potatoes...

I don’t really believe in bucket lists. I’m not a fan of keeping lists of things I want to do before I die. Partly, this is because it seems a nonsense, as the simple truth is that no one knows when they’re going to die. If you could die tomorrow, why are you writing a list instead of getting out of the door? Mostly though, my objection probably comes from how lucky I am to have done some incredible things in my life, so a bucket list seems kind of redundant. 

 I’ve swum in the chilly waters off Kaikoura in New Zealand as hundreds of dusky dolphins swam around me and leapt over me. I was told that you need to sing to them through your snorkel to keep them interested in you and to stop them just swimming off when they get bored. As a result, I’ve discovered that they’re big fans of “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. 

I’ve skydived from 10,000m above the Skeleton Coast in Namibia, where the big dunes of the Namib desert meet the ocean, freefalling for a seemingly endless 30 seconds before the parachute opened, surprisingly filling me with mild disappointment. Here I learned that it’s okay to pack your main parachute up in a slightly slapdash way as long as you’re careful with the reserve as that’s the really important one. 

I’ve done a lot of diving too: on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, in the Maldives with giant Manta Ray doing a graceful dance together no more than a meter above my head, or along the edge of a canyon into the deep ocean surrounded by literally three hundred sharks, all bigger than me and a few casually swimming along behind me as if to see if I was worth the effort of a closer look. It’s at moments like these when you really begin to appreciate your place on the food chain. 

I’ve walked with lions and wolves, seen sperm whale, humpback and orca, kayaked with baby seal, stood within 2m of an adult male grizzly bear, watched dawn breaking above the jungle temples of Ankor Wat… So there’s no question that I’ve been very lucky. 

All this brings perspective; when you experience the elemental beauty of nature first-hand like this, it’s not hard to understand your own existence as comparatively insignificant, in the most wonderful way. All our sound and fury ultimately signifies nothing, and that’s okay. 

The time I felt this most acutely was standing on the sides of Mount Tungurahua in Ecuador as it erupted. Ecuador is a small country, barely the size of the UK, but it contains in that space an enormous diversity of landscapes, from high Andean paramo all the way through to Amazonian jungles (not to mention the Galapagos Islands). We were on a three-week trip and wanted to cram in as much of this as we reasonably could. We hiked the high Andes up to about 5000m, we watched hummingbirds feed, fished for piranha in tiny jungle rivers, brushed tarantula off the benches before sitting down to dinner, drank fresh passionfruit juice and picked coffee berries straight from the tree. Banos is a city in the middle of the country and is renowned for its hot springs and adventure activities. I’ve never seen the appeal of bungee jumping, but we did mountain bike along mountain gorges and, on our first evening in town, we took a trip up the town’s volcano (as our guide would say, the hot springs are not for free) Now, when you think about active volcanos, the chances are that you’re thinking of Pompeii or Krakatoa, but not all volcanos are quite that explosive. Tungurahua means “throat of fire” in Quichua, and although it is erupting and you actually have to drive over the pyroclastic flows that have poured over the road to reach the town itself, you’re not seriously in danger of being overrun by lava. The town does have volcano warning alarms, but apparently the lava moves so slowly that you will have around three days to actually leave the town before you’re really in trouble. Mind you, the volcano dominates the skyline and, as you drive into the town, you can see the column of smoke and ash it produces from a hundred miles away. It’s quite an impressive sight. 

That first evening, we drove up the volcano before it got dark. It’s quite steep and narrow in places, and as we slowly wound our way up the narrow, wooded tracks, we came across a tiny, wizened old lady dressed in the traditional costume of the region, complete with natty woollen Spanish-style trilby hat (a legacy of the Spanish colonisation). There’s only one path up or down the mountain, so we stopped and – through our guide – offered this lady a lift, which she gratefully accepted. As we continued up the mountain, we began to be aware of the rumbling of the erupting mountain. “Ah,” said this tiny, birdlike lady, cackling delightedly, “Mother Tungurahua is putting baked potatoes into the oven for her children”. 

 Before long, we dropped her off to make her own way, and as she smiled and waved, we continued up the mountain. Not long after that, I was standing in the gathering dusk, listening to the sound of an erupting volcano and feeling the ground rumbling beneath my feet. I have never before in my life felt quite so connected with our planet whilst also feeling utterly insignificant. It was, in the most literal way possible, awe inspiring. 

Our precious planet is huge and beautiful and life is short. Later that day, I ate guinea pig for the first time. I don’t recommend it. Tarantula is nicer and neither are a patch on crickets fried in sesame oil served as a bar snack. Travel really does broaden the mind… as well as the palate.

into the trees...

I dragged myself out for a run at lunchtime today. I say “dragged”, although obviously with me NOT going out was never an option. I went running last night, an hour or two before the sky was split by some splendid electrical storms. I only ran a little over three miles, but it was mercilessly hot and humid just before the storm broke and it was a real slog. We’ve been having torrential downpours all day, and it’s still pretty muggy, but obviously I’m not going to let something like that stop me from flogging myself when I’ve decided that’s what I’m going to do.

I’d forgotten my headphones, so this was the first time that I’ve been out for a run on my own without music for years. You know what? It was actually really nice. The weather meant there was almost nobody else around, and I was able to listen to the sound of the rain on the canal and on the trees around the towpath, and to listen to the birds who were singing their hearts out as the rain began to abate. It was nice.

Perhaps it was the weather, but when I saw a large, soggy pigeon lurch heavily into the air from the canalside and flap awkwardly into the trees on the other side, I was reminded of the time we spent in the jungle off the Coca River in Ecuador. The Coca is massive. It may only be a tributary of the Amazon, but when we travelled down it in a motorised canoe for several hours to get to our jungle lodge, it must have been at least a kilometre wide, with rainforest clinging to the very edge of the banks on both sides. The lodge itself was off the main river and down a maze of much smaller tributaries, each with vegetation hanging heavily down on every side.

This part of the world is filled with all kinds of birds of course, and it was common to see toucan or kingfisher or vultures flying about. The bird that I really remember from the jungle though is the Hoatzin.

It’s a peculiar bird. A relic, really, and it is apparently unique amongst all birds. Almost closer to the dinosaurs than it is to other birds. What I remember most about it is this: that the locals call it the “Stinky Turkey” because of it’s distinctive smell (caused by it’s unique digestive system, apparently) and that it makes the most extraordinary noises… strange wheezy, groaning noises, and it has a peculiar, lurching flight that makes an odd creaking noise as it flaps laboriously into the air.

Running today, that pigeon taking off damply from the side of the canal and flapping heavily into the trees on the other side, really took me back to that little piece of the Amazon jungle in Ecuador. Just for a moment, I could have been in the rainforest watching a Hoatzin lurching heavily into the air.

But no. I was still in Beeston.

On the plus side, that meant I had access to a proper shower when I got back, and there probably aren’t many tarantulas hunting moths around my kitchen lights here, and liable to fall onto the table as I’m having my dinner, I’m sad to say.

Pity, really.  That was a good trip.

strange fruit....

I've developed a real taste for passion fruit. A veritable passion for them, you might say, although the "passion" in their name refers not to love, but to the passion of Christ... but I digress.

I suppose I'd always known that they existed, but I never really paid them much attention until we went out to Ecuador last year. Until then they had always been that small, wrinkly purple fruit that I vaguely recognised but never actively sought out. In South America though, they're quite a big deal. For starters, there are loads and loads of different types - they grow there, you know.... Walk through any market place and you'll see bucket loads of them, all freshly picked. Forget about the small purple ones and check out the huge granadillas or the curuba, whose fruit looks a bit like a banana. These are so fresh that they are warm to the touch from sitting in the sunshine, and you can peel them open with your bare hands and greedily suck out all the flesh and those deliciously sour seeds. Let me tell you: the humble passiflora family has got it all going on.

It's not quite the same as sitting out on a hotel veranda in Banos, sipping on a freshly squeezed maracujá juice and looking out over a gently smoking volcano whilst waiting for my breakfast, but eating a small, wizened passion fruit in front of my computer at work does take me away from the mundanity of work for a few wonderful seconds of positive association.

I suppose I should be grateful that you can buy passion fruit here at all. I discovered the tomate de árbol in Ecuador too - it makes a mean juice - but you can't seem to get it around here for love nor money.

You might think that our supermarkets give us enormous choice, and in some ways I suppose they do. When compared to the natural bounty on display in every single marketplace around the equator though, they ain't got nothing. In Ecuador they have so many bananas that you can buy a bucket of them for $1 and feed them to your cows. They're so common, you can pick them from the side of the road.

We might be rich in many ways, but there's no banana you can buy here that's tastier than one that you picked for yourself from the side of the road.

I think I need a holiday.

...everything is gonna burn

Another picture from the Guardian's "24 hours in pictures" feature from yesterday.

Tungurahua is about to erupt again and the Ecuadorian authorities have evacuated 1,000 or so people from villages at the foot of the volcano as a precaution against pyroclastic flows and the like.

Of course, we were there in March last year.



Just after we came back to the UK, there was a feature on the news called "Living in the shadow of the volcano". It told the story of the people living at the foot of Tungurahua and how they lived in perpetual fear of an eruption. The thing is though, having just been there, I knew that this wasn't really true. Sure, there are people living underneath an active and actually erupting volcano, but they aren't exactly living in fear. Just at the foot of the mountain is Banos, Ecuador's most popular holiday town. Even though you drive into the town over the debris left by pyroclastic floes down from the mountain (the road rises about 10m in some places to get over this stuff), business is going on entirely as normal. It's true that they have alarms to warn them of an eruption, but even then, an evacuation would be a rather leisurely affair, as lava from the volcano will take about three days to travel the mile or so down the mountain to the town. To be honest, they probably welcomed an eruption as it was bringing droves of tourists to the town to have a look, and there was a thriving industry geared up around taking people up the volcano and selling them postcards and so on. We went horseriding up the side of the volcano.



Scared? Not really.

Mind you, hearing the explosions, watching the smoke and ash billowing out of the crater and feeling the ground shake is an awesome experience.....

Ecuador is a brilliant place, and that was a fantastic holiday.

*sigh*

jungle boogie....

---
Ecuador Trip - part eight.

[Part one - Part two - Part three - Part four - Part five - Part six - Part seven - Part eight]

...in which our heroes head into the jungle, the mighty jungle....

Monday 19th March

An early start to catch a flight to Coca. It's only a short hop of about 25 minutes over the mountains by plane, but it's a journey that takes a full ten hours by car. Coca is a small town on the eastern side of Ecuador, and it's here that we are going to make the journey down the Napo river and into the Amazon jungle. Quito is 2800m above sea-level and is the second highest capital city in the world (after La Paz). Coca is almost at sea level, and you can feel the difference in temperature and humidity as soon as you step off the plane. We're practically on the equator here, and it is hot. We are met at the airport, and after a bit of hanging around at a local hotel we are soon boarding a motorised canoe and starting our 5 hour journey down the Napo to our lodge. It's a very atmospheric journey.


The Napo river - big

The Napo is a huge river (although it has hundreds of miles still to travel before it joins the Amazon river) and the jungle presses up tightly against the river banks. We also discover how the rainforest gets its name, as we pass through squalls of varying intensity. Finally we turn off the main river and dive down a much smaller stream to reach Yuturi, our lodge.


Yuturi Lodge

It is set in 500 hectares of lagoon, and it is a lovely spot. Home for the next three nights is to be a little cabin with a palm leaf roof and a small and rather smelly bed covered with a mosquito net. It's certainly not five star, but I'm not here for the comfort. We rest up for the next few hours in the hammocks and watch the rain come pouring down. It's very, very different to the mountains.


home sweet home

Apart from one other couple (Fernando from Ecuador and Maria from Hungary, who met in London on an English language course), we are the only people here. We have a nice meal in the lodge, a few hands of Cuarenta and then hit the sack early as the generator is turned off at 21:00. C. is slightly freaked out by the size of the cockroach sitting on the wall of our hut, but I reassure her that it is surely the only one in the whole jungle and we've just been unlucky. I drift off to sleep listening to the incredible noises coming out of the jungle, which seems to only just be coming to life....

Tuesday 20th March

We make an early star, waking to the sound of howler monkeys somewhere out in the jungle. We head out into the lagoon in the smaller canoes to do a bit of birdwatching. We see lots.


A typical view across the lagoon from a canoe

I know I said I wasn't going to make a list, but you're just going to have to humour me again:

Hoatzin, White Banded Flycatcher, Plumbeous Pigeon, Striated Heron, Greater Ani, Fulvous Shrike Tanager, Nightjar, Cobalt Winger Parakeet, Banded Kingfisher, Great Tinamou, Small Billed Ani, White Hawk, Orange Winged Amazon, Mealy Amazon, Pauraque, Chesnut Headed Crake, Many Banded Aracari, Cocoi Heron, Anhinga, Lesser Jay, Amazon Kingfisher, Blue Crowned Trogone, Yellow Rumped Cacique, Violaceous Jay, Ruddy Pigeon, Less Kiskadee, Masked Crimson Tanager, Neotropic Cormorant, Osprey, Crested Oropendola, Black Continga, American Pygmy Kingfisher, Yellow Dusted Woodpecker....

I'm sure I've missed some. It's a pretty splendid place for looking at birds.


My favourite: The Many Banded Aracari

We return to the lodge for breakfast, but we're soon back in the canoes and off for a 3 hour walk through the jungle. It's not terribly heavy-going, to be honest, but the storm last night has meant that there is plenty of water to be waded through / crossed on fallen trees, so it's never dull. We also see an enormous variety of insects, mainly ants of varying sizes from the tiny lemon ant (which I taste, and yes, they are lemony) to the massive Conga ant that you really don't want to mess with. Perhaps in retribution for eating some ants, the worst bite I get in the whole week here comes from an ant that works its way underneath my shirt and takes a couple of chunks out of my arm.


A big tree, a machete and some sweaty tourists...

Back at the lodge I get dragged into another game of football with the natives - this time it's three-a-side and I'm wearing my walking boots, so it's somewhat harder (and hotter) than the game that I played with the Pinyan in the mountains. I think my team wins, but it's hard to be sure and although I score 3 goals, I think that's about the entire extent of my contribution.


"How the hell do I get round that?"

I am absolutely roasting by the time we finish, but somehow manage to resist the temptation to jump into the lagoon with the piranhas.

That night we go out in the canoes armed with our torches to see if we can spot any caimans... with 500 hectares of lagoon to hide in though, it's a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, and all we keep seeing is the same poor Nightjar that must be sick of the sight of us (oh, and the bats that keep skimming the water looking for fish). And mosquitoes.... plenty of mosquitoes....although luckily for me they prefer the taste of C to the taste of me (well, if you had the choice of marble coloured, beautifully soft and smooth skin or hairy, sweaty and slightly yellow skin...what would you choose?)

Wednesday 21st March

We take the short walk to an indigenous community. I suppose in theory this is a chance for us to see how they live, but in practice it amounts to a trip to a hut to be offered the chance to buy some tat (bracelets, spears, daggers, blowpipes...) and a quick stop in another hut to sample some of the local liquour "chicha" and to learn how to do a dance. On the way back to the lodge, I manage to slip off a rotten tree across some scuzzy water and get a wellington boot full of crud. Nice. At least I manage to avoid the cappuccino spider that has its enormous web strung off on the other side of the same rotting tree. It's not much to look at, but apparently it's the most dangerous spider in the jungle.


the jungle canopy

On all of these expeditions we are accompanied by Carlos, an English speaking guide and by "Toro" (real name: Franklin), our indigenous guide. Toro is great. He's a bit of an action hero and always travels at the front with his machete to watch out for snakes and to point out any interesting things he finds along the way (poisonous frogs, millipedes, termite nests, lizards and the like). It is Toro who demonstrates how to shimmy up a tarzan vine and who jumps head first into the stagnant water when the machete falls in. Carlos is a different kettle of fish and is rapidly making me appreciate all over again quite how good Ivan was. Carlos is a bit lazy and not very helpful. He's not disastrous though, and maybe we've been a bit spoilt.. thankfully the jungle is interesting enough for it not to really matter. On our return to the lodge, we are supposed to be blowpiping, but after a couple of hours resting, Carlos discovers that the 3m long pipe is blocked. He spends a fruitless (and unhurried) half an hour trying to unblock it before deciding that we should go fishing instead. Nice to know that he spent the time after lunch fruitfully... asleep in a hammock.

Piranha fishing proves to be a relaxing but mildly frustrating exercise. We sit in the canoe in the middle of a lake in the lagoon and cast a line over the side using fresh meat as bait. Time and time again, the bait is taken but the hook is ignored.... it's actually quite interesting holding the line quite close to the surface and watching the piranha striking the bait and pushing it from side to side. Of course, the only person to actually catch anything is Carlos.... who catches three. C manages to get one out of the water, but it drops back in before she can get it into the boat. It's a lovely spot to watch the sun coming down though and observing the toucans, the parrots and the other birds.

Back at base, the blowpipe has been unblocked and we have a go at hitting the lemon in the centre of the target. The blowpipe is about 3m, and you imagine it would take quite a bit of puff to get a dart all the way down the pipe and out with any force... actually, it's surprisingly easy.


a huff and a puff....

Guess who wins our little competition?


a pair of lemons

Tea includes a piranha... but having seen what they eat, I don't really find it very appetising. Tonight also sees my first defeat in Cuarenta since the night we learned to play. C. was my partner in a match against Fernando and Carlos, and things were looking pretty good until C. misdealt the cards. In cuaranta this is an instant 10 point fine, and it's enough to swing the pendulum back the other way and before long we are beaten. It's a sad moment indeed.... but I don't bare grudges and I barely mention it now....

Thursday 22nd March

We have an early start to leave Yuturi to head 5 hours back upstream to the sister lodge, Yarina. I think the main reason for the transfer is because it means we only have a further one hour hop up the Napo to get back to Coca on Friday to meet our flights back to Quito, but another reason is that although Yuturi is unrivalled for birdwatching, Yarina is better placed for seeing other animals. On the way back up the Napo, we pause a few hours upstream at a place called "Monkey Island" - so named because it is home to a colony of Woolly monkeys. We trek half an hour into the jungle and catch a glimpse of a couple of monkeys, but just when I think that's going to be all, we get a great view of a family swinging about in the trees a few meters away from the boat. They look a little like small gorillas, and this is my first glimpse of monkeys in the wild. It's impossible not to be mesmerised by them and the way that they use their tails as a fifth limb.

Another couple of hours in the canoe and we take another small inlet off the Napo and soon arrive at Yarina. It is immediately apparent that this is a very different kettle of fish to Yuturi - there is hot water for one thing, and the beds are cleaner and more comfortable. It is also considerably busier and is packed with Americans. They generally seem quite nice, and it's great to be able to have a bit of comfort, but it puts the solitude of Yuturi into sharp context. It also seems to be an awful lot hotter here for some reason. The jungle around here is in some ways a lot tamer in the sense that there are more walkways and lookouts and things that have been built by the lodge. It's not quite a jungle theme park, but it's definitely a lot more domesticated than Yuturi. Mind you, the animals don't seem to care, and over the next 24 hours we see some more woolly monkeys, some squirrel monkeys, some pygmy marmosets, an aguti, a tortoise, a couple of big hairy tarantulas as well as lots and lots of birds. There is also a small area with some cages where animals that have been rescued are housed before they are released. Here we are able to see a spider monkey (that rather touchingly reaches out his tail to wrap around my leg as a sort of hello - it's hard to look at a monkey close up and not to see that we are relatively closely related... although some people are more closely related than others.... and this chap seems to take a shine to C.) We also see three adorable ocelots... sadly we learn that they are pretty much permanent residents here now because they had been released in the past but kept coming back. They are a beautiful combination of a leopard and a domestic cat, and even when one of them playfully reaches out through its cage and bats C's camera with its paw, I think she would happily take one home....



At dinner, C. is able to make public use of the indigenous dance that we learnt yesterday when she is pulled up by Toro to dance in front of everyone else as part of a demonstration. She professes to be embarrassed but is clearly as pleased as punch at the chance to shake her stuff on the dancefloor. Luckily, my undoubted prowess is not required in the demonstration.... Later that night we go out in the canoes looking for more caiman, and this time we have more luck, seeing several - their eyes glowing back red as we shine the torches out from the canoes. We get so close to one that Toro is able to shoot out a hand and grab it out of the water with a firm grip behind it's neck. This enables us to get a closer look at this 1m long alligator and even to touch it's very smooth armoured belly..... and then Carlos decides that he wants to hold it and to show it to some of the other tourists in the other boats. Toro seems unsure but hands the poor thing over. Carlos promptly drops the caiman into the canoe, where it not surprisingly starts snapping around C's ankles before it is picked up again. I'm not sure who is more relieved when the poor thing is popped back into the water - the caiman or C.

Friday 23rd March

Before we head back to Coca and our flight back to Quito, we just have time for one more expedition to a little fenced off lagoon with a short trail.... we are told that there are anaconda here, but unluckily (?) we don't encounter any, having to make do with more birds and monkeys. The jungle is starting to get under my skin: it's very different to the mountains, but it has a charm all of its own, and there is something very soothing about gently paddling down a small river surrounded by dense foliage, exotic birds and the distant sound of howler monkeys. Carlos also appears to be coming into his own here now and is clearly fascinated and animated by the monkeys in a way that he wasn't by the birds at Yuturi.


Carlos & Toro

After lunch we pack up and head back into Coca, just 45 minutes upstream. It looks as though we are going to have to wait a few hours for our flight, but the airline bumps us onto the first plane and about 35 minutes after we have disembarked from the canoe and said goodbye to Carlos and Toro, we are stepping off the plane in Quito -- and immediately I can feel that we are back at altitude as find myself gasping for air. We drop our bags at the hostel and then spend the next couple of hours wandering around "Gringoland", a mixture of restaurants, shops, internet cafes and hostels that is full (as you might imagine) with gringos. We manage to find a really great t-shirt shop and pick up a couple of souvenirs - t-shirts for ourselves, but also a nice hand-printed Ecuador football t-shirt for Lord Bargain (Ecuadorians are quite small people, so it's actually really quite hard to find a t-shirt big enough for a man who is the best part of 2m tall).

We have an early-ish tea at the "Magic Bean" (where a traditional band is playing just outside the window, and as they inevitably strike up a rendition of "El Condor Pasa", I am incredibly amused to hear a lady seated at a table of extremely pretentious Canadians nearby listen for a moment and then remark in deadly earnest to her friends "I wonder if Simon and Garfunkel were influenced by South American music at all". Good grief. What makes you say that? The song they did called "El Condor Pasa"?

Back to the hostel and the awful packing for the long day of travelling tomorrow.

Saturday 24th March

Up at the crack of dawn to get to the airport for our flight to Miami, our pointless trip through customs and immigration in the USA and then on to Heathrow. We leave Quito at around 8am on Saturday morning and land in London at a little after 06:30 on Sunday morning. A couple of hours later and we are finally back at home, where all I can do is drag myself upstairs to bed for a couple of hours of sleep.



What a brilliant, brilliant holiday.

THE END!

...finally!

---

If you like what you've seen here and you're thinking about a trip to Ecuador yourself, allow me to point you in the direction of a couple of very helpful gentlemen:

Equatorial Travel --- this is a small fair trade shop/ travel agency based in Ashbourne in Derbyshire and operated by a nice man called JP. It was JP who organised our trip to the Sahara in 2001, and it was because that was such a brilliant holiday that we considered going on this trip in the first place.

All About Eq --- this is the travel company that our guide Ivan helps to run. If you are not based in the UK but you are thinking about taking a trip to this beautiful country.... I strongly advise you to check these guys out. As with JP, sustainable tourism is the name of the game here, but this is a great way to get off the beaten track and to get away from those hordes of gringos! If you are based in the UK, then you should be talking to JP!

Okay. I'll try and talk about something else from now on.....

lookin' in the sun for another overload....

---
Ecuador Trip - part seven.

[Part one - Part two - Part three - Part four - Part five - Part six - Part seven - Part eight]

...in which our heroes sample a local delicacy, climb to 5000m and take a ride through the Devil's Nose....

Saturday 17th March

I have the same plentiful breakfast as yesterday and then we go horse riding for three hours. To be perfectly honest, a small part of my motivation for this is to replace some of the photos that we lost (which included some great ones of the pair of us on horseback in front of a crater lake above the Pinyan village). I do also like the idea of spending a few pleasant hours tootling up the mountain and perhaps having another look at the volcano though. Initially I'm slightly wary of Nieve ("Snow") my horse as he seems to be a little skittish, but we soon come to some sort of an understanding - as long as we remain in front of C and Mosquito, he won't gallop. Deal. The ride is a lot more placid than the one we took out of Pinyan and we spend a lot more time riding on proper roads, but it's still a good way to get out and to see the landscape of waterfalls and lava flows.



On our return to the hostel, we hop back into the Land Cruiser and set off for Riobamba, only stopping along the way at a little restaurant on the side of the road to sample a local delicacy: Cuy. Guinea Pig.



Ivan is a vegetarian, but he is suspiciously keen for us to sample this and has been waiting until we enter Chimborazo province before serving it up to us (apparently they fry it in Otavalo, but the best way to prepare it is the way that they do it here - stick it on a spit and grill it). Well, there's nothing else for it but to give it a go.



It has to be said that there is something very disconcerting about having it arrive on your plate and be utterly recognisable. It is served more or less whole, and so before you get started, you find yourself eyeballing a guinea pig with its big rodent teeth grinning at you and its little paws clutching at the side of the plate. Hmm.

What does it taste like? Inevitably it tastes like a very greasy chicken. It's not delicious, but it's certainly not disgusting. The worst part of it is that it is unbelievably fiddly to eat, with all those little bones. You know how rabbit is a bit tricky to eat? Well Guinea Pig is a little bit like that only harder. I give it a go, but life it too short to suck the meat from between a guinea pig's ribs. Ivan's wife picks hers completely clean, but C and I both have to concede defeat with quite a large pile of skin, bones, paws and meat still on the plate. The locals find us fascinating throughout, openly staring. I suppose they don't see too many western tourists tucking into Cuy around here.

I can't think why.



We drop the bags off in Riobamba later that afternoon and head straight off to the Chimborazo volcano itself. At 6200m, this is the highest peak in Ecuador, and because of the way that the Earth bulges at the equator, this is also the highest spot on the planet from the centre of the earth.... 2000m higher than the summit of Everest. The weather is slightly cloudy, so we don't get a good view of the mountain itself, but as we approach the car park, we do get a really good look at the vicuña's -- these are relatives of the llama and are pretty rare but there seem to be plenty of them here. Their woolly coats produce such high quality yarn that it used to reserved for kings and emperors. They're certainly cute.



At the car park, although it's now nearly 17:00, we decide to hike up to the refuge at 5000m. This is a new altitude record for us, and although it's only a climb up (in altitude) of about 250m, it's really quite hard work as it is pretty cold at this height. In the refuge we celebrate with a cup of coca tea in front of a roaring fire and contemplate the fact that we have just strolled up higher than the tallest peak in Europe and are now further from the Earth's core than the summit of Everest.



We head back down to the car park in the gathering darkness and have a rather hairy journey back down to Riobamba as the fog closes in and we struggle to pick out the dirt track down the mountain. We make it okay and I celebrate with a giant calzone from the local Italian, although C eats nothing and is violently sick later in the night. This is probably a direct result of the altitude, but neither of us can shake the feeling that somehow the Guinea Pig was involved....

Sunday 18th March



Our plan for today revolves around El Nariz del Diablo - the Devil's Nose railway. This is where the railroad passes through a steep section of mountain and where the engineers conquered the sheer drop of the gradient by carving a number of switchbacks into the face of the rock. These enable the train to climb a gradient of 1-in-18 from 1800 to 2600 meters, by going forwards then backwards up the tracks. It was built in 1900 and was considered an incredible feat of engineering (albeit a rather daft one as their decision to go through the valley rather than around it now means that the line is useless for modern freight trains as they can't manage the gradient and are too heavy for the rather wobbly looking tracks).

It's a bit of a tourist trap, with most gringos heading to Riobamba and then trying to grab a slot on the roof of the train for the four hour journey down to the mountains. In Ivan's opinion that's a bit of a waste of time - it's only for the last few minutes of that four hours that you are actually going down the switchbacks, and because the train leaves at about 7am and because we are at over 3000m, it can be a cold and miserable experience. Far better to head down to Alausí, a couple of hours drive out of Riobamba, and hook up with the train just as it heads into the Devil's Nose. We make an early start to try and beat the rush, but it's still clear when we pull into town that we aren't the only ones who have had this idea and the place is swarming with tourists (making me realise again how lucky we have been that in the rest of our trip we have hardly seen any western faces at all). It turns out that the railway company are well aware of the attraction that they have here. The railway line is actually blocked just beyond the Devil's Nose and so pretty much the only function of this stretch of track is tourism, and so several trains are laid on throughout the course of the day. We buy some tickets, but the whole thing is pretty chaotic, so in the end we manage to wangle our way onto an earlier train. For the first half of the trip we are inside the train, but we are assured that once we get down to the bottom we will swap places with the people on the roof.



It's quite impressive. It's not so much that the track hangs over the edge of a mountain (although in places it does), it's more that you can really see how difficult this section of line must have been to build. The rock walls are almost vertical in places, and you can really appreciate the work that the engineers have done to dynamite out a path for the train to follow. The switchback system means that the train zig-zags its way down the slope, moving forwards and backwards down the gradient until we reach the river at the bottom, at which point we climb up onto the roof and enjoy the journey back.



It's a sunny day and the scenery is splendid, so I try to ignore the fact that I am sat next to a whole busload of other gringos, many of whom are wearing the traditional Ecuadorian felt porkpie hats, and one of whom is wearing a Helloween t-shirt. Oh well. They're no different to us, I suppose.



From here it's the drive back to Quito and the start of the long goodbye to Ivan (stopping only for a delicious ice cream in Salcedo, the home of the popsicle! And take my word for it: if anyone ever offers you a tree tomato lolly, say yes! delicious....)



Ivan has been the most wonderful guide: he is knowledgeable, enthusiastic and keen to show us his country and its people. Throughout the trip, he has treated us more as his friends than as his clients and he's been the single biggest reason why this holiday has been so much fun. When we arrive in Quito that evening, we have one final dinner with Ivan and Alexsita (together with Ivan's friend Nicholas, another guide from Montreal who Ivan will be working with over the next few weeks). After that final supper, we finally say goodbye to our guide outside the hostel and wave off the land cruiser for the final time. It's sad, but we're not finished in Ecuador yet.... we're off to the jungle tomorrow.


Ivan Suarez - the best guide in Ecuador (with his lovely wife, Alexsita)

To be continued.... but we're nearly finished now.

volcanoes melt me down...

---
Ecuador Trip - part six.

[Part one - Part two - Part three - Part four - Part five - Part six - Part seven - Part eight]

...in which our heroes watch an erupting volcano without running away screaming (ha! Pierce Brosnan eat your heart out!)....

Thursday 15th March

I suppose that it was inevitable that this would happen at some point. How many people spend three weeks in South America and manage to avoid it entirely? My day begins a little unceremoniously in the small hours of the morning with a quick dash to the smallest room in the house. I believe that the Mexicans call this "Montezuma's Revenge" but as Ecuador was part of the Inca empire rather than the Aztec empire, around these parts it is known as "Atahualpa's Revenge". I don't actually feel all that bad - just a few stomach cramps and a desire to never be very far away from a toilet. I can't help but think that it is far better to be experiencing this now, when I have relatively easy access to plumbed bathrooms, than to have suffered from it when we were trekking. Anyway. I've got it now, and so does C. Just as I am about to take some immodium to stick a cork in it, Ivan stops me and tells me that it won't help as it will almost certainly be bacterial and my body needs to flush it out. Instead he takes us to a pharmacy and we buy some antibiotics. When I express mild surprise that it is so easy to buy antibiotics over the counter, Ivan smiles at me and tells me that things are different in Ecuador - it's not so much that you are allowed to just buy them, more that no one really stops you. He tells me that he was once challenged by a pharmacist and asked if he was a doctor. When he said that he was, the pharmacist simply said "and how may I help you doctor?". Under other circumstances I might think that this is a bad thing and will surely only help in the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Right now though, I just take the pills. Within hours I am starting to feel better, although the selection of pills and potions I am taking is starting to make me feel like an invalid (malarone to stave off malaria, vitamin B to discourage mosquitoes, omega oils for my brain and nervous system and now some antibiotic. Perhaps I should buy a pill box?)

After a quick trip to visit Saquisili market (more cows, more fruit, more textiles), we say goodbye to Ian and Val who are heading off to a luxury spa and then he Galapagos and we join Ivan for the journey south. C. looks as white as a sheet and tries to sleep in the back seat of the land cruiser, but I park the iPod speakers next to the gearstick and Ivan and I sing our hearts out to the Beatles as we leave the Cotopaxi region and head into Tungurahua Province. The province is named after the volcano that towers above the popular holiday town of Baños. Tungurahua has erupted as recently as August 2006 and is very much an active volcano. We haven't gone far down the road before we start to see giant plumes of ash being tossed up high into the sky by the explosions that are apparently happening every few minutes.



Given that Baños is nestled right up against the slopes of the volcano and that this is our destination, the sight can't help but make one feel slightly nervous. Who hasn't seen Dantes Peak? As we get closer, the volcano only becomes more impressive and as we drive into Baños itself, you can clearly see how the pyroclastic flows have swept down the mountain and barely missed the town on either side. As you approach the town itself, you actually have to drive over these flows where they have swamped the road. As we check into the hotel, we are warned about the siren that will go off in the event of an eruption and the evacuation route we would need to follow. It's all very dramatic and a touch unsettling. At one point in our stay here, we are having a nap after lunch when we hear an alarm going off. I am busy reading a book, and the sound of the siren only penetrates my consciousness after a few minutes. I had assumed it was a car alarm, but it now occurs to me that it could be the warning. Just as I wonder if I should be worrying and perhaps get up and see what's going on, the alarm stops. Later that evening I am woken in the middle of the night by a very loud rumbling noise as the volcano makes its presence felt. One day soon that volcano is going to erupt again, and I was very relieved when we left and it hadn't happened whilst we were there.

Baños is a nice little town made famous by the thermal springs that come down from the volcano. It is roughly equidistant from all of the major population centres in Ecuador (Guayaquil and Quito) and is the place where the locals come on holiday. It is also something of a gateway town to the Amazon jungle, and so tends to attract a fair number of gringo tourists too. As a result, it is packed full of hostels, restaurants, internet cafes and souvenir shops. There are also plenty of places where you can book a trip to the jungle or sign up for some bridge jumping or canyoning, or where you can hire a quad bike, a horse or a bicycle. Baños is also something of a place of pilgrimmage: the catholic church arrived here to find that the natives (perhaps not surprisingly) worshipped the volcano. A bit of quick thinking saw this deftly substituted by a cult of the Virgin Mary, who was said to have appeared at a local waterfall and who rather conveniently carried out a number of miracles in the local area. As a result, the waters at Baños are said to be holy and blessed by the Virgin, and people flock from all around Ecuador to see if they can be the beneficiaries of the next miracle. The walls of the nave of the main church in the town are covered with murals depicting the Virgin carrying out various miracles (each one carefully dated), and the font at the side of the church has a convenient tap on it so that you can fill up as many waterbottles / grails / whatever as you feel you require. The locals appear to have taken all of this into their stride although it is still clear that they have not completely abandoned their original beliefs either. After we have dropped off our bags of at the hotel, we decide to head up to a viewing point to get a good look at the volcano. On the way up, we pick up a little old lady who has been trying to get a lift back up to her house on the top of the mountain after a day selling leaves in the market. As the land cruiser picks its way up the mountain and the top of the volcano becomes ever clearer, this lady tells us that "Isabella is in her kitchen cooking fava beans and potatoes for her children".... animist beliefs still alive and well then... although when we drop the lady off at her house, she constantly makes the sign of the cross and blesses us to the Virgin for our assistance. It's an odd mixture.

We pull the car up and hike up about 50 yards to a viewing spot. It's a clear evening, so we spend the next hour gawping in amazement at the power of nature. The summit of the volcano is no more than a mile away from us and we can feel the ground shake with every "small" explosion that sends plumes of ash high up into the sky. It is an absolutely mesmerising sight, as are the great gashes cut into the side of the mountain and through the cloud forest by the pyrcoclastic flows as they sweep down towards the town. Apparently if you watch the volcano at night you can see sparks of hot ash flying up into the air. Frankly it's an impressive enough sight as it is. All I can do is stand and watch and feel very small.



After a while we head back down the slope and grab our trunks for a quick dip in the famous hot springs. This is clearly the thing to do in Baños in the evening, and the place is absolutely swarming with tourists. The pool itself is basically gringo soup and we don't stay for long. These may be amongst the most famous springs in Ecuador, but they aren't a patch on Chachimbiro or Nangulvi. We pick up our stuff and head out on to the local pizza restaurant for some much needed sustenance (and I'm pleased to see my appetite is returning) and an episode of the popular medical drama "Doctor House".

Friday 16th March




The volcano doesn't erupt during the night and we don't die in our beds. I must be feeling better too, as my breakfast consists of coffee, passion fruit juice, pancakes with fresh fruit, yoghurt, granola and passion fruit honey. Mmmm. Just the fortification I need for the day as we spend the princely sum of $5 hiring a bike and bombing down the road out of Baños and along a canyon punctuated by a number of splendid waterfalls - the most spectactular of which is the "Pailón del Diablo" (the devil's cauldron) where the water is forced through a narrow opening in the rock and slams down under pressure onto a shelf of rock, throwing up an enormous amount of spray.






Very impressive - certainly impressive enough to make the walk over the rickety bridge a touch nerve-wracking.



....or maybe it was just the incredibly rickety bridge that made the crossing a bit nerve-wracking?

We also watch some apparently nerveless gringas from somewhere in scandinavia bridge jumping -- this is where you are strapped into a harness and throw yourself off the side of a bridge over the canyon, swinging round on an elasticated rope attached to the other side of the bridge. It looks a bit less scary than bungee, but only because the harness is strapped around your body and not just to your legs. I still don't fancy it much though.... my stomach is feeling better, but I don't think I'd want to put it through that, thanks very much.

After the exertion of the bike ride, we have a nice and gentle afternoon.... we head back into Baños, have a nap (well, C. has a nap, I finish off "Moonraker", the third of the James Bond books that I have brought with me) and then head out into the town to have a look at the shops and to back up the cameras. Well, you can't be too careful, eh? Because he has been such an excellent guide and because he has shown some distinctly left-wing tendencies, we buy Ivan a Che Guevara t-shirt as a gift. Hasta La Victoria Siempre. I am however totally unable to find a shop that will sell me an Ecuadorian club football shirt. I am keen to find one because I want to take it back to Lord Bargain as a gift, but all I can find are appalling fakes of the national team shirt. Can I find a FC Quito, a Barcelona or a Deportivo Imbaburra strip? Nope. I start trying to think of a plan B.

Ivan is delighted with his t-shirt and insists on wearing it out to dinner, where I am also gracious enough to allow him to beat me at chess. *ahem*. I think I'll be sticking to Cuarenta. Ivan's wife is making the long trip from Otavalo to Baños to spend the weekend with her husband, so C. and beat a hasty retreat back to the hostel to allow to head off to the bus station to pick her up and to spend some time with her without us in their hair.

Tonight the volcano can rumble all it wants.... nothing is keeping me from the land of nod.

To be continued.....

smiled with the risin' sun....

Andean Cock of the Rock - silly looking
--
Ecuador Trip - Part Five.

[Part one - Part two - Part three - Part four - Part five - Part six - Part seven - Part eight]

Monday 12th March

Apparently you have to get up early if you want to go birdwatching. This may explain why my serious interest in this kind of thing waned when I was about 13. Still, it would seem foolish not to make the most of this opportunity to go and have a look at some of the more exotic and colourful birds in the world. We head up into the cloud forest with Ivan and a birdwatching guide called Marcello, and for the next three or four hours, we walk slowly up into the hills stopping occasionally to gawp through Marcello's telescope at some remarkable looking bird or other.

I know I said I wasn't going to type up a list of birds, but I'm going to make an exception here just to give you a flavour of how much we saw in that relatively short space of time:

Sickle Winged Guan, Bay Wren, Tri-Coloured Bush Finch, Smooth Billed Ani, Swallow Tailed Kite, Orange-Bellied Euphonia, Blue Necked Tanager, Spotted Woodcreeper, Golden Tanager, Dusky Flycatcher, Squirrel Cuckoo, Yellow Tyrannulet, Golden Headed Quetzal, House Wren, Yellow Faced Grass Quit, Red Billed Parrot, Blue Grey Tanager, Tropical Kingbird, Faun Breasted Tanager, Rusty Margined Flycatcher, Black Winged Saltator, Black Vulture, Roadside Hawk, Red Faced Spinetail, Red Headed Barbet, Golden Rumped Euphonia, Choco Toucan, Pale Mandibaled Aricari, Strong Billed Woodcreeper, Grey Breasted Wood Wren, Crimson Rumped Toucanet, Guayaquil Woodpecker, Andean Cock of the Rock, White Capped Dipper...

Do you see what I mean? I was particularly taken with the toucans myself - what an incredible bird to actually see in the flesh.


A Choco Toucan

At the top of the hill, we take a ride in an incredibly rickety open cable car over a ravine. Ian kindly points out when we are about halfway across that there is no safety cable, but somehow we make it across and back in one piece. We then head down the hill and pay a visit to a butterfly farm. I'm sure this is all very interesting, but to be honest my attention is somewhat taken by the discovery that C's memory card is saying that it has no images. Given that this was the camera that we used to take almost all of the pictures of the trek, this is something of a blow and it hits me quite hard. Suddenly I have absolutely no interest in putting a bit of melon juice on my hand and in trying to get a giant butterfly to perch on my fingers. All I can think about is how all those photos of us playing football with the Pinyan, of us on top of the mountain on my birthday, of the birthday cake, of us on the horses at the lake.... they're all gone. It takes me a good couple of hours to recover my sense of humour and to remember that at least I experienced all those moments and that they will forever be locked into my brain.

Stupid technology.

After the butterfly farm, we go tubing down the river.



This essentially involves sitting on some lorry inner-tubes that have been lashed together and hanging on for dear life as they are pushed onto some river rapids. It's quite tame really, but it's a lot of fun, and Ivan (bless him) goes to extraordinary lengths to chase us down the river in his car so that he can take some photos.... we're quite short on photos now, of course.



After the early start, we have a "power nap" for a couple of hours in the afternoon and then we gather together for a trip to a "frog concert" (I keep trying to suggest that it should be called the "frog chorus", but Ecuador appears to have missed out on that particular pop classic). It sounds like it will be of minimal interest, frankly. How long can you stand and listen to some frogs chirping? Actually, it's quite impressive. We head just out of town and down to a little hostel that is surrounded by a couple of man-made pools. Our host, Bernardo, greets us with some wine and then takes us on what is essentially a nature-walk through the dark. We hear something in the region of 13 types of frog, but we also get to see things like a waterspider, luminous funghi, some massive cockroaches, a preying Mantis and an extremely cute German Shepherd puppy. We try telling Bernardo that calling this a "frog concert" doesn't do it any justice at all, but he clearly likes the name and isn't going to be shifted from it. Oh well. We head back into Mindo for dinner and few more games of Curarenta (again, I am decisively victorious!)

Tuesday 13th March

Essentially a travelling day. We leave Mindo behind us and head up towards Quito, pausing briefly at Mitad del Mundo, where we fight our way past the other gringos to get our photo taken at the monument marking the equator. It was here that a French expedition in the nineteenth century conclusively proved that this was in fact the equator. They were nearly right - there is a native site a few hundred meters from here that has been in place for thousands of years. Needless to say, they had it right all along and the monument is actually in the wrong place....


North & South

It's a bit of a tourist trap though, so we have some ice cream, take some photos and move on.



In Quito (that's another UNESCO World Heritage Site off the list then) we take in a bit of culture by visiting the house of the artist Oswaldo Guayasamín. I'd never heard of him, but apparently he was one of the most important artists in South America. We visit his grand (but unfinished) Chapel of Mankind. It was intended as a secular riposte to the Sistine Chapel, focusing on man's treatment of man, and it's a very powerful statement. Guayasamín's images capture the political oppression, racism, poverty, and class division found in much of South America and as a result it's spectacular, sometimes harrowing but not really very cheerful.



After this we head down into the Old Town and check out the Catholic bling of San Francisco and the main Jesuit chuch. As you might expect, every surface is either smothered in gold or in pictures of hell (where people strangely seem to have mainly indigenous faces). Mind you, in spite of this ostentation, there is also evidence of a subtler and altogether more pragmatic hand: the churches are often built on the sites of ancient temples, and if you look closely, Inca symbols and motifs can be found all over the interior and exterior decorations. Fire and brimstone is all very well, but those early catholic settlers were well aware that they would need more than that if they were to really win the hearts and the minds of the locals. We see this again later on when we visit Banos, where the traditionally female volcano has been totally hijacked by the Catholic Church into a cult of the Virgin Mary. They may have caused untold misery here over the centuries, but you really have to take your hat off to them sometimes, don't you?

We check out the changing of the guard at the presidential palace, later learning that this was actually the scene of some violent protests that very morning - a small constitutional crisis has been brewing since the new president took office and set the wheels of a referendum on the constitution moving -- he's taking a stand against an unpopular and corrupt parliament, and needless to say, the parliament don't like it very much - especially not when 57 of the 100 members are sacked for refusing to recognise the legality of the planned referendum.... We then head off to belatedly back up our cameras, get back in the car and to head the 2 hours or so down towards Cotopaxi.

When we arrive, the volcano is shrouded in fog, but after the long drive, it is an absolute pleasure to see that our hostel has open wood fires in every room. Now that's what I'm talking about....

Wednesday 14th March



Cotopaxi - as we never quite saw it

When we arrived in Ecuador, I was undecided about whether or not we should attempt to climb to the summit of Cotopaxi. On the one hand I had heard that this wasn't actually that difficult a climb and was possible without any real experience. On the other hand, the volcano is 5,897m high and you need to have crampons and ice-axes and things to get to the top. Whilst we were on the Pinyan trek, Ivan showed me a booklet detailing what you have to do to climb -- you have to climb up to the refuge at about 4,500m with your sleeping bag. You sleep in the refuge until about midnight, and then you set off on the 6 hour climb to the summit. The reason for the early start is that you will have to cross some snow-bridges, and these become notoriously soft as the day goes on. Once you get to the top, you hang about for a bit and peer down into the crater as it belches sulphurous clouds, and then you head back down. The whole thing will take at least 9 hours and is physically very demanding. I thought I was probably up to it, but in the end decided that I wasn't in Ecuador to kill myself, and basically had no need to put myself through that. We decided instead that we would satisfy ourselves by climbing up a bit from the refuge. On Ivan's advice, we went up the south side and based ourselves in the Cara Sur refuge -- this is relatively new, and most people go up the north side, so we had the entire mountain to ourselves.


The remains of some pyroclastic flows...

It was raining when we arrived, so after a short delay and a few hands of Cuarenta as we waited for the clouds to clear, we headed up the volcano. Pretty soon it started to snow, and before long we were actually walking in the snow line itself.


"I thought this was supposed to be the tropics, dammit..."

By the time we reached the camp that is used for assaults on the summit, we were all tired, cold and wet. We were at 4,750m - just a little shorter than the summit of Mt Blanc - and that seemed plenty high enough to me. We had a mug of coca tea and then began the descent. In all, it took us something like 4 hours and 40 minutes. I have nothing but admiration for anyone with the energy to climb further. I was knackered and that was more than enough for me.


4750m and knackered....

I slept very well that evening.

To be continued.....