bus. I found a $5 a night (very cheap) bunk in the thick of yuppies-ville and crashed.
The next several days were spent in Mariscal, flitting and gabbing. I quickly transferred from my cheap-house to a much better option, Posada del Maple, upon which I at first projected the hope of it being the `Cranky Croc of Quito`. It certainly is a beautifully renovated and decorated place, close to the action but on a quiet, plane-tree lined street. Not quite as alive as the Croc or with as comfortable beds but with fantastic breakfasts and a more consistently refined crowd.
During these turbulent times I fixed my Keen sandals, without which I would`ve died. I got my last rabies shot, without which I would`ve died. One day while taking an ice-cream I saw the great vision of a young guy pedalling hands-free on his Giant mountain-bike down Juan Leon Mera (a main street) singing to himself with a huge grin on his face as he strummed air-guitar on a shining new bicycle frame. Heh heh. Cool. Not so cool was seeing the aftermath of a woman who`d just been hit by a car, screaming and gasping for air with obvious internal injuries. Ecuadorian drivers are extremely arrogant and self-righteous on the roads and won`t stop for pedestrians; there are a lot of 4wd`s here in the inner city too.
I also attended another trivia night with SAE. This time I was fortunate enough to land myself on the wily veterans team, who impressed me all night with their intellects, an (almost) perfect score and a perfect team name - "I look at tranny porn all day at work and it gives me a ginormous boner". I took away so much intellectualisationalism that evening, the most life-changing fact being how to spell `ginormous`.
On our team was Mark Thurber, the co-author of the aforementioned-in-my-blog-in-another-post Hiking Guide to Ecuador, my current Bible. A cool guy. We chatted about some good hikes to do and he gave me his card for further reference. Sweet! My walk back to the Posada was probably the most dangerous of my trip with some make-up caked prostitutes clambering at my hands as I pushed through their sticky web of a beat.
I also re-visited the overpriced National Botanic Gardens of Ecuador, which is about as big as my ex-backyard in Northcote, with half the space inaccessible. Still it was reasonably well done with interesting sections on the paramo and an orchid hothouse - some of them were very delicate and pretty. I have included photos of the very plain-looking Ayahuasca vine and San Pedro cactus, two halucinogenic plants of choice in this part of the world.
During my time at Posada I met several interesting folk, like Karly from the US volunteering in a rural school, Elza from France working with the Chamber of Commerce here for 6 months, Peter the German who owns a hostel/lifestyle-resort in alternative Vilcabamba and Christian, the German student who`d volunteered in the Galapagos, was studying Latin and currently reading a rare and ancient mythical text in that language - see photo.
I called my brother Ned and his partner Heidi for Ned`s birthday - Happy Birthday Ned!! - we chatted amiably enough until Ned asked me how much I had been spending each month. `Let me see... oh yeah, only $7000 in 5 months. $1400 a month`. That does include a lot of hidden extras but when it boils down to it I realised I couldn`t continue to spend as I had been.
So I tightened the belt somewhat like cooking in house, eating a tonne (easy to do) at free breakfast, ate the $2 set lunches and scoring a free gym session due to a snoozing attendant. On my long walk to see `The Hurt Locker`, I passed this massive hole in the sidewalk, see photo - a busy footpath. Liability, what liability? The movie was pretty well acted and very subtley produced, well done. But I wouldn`t have orgasmed all over the movie theatre like some of the (American, ahem, say no more) reviewers though. There were definitely a few Holy Wood cliche moments there. Also interesting and slightly annoying was the cinema culture - I sat next to two oldies of which you would expect a constant stream of explanatory chatter, but the whole crowd was into it. It seems murmurring and low-level talking is perfectly acceptable here. Or maybe they took it in turns to read the subtitles and consequently explain it to each other. Yeah, that`s definitely it.
I said my final (I promise) goodbyes to Yvo and Helen, who thoroughly enjoyed their Galapagos trip rubbing shoulders with an amazing variety of tame and photogenic sea and land creatures like Bill Gates and Leo di Caprio. Yvo was in town promoting his latest GU mix and kindly provided me with a copy. They were headed to Otovalo to the famous artesans market and invited me along - I could see myself spending more than I wished up there so I very politely and respectfully declined. Considering the circumstances they both reacted quite reasonably I thought... they weren´t angry, just disappointed.
But it was I who laughed bitterly of the disappointment after they missed their flight to Curacao. Not good enough, and they knew it. When we parted terms for the fourth time it was on a note of mutual disappointment.
My intended journey to Oyacachi was thwarted by an unexpectedly infrequent bus service - if I had checked an online resource I would have found that they only leave Mon, Wed, Fri etc and so I could have stayed another day in Quito. But then I wouldn`t have got to stay in pretty Cayambe and try their butter biscuits. It was rather boring though (despite seeing the fake-arsed underpants - I want them in men`s!!), because as I learnt pretty quickly, if you dont have $ then a town is just a regular old town. What was more with no book to read or fellow backpackers to talk shit with, I wandered the streets aimlessly, imploring desperately for people to purchase my chewing gum, squeaky toys and/or gold chains. I was saved from dying of extreme boredom however by a TV channel showing non-stop recent and not so recent movie previews in overdubbing, subtitling and just straight English.
My intended journey to Oyacachi was thwarted by an unexpectedly infrequent bus service - if I had checked an online resource I would have found that they only leave Mon, Wed, Fri etc and so I could have stayed another day in Quito. But then I wouldn`t have got to stay in pretty Cayambe and try their butter biscuits. It was rather boring though (despite seeing the fake-arsed underpants - I want them in men`s!!), because as I learnt pretty quickly, if you dont have $ then a town is just a regular old town. What was more with no book to read or fellow backpackers to talk shit with, I wandered the streets aimlessly, imploring desperately for people to purchase my chewing gum, squeaky toys and/or gold chains. I was saved from dying of extreme boredom however by a TV channel showing non-stop recent and not so recent movie previews in overdubbing, subtitling and just straight English.
The bus to Oyacachi was my first Ecuadorian bus experience where the bus wasn`t over-full or even full at some stage of the journey. We headed into hills of lush green farming country with lots of maize, quinoa and onion cropping along with dairy farming. Soon the bitumen turned to a well-made cobblestone road - how cool!! (if somewhat bumpy and slow). We passed through a few small towns before the cobblestone turned to dirt and the farmland slowly turned to paramo and hacked cloudforest. My frustration and boredom pent up from my false start started to dissolve as we entered the wilderness of the Cayambe-Coca Ecological Reserve. By then the scenery was beautiful - clouds rolling over the mountain landscape and small waterfalls everywhere. The cloudforest became dominant as we entered the Oyacachi River valley. I remember a gap in the fog revealing in the distance an enormous spurt of water jetting out into the rainforest from a high ridge. It was at least 5km away.
We arrived at the incredibly set and increasingly tourism-based town of Oyacachi, nestled in a bowl of forest and I directly made my way to the thermal baths where I set my tent for the night. Oyacachi is a magic piece of Ecuador. Everyone greets each other in the street, stranger or no, they all walk down to the thermal baths to bathe and socialise of an evening and are very friendly. And being nestled in a large rainforest reserve it seemed an idyllic paradise to me. The goodness of the luxuriously hot waters combined with a delicous cool breeze melted the rest of my cares away.
No comments:
Post a Comment