Two Months in Ecuador

After 23 hours between two back to back bus rides we made it to Lima, Peru, with two months and one country under our belts. Here is a brief wrap up of how we spent our last week and a half in Ecuador.

Emily left off our last entry just as we got to Cuenca. Cuenca ended up being a very nice place. There are a ton of universities in Cuenca which always gives a nice feel to a city and the cobblestone streets and plenty of colonial architecture make it a fun place to explore. Add to this a completely agreeable climate and plenty of pastoral countryside surrounding the city and you may have the reason that we found more ex-patriots here than anywhere else we have been. There are tons of retired gringos from all over...mostly the U.S. though. On our second night in Cuenca we met up with a couple of friends we met and planned our trip to the Parque Nacional Cajas.


Cajas is a huge, high, beautiful and not very popular park just outside of Cuenca. The next morning Emily, Maite, Colm and myself met up and set out for a day hike in the park. We had been told that conditions can get rough and altitude can be an issue so we were planning to do a 4 or 5 hour hike but once we got to the ranger station, the ranger was convinced that we needed to do the 8 mile, 7 hour hike. And when a ranger is pushing you to do one trail over another, it is hard to say no. Plus, besides a short climb which was shown on the map, the rest was all downhill in a nice valley.

Globitos

Emily appreciating the climb to above 12,000 ft.

Well the ranger was right of course, the trail he suggested was amazing. Despite the two hour climb which took us well over 13,000 ft. we enjoyed some amazing views of green peaks, mountain lakes and tons of wildflowers. It was yet another wonder to find in a country the size of Nevada but with the diversity of an entire continent. The weather even held out too! Right until about 15 minutes after our awesome lunch of avocado and potato chip sandwiches. We got about 5 minutes warning of light sprinkles and then all of a sudden it was hailing on us. Then came thunder, harder hail, then hard rain, all of which made walking on the smooth granite rocks a little precarious. ¨Resvaloso¨ is a word we have learned well after the jungle...it means slippery. Luckily, after 30 minutes or so the rain slowed and eventually became a constant drizzle again which was much nicer and allowed us to finish the hike in good spirits with taste of adventure. By the time we got to the bottom we were all soaked head to toe and cold to the point of our fingers not working so well at intricate tasks like zippers, shoelaces etc. After learning that we had to wait at least a half hour for a bus we almost despaired but soon spotted resturaunt pumping smoke out of two chimneys. While we waited for the bus we enjoyed some hot coffee and warmed our fingers by the fire.


The next day our friends were heading to Vilcabamba, a village in a valley south of Cuenca famous for residents that live to be well past 100 years old. We had heard so many things about Vilcabamba and its famous Izchcayluma hostel/resort. This post is getting kind of long and it would really be too easy to go on and on about how great it is there. So instead I´ll post some pictures of our trail ride, our epic hike and some views from our hostel which we expect will be the nicest places we will stay during the whole trip. It was so nice we failed in our attempt to leave not once but twice before we finally told ourselves we had to be moving on.

View from the hostel dining room

Epic Ridge Trail

Very Good

Howdy Partner

So we left Ecuador on a totally positive note. It is an awesome country where we were glad to spend double the time that we plan to spend in any other country on this trip. Someday we will almost certainly go back.

The Coast

It´s time to talk about the coast!

Kurt already mentioned that we took a long, hot, uncomfortable overnight bus from Baños to Canoa. I´ll just reiterate that- long, hot, uncomfortable, complete with a 2 a.m. police search of everyone on the bus. I don´t think we fully comprehend what we are in for yet- Ecuador is a small country and the bus rides we´ve taken so far are nothing compared to what we´ll have to do in Peru and the rest of the countries we plan on visiting. Also, bus drivers are maniacs. But I digress...

We arrived in beautiful Canoa at 6:00 a.m. and waited around our excellent hostel, Hotel Bambú, for about an hour and a half until someone arrived who could check us into a room. This hostel was basically a resort for backpackers. It was right on the beach, and they had a variety of rooms and prices, from campsites and dorms to private cabañas with balconies. It also had a very good restaurant and bar (with a great happy hour, perfectly timed to coincide with the sunset), they rented surfboards and boogie boards, there were hammocks aplenty, and a ping pong table. Canoa itself is a really small town, very quiet and tranquil. Most people there are either fishermen or surfers, I think.

So, as you might guess, we did a whole lot of nothing (but relax) during the four days we spent there. (Kurt did have a rather gruesome doctor´s visit in the nearby town of San Vincente to treat his anthrax infection. A lot of you have expressed concern about the anthrax, but I am happy to report that as of now it is almost completely healed.) We spent most of our time on the beautiful, clean, wide beach. Kurt went surfing one day (he caught like four waves! he looked really cool, I was impressed) and I rented a boogie board. We ate a lot of ceviche and drank a lot of tropical drinks.

But before we knew it, it was time to move on again. We headed south to Puerto Lopez, which is a larger town, with a lot more fisherman and which many tourists use as a base to explore the nearby Parque Nacional Machalilla, which is Ecuador´s only coastal national park. We stayed in a not-so-great hostel for our first two nights before moving to the Sol Inn, a great, cheap backpacker´s hostel.

We spent a day touring the Isla de la Plata (part of Machalilla national park), often referred to as the ¨poor man´s Galapagos¨ ( so named because you can see many of the same bird species there,
and it only costs $30 to get there instead of your life´s savings). And yeah, we saw some cool birds. My favorites were the blue-footed boobies who for some reason have almost no fear of humans. We took a nice long hike throughout the island before heading back to the boat for lunch and snorkeling (the ocean is warm here! hooray!) where we spotted some clown and parrot fish, and two giant sea turtles (from the boat). Since everyone likes pictures of boobies, here´s a few:

Blue-footed boobies

An Adolescent Nazca Booby

A boobie and its baby

The next day we headed to the mainland part of Machalilla- a beach and coastal area known as Los Frailes, with some new friends from the hostel. This area was really nice. It preserves a tropical dry forest ecosystem (since Ecuador apparently hasn´t had proper winter rains in the last 3 years, it was really, really dry). So we did a hike through the dry forest which led us past two smaller beaches to the pristine, nearly empty beach of Los Frailes.

Los Frailes

The food on the coast was really nice but also much more expensive. Obviously there is a lot of seafood. The ceviche is as good as we´d heard (this is raw seafood, usually fish, shrimp, octopus, clam, or mixed, cooked in lime juice and mixed with tomatoes and onions). It always came served with either patacones (green plantain fritters) or chifles (also fried plantains but much thinner, like potato chips). The other highlight was pescado encocado (fish cooked in coconut milk). Encebollados, or fish soups, are also popular but it was so hot I never wanted to try them.

The bus snacks (on most long distance busses there are lots of food vendors that come onto the bus at various stops along the way) improved a lot on the coast- we tried pan de yuca (bread made with yuca, and sometimes nuts or cheese), empanadas de queso (these are often covered with sugar- weird, but not bad), and slices of piña or watermelon. The pineapple on the coast was incredible. Just out of this world. Unfortunately I neglected to take any pictures of food whatsoever during this leg of the journey. But here´s a picture of some guys playing volleyball in Puerto Lopez:

Look at how high that net is (click to enlarge)!

After Puerto Lopez the plan was to go to Montañita, a surfing/ party town about an hour south. But of all the fellow travelers we met who had been there, nobody had anything good to say about it. So we decided instead to check out Cuenca, Loja, and Vilcabamba before heading into Peru (these are all cities and towns in the Southern highlands of Ecuador). So Cuenca is where we´re at now. We´re heading to Vilcabamba tomorrow and then, finally, on Monday... Peru!