Saturday, June 23, 2007

Another Banos update

Note: Banos is spelled with a tilde on the N. This keyboard is nuts.

I am back in Quito after a tumultuous couple of days. First, to finish the last story about the first place I hit this week, Quilotoa:

The hike back from Quilotoa to Chugchitlan was amazing, but the path was tough to follow. It took about 4.5 hours to get back after getting lost a couple times along the way and asking farmers for directions. A highlight was the cute little girl who scammed me. About an hour into the hike, I happened upon this nice girl on the side of a mountain who suggested that I hire her as a guide. "Tourists get lost in the canyon" she said. She wanted $5 to walk me through the canyon but I wasn't having it. I left. Two minutes later, I hear loud barking right behind me and turn to find two small dogs who were very upset with me. They followed me and were trying to bite my legs. After about 2 minutes of this, out of nowhere the little girl appears holding a stick and quickly calms the dogs down. "I should be your guide" she said. Flustered, I asked her if there were more crazy dogs in the hills. "At least 10" she said. I was sold. The stick she was holding, I would learn, was not magic. They were her dogs. One of them, named Oso, followed us all the way through the next canyon (which truthfully was really hard to navigate) and I shelled out 5 bucks to the little girl. She wins.


Some troubles on the way out of Quilotoa. The only official bus out leaves every morning at 4AM. The hostal owner tipped me off to an alternative...a children's school bus that leaves at 6 AM. I hopped on, and me and the kids were off, bumping down the road. Around 6"45 though, we got a flat tire. I missed my connecting bus in the next town, which is called Sigchos. Quickly I learned that the next bus didn't leave until 2 PM (it was 7"30 at the time). Sigchos was nothing to write home about, a depressed farming town with high unemployment. Around 11"30, though, my luck changed. Down the road came a Lechero, the name given to the milk trucks that go daily back and forth between the small towns. I hopped in the back with another travelling Spaniard and a family of four from Quito. We rode standing up for about an hour and a half, trying not to let any milk backsplash hit our clothes. It was a great ride. There was serious milk on this truck. The pictures and video should explain.


After a very long day of travel I finally arrived in Banos, which is a resort type spot in the southern part of Ecuador, famous for its thermal baths. The town itself shoulders right up to Tumburaghua, an active volcano that ERUPTED LAST SUMMER. The town shut down. Big time destruction and inches of ash everywhere. It's STILL SMOKING. On top of that, the town is flanked by mountains with heavy foliage. During rainstorms, LANDSLIDES are common. But Ecuardorians and stupid tourists like myself still flock to the town for adventure sports and thermal baths from natural hot springs.

The weather was bad. I spent a good amount of time taking Spanish classes, which were cheaper than Quito and pretty good. On my third (and last) day, I rented a bike for $5 with a couple of people I was rooming with and took them down a massive 15 mile hill that eventually leads to a jungle town called Puyo. Along the way, I jumped off a bridge with a bungee cord that was attached to a parallel bridge. It was my first time, it was great and relatively safe, and it cost another $5.

That was yesterday, and afterwards it was time to leave Banos. In fact, it was our only window. Torrential rain caused massive landslides that block the roads. Everyone was essentially stuck in this town. And they were okay with it. With an active smoking volcano looming in the background.

A tour guide operator agreed to take us (a group of 8 travelers) as far as he could up the highway in a van. We got about a mile out of town until we hit a traffic jam. All traffic was halted because the highway BROKE. A landslide took a bite out of the asphalt on the side of the mountain the highway wrapped around. Police, newsreporters, bulldozers, and gawking tourists all made the scene. I hopped out of the van, climbed over the rubble and mud, and hopped into the back of a pickup truck on the other side.




I rode into the next town with THIRTEEN Ecuadorians in the back of this small pickup in the rain, and grabbed another bus to Quito. Everyone was eager to talk it up on the ride so we could forget about the rain and wind. A highlight was that more than a few of the Ecuadorians on board believed the next world war will be fought over WATER, and that transnational corporations like Coca Cola and Pepsi are slowly aligning to privatize and
control the world's capabilities to create, store and transport potable water. Ookay.

I'll be in Quito until tomorrow morning. At noon, I'll be meeting another traveler and our guide at a travel agency, and we'll embark on a 3-day trip to attempt to climb the south face of Cotopaxi. I climbed that mountain I posted about a couple weeks ago again today to re-acclimatize myself.

There will be an overnight stay in a refuge,
climbing on ice, camping on ice, horses, and a push for the summit starting at midnight on Monday. They provide all the equipment and even warm clothes...I only have to bring batteries and chocolate. I stocked up on the latter. We should hit the summit at dawn. If the weather is terrible, we'll bail out and I'll be back than Tuesday. But we'll see...

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Quilotoa and Baños



Good morning boys and girls!

It´s been a while since I have been able to use a computer so I´ll stuff a few updates into this post.

Sunday was my last day staying with the Proaños in Quito. They are a great family and I´d recommend the Vida Verde program to anyone. I´ll miss em. These are a couple of pics from a visit to an overlook of the city and our last breakfast on Sunday, when I hopped on a bus down south.

About an hour or two south of Quito, off the Panamericana highway, things get a little hairy on the roads. There is a loop of very small, mostly indigenous towns high up in the mountains that seem to revolve mostly around agriculture and just a little tourism. It´s known as the Quilotoa loop. The busses are convenient in the sense that you can count on an outstretched hand from the open, moving door to haul you and your backpack on board at the last second while a bus is pulling out of a town. The drivers are also very helpful with dropping you off where you want to be, especially if you stick out like a gringo in...a town like Quilotoa. The busses do, however, have their inconveniences. Especially off the beaten path.

Mid-afternoon Sunday I arrived in a town on the Quilotoa loop called Chugchitlan, where I shacked up in a hostal called "Hostal Mama Hilda." True to its name, Mama Hilda herself pledged to treat me like her son, and showered me with food, wine, and firewood, and a discount rate because I spoke Spanish in this luxury getaway that seemed to be completely carved from Eucalyptus wood.

A 4 AM bus took me to Quilotoa to see the main attration of the loop, the Quilotoa lake (elevation 3914 meters). Hindsight tells me I should have dressed warmer. Think strong, cold, pre-dawn wind. I ducked into a hostal in Quilotoa (which was pretty much a ghost town) and had breakfast with a Quichua family who spoke just a little Spanish. If I wasn´t cold and pretty much de-sensitized to awkward situations, it would have been a little weird. But it wasn´t!

A little after dawn, I set out to hike to the lake.
It was incredible. Quilotoa Lake is really a large volcano crater filled with sulfur-tinged water, giving it a greenish-blue tinge (and preventing anything from living in it). The volcano last erupted before 1800, and scientist types think it was actually an implosion, not an explosion. The hike down and back took about 2 hours.

After the lake, I hiked back to Chugchitlan. It´s about a 4-6 hour trail through "roads" and canyons, and it was truly some of the best hiking I´ve done, even when I got lost and had to ask farmers the way.

This internet cafe is expensive. Will finish later.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

More Quito and Mitad del Mundo

I mentioned before that Quito is a big city -- in terms of sprawl. It´s long but thin because it´s flanked by mountains. You can easily spot houses perched up on the mountains. Small towns, really. And they´re completely illegal. The city´s administration mandates that people do not develop on the mountains due to risk of landslides from inclement weather. As it´s free to develop there (enforcement is lax/nonexistant), those who can´t afford to buy or rent on a legitimate plot of land just set up shop in the mountains with fingers crossed.

That said, the developed city has its own dangers. It´s not advisable to walk around the area where I´m staying after dark (cabs are the way to go) and you have to be more on-guard as a pedestrian in general. As opposed to the U.S., where the pedestrian has right-of-way, in Quito (and probably in every second and third world country, for that matter), the pedestrian warrants no respect whatsoever from drivers. I´ve had to stay on my toes.
Luckily, every morning I´m afforded an exercise in alertness. Two doors down from my homestay, the neighbors invested in an economical choice in home security. That´s right, a raging German Shepard. They keep him on the roof where he greets me (and only me, not the locals) with total hatred every time I pass, dangling his front half as far off the roof as possible for maximum effect. I haven´t caught a picture of him yet, but this is the closest I could get. I´m working on it.

For class yesterday I visited the Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World) with my professor. It´s about 1.5 hours outside of Quito in a small town called...Mitad del Mundo. As confirmed by GPS systems, the latitude 0°00'00" passes through the town. There is a large state-sponsored monument celebrating its location as it was originally calculated by the French in the 1970´s. Unfortunately for the French, it was a miscalculation. About 300 yards north, there is a small museum that is located on what has been confirmed by GPS as the correct "middle of the world", and it was first pinpointed by ingineous folk some thousand years ago using simple tools to gauge the sun and its geometry. Long story short, they worshipped the sun, figured out there were two equinoxes, stood a stick on its head and pinpointed the location where its shadow would absolutely and completely disappear for a few moments during each equinox. At these times, they were the closest they could possibly be to the sun, their source of energy, spirit, "the force", mojo, etc. etc.

The museum is tourist sensation. Standing on the equator, I balanced an egg on the head of a nail, which is supposed to be easier to do because of centrifugal forces from the north and south poles. They gave me a certificate. I questioned my manhood as my young female tour guide easily forced apart my arms grasped together akimbo while standing on the equator, after not being able to just a little bit to the north. And my watch confirmed the accuracy of the solar clock that the ingidenous folk had constructed however long ago (it was 11:01).

The museum also featured some more throwbacks to inginenous days unrelated to geometry. My favorite demonstration was fond of the "Tzantza" ritual, which is of course Quichua for "decapitating you and shrinking your head." The first two pictures speak for themselves; the third is a real shrunken head, whose hair continued to grow long after its initial shrinking.





They tell me the tribes that developed this process don´t really do it to people anymore. But, they do practice on monkeys, to preserve the ritual. Classes were not available to learn how to do it.

I have kept up with other classes, though. I´m less awful at salsa and this is the first I´ve spoken (typed) English all day. Saturday is my last day in Quito. Following, I´ll head further south to Quilotoa and Baños, to return the following weekend to Quito for a mountain excursion to hopefully climb what is disputably the world´s highest active volcano, Cotopaxi (but not "active" like I´m going to see any lava. In fact, I´ll just be cold.).

Monday, June 11, 2007

Otavalo Market and Rucu Pinchincha


I hit two obligatory touristy spots this weekend. The first, the Otavalo Market, is an open-air market hosted every Saturday morning by indigenous capitalist types. The trip was about 2 hours from Quito by bus, and I arrived at the very tail end of the animal-off, where the women of Otavalo trade live animals in the early morning. For the rest of the day, tourists flock to tents, stands, etc. to haggle over what become increasingly similar wares that are ¨hand crafted¨ by the sellers. After seeing nearly identical stone masks and giant spoons in Otavalo on Saturday and in Quito yesterday I am a little skeptical. But yes, I caved and bought some stuff. It definitely felt like I was at the mall, though, which is the absolute last place I want to be on a Saturday.

On Sunday, I took a trip up the TeleferiQo in Quito with Eric, one of my roommates at our homestay in Quito. The TeleferiQo is a brand new gondola-type ride that brings you about 12,000 ft above sea level for some nice views of Quito. From there, you can go the Disney World route and hit the overpriced cafe and ride the bumper cars and rollercoasters that lie below, or you can jump on a nearby trail that leads (sort of) to the top of an inactive volcano. We chose the latter.




The climb took about 3 hours, and when I got the top (14,400 ft) I wish I had brought gloves. (14,400 ft). But there were great views and it was a great way to begin to acclimatize myself for bigger climbs.







The feeling of reaching the summit didn´t come close to the fun of going down, though. I got to break in my trail running shoes and act like a 5-year-old at the same time. Although you get to watch my hand for about 8 straight seconds, I think I captured the moment pretty well:



I´m back to class this week, then off to what looks like another climbing trip this weekend...

Friday, June 8, 2007

Safe Landing

Honestly...not too much to report here, but all is well. I made it to Quito and have met a bunch of good people. Continental decided to hide my luggage (read: backpack) from me for three days, so I had to make due in the interim with, uhh, the same clothes as the day before.

Acclimitization has not been overwhelming. Quito is about 2850m (9000 ft) above sea level and the change in altitude has taken some getting used to, but my head hurts more from all the Spanish that has been crammed into it than it does from the thinner air. That said, the city is surrounded by massive mountains and there are at least 2 volcanoes close by.

I´m currently living with the Proaños. Rosa, the mother, is the director of the Spanish school Vida Verde where I´m taking 6 hours of classes per day during the week. I would definitely recommend it. The other students, even the Americans, are refraining from speaking English pretty much full time. It will be tough to leave after next week, but adventures beckon.

Aside from the bars of Mariscal Sucre last night, where the female citizens of Quito (Quiteñas) practice what they call cazagringos (gringo-hunting) there has not been a lot of real excitement around here yet. But I´m sure that will change. I have, however, taken a couple of salsa lessons (gratis with the classes) that confirm that I am very, very white. Also, I stopped by a big market yesterday where they use *all* parts of the cow in plates, soups, etc. Think hoofs, brains, stomach linings...delicious).

It looks like I´ll stick around Quito until the middle or end of next week and then giddyup with some scrubby traveling. Definitely excited for the upcoming weeks!