Ecuador - The Avenue of Volcanos

Fruit & veg in a market town in the Avenue of Volcanos

After saying goodbye to our host family at the end of our week long Spanish Course, Angel, the father of the host family, kindly drove us to the meeting place for the next part of our trip in Ecuador. Whilst walking around in Quito we had seen several bus trips advertised by various tour companies. The trip we wanted would take us from Quito, down the Avenue of Volcanoes to the Cotopaxi National Park, Banõs, the Devil’s Nose train ride and then on to Cuenca. However, we thought the arranged trips were expensive compared to arranging most of it ourselves and using the public buses. In the end we decided to do a bit of both. We bought an organized group trip with one night in their hotel near Cotopaxi and then from there we would take the public buses.

The minibus and the bikes

Quilotoa Crater Lake

The minibus arrived and we began the journey south to the first part of the trip to Quilotoa Crater Lake. The minibus dropped us off near the top of the crater where it was a short walk to the rim and a fantastic view of the lake about 400m below. It is a caldera like the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania only this one is filled with water. The weather was pretty good but cold at this altitude so we started the very steep walk down to the lakes edge. 


Taking the lazy option



Clouded Cotopaxi volcano (5897m)

It was really dusty especially when the mules that carried passengers back up the slope headed speedily past us on their way back down again. The crater was formed about 800 years ago after the volcano erupted and then collapsed.  After a drink and a rest at the edge of the water it was time to go back up to the top of the crater again. To make a change we thought we would take the easy way up by paying a cheap fare for a mule ride. It was a bumpy but fun. We felt a bit sorry for the mules carrying us up there but they seemed used to it.

Poor picture of Andean fields

The crater lake almost looks unreal as it seems to be perfectly round with various shades of blue green water. It was an impressive sight. The minibus then drove us to our remote but comfortable hotel. As normal it was cold in the room and so the owners lit a wood burning stove for us. This warmed the room up nicely but left things smelling a bit smoky. After breakfast we loaded our bags into the minibus and were driven up to the small car park on Cotopaxi. On the way we could see valleys and the Andean mountains. No matter how steep the land was the locals had managed to use every inch to grow various crops. It was quite a sight to see ploughed fields on the mountain sides.


Iren at 5000 meters on Cotopaxi

 


The easy way. Cycling down Cotopaxi

 From the car park it was a steep hour or so walk up to the Cotopaxi Base Camp. This was a mountain hut where the people that were going to the top would stay the night and make an early start. Cotopaxi is Ecuador's second highest mountain/volcano and is 2 meters higher than Kilimanjaro at 5897 meters. Our day trip was really just a short walk up to the glacier at 5000 meters and then back down again. We didn’t feel any affects of the altitude other than we had to walk slowly. The view was great although it kept disappearing in the clouds. The walk back down to the minibus was much easier than the walk up. The next part of the day trip was to cycle down. The mountain bikes were taken off the roof of the minibus and we started to freewheel most of the way down from about 4300 meters. It was cold but we were prepared with warm clothes. We took it slowly and enjoyed the spectacle and the views.

Waiting for a bus on the Pan American Highway

The minibus followed us down and at the end drove us back to the main road. At this point we left the organized trip and stood at the road side with our bags. It was the busy Pan American Highway that runs the length of South America. There are no bus stops so you have to flag down a bus. We were a bit nervous since we hadn’t done this before. After a short wait we saw a bus in the distance and started waving. Just as we had been told it stopped. We just about managed to ask where it was going in Spanish. We took it Ambato where we changed for another bus to Banõs. We had heard various stories of the dangers of taking these buses so we were a bit wary but everything went fine. The buses are really cheap and surprisingly comfortable if a little crowded at times.


View from hostal in Baños 



Viewing one of the many waterfalls

We arrived in the early evening and stayed two nights in Baños. We were unlucky with the weather. Our guest house owner told us that there really were great views but unfortunately we didn’t get to see them. The next morning we rented bikes and followed a typical tour down the valley to see the various waterfalls. The valley sides are covered in cloud forest and we experienced quite a lot of rain and therefore didn’t take many photos. After about 20km we came to what our guide book said was the most spectacular waterfall. It was about a 30 minute walk from the road down a small path to get to the bottom of the valley and the waterfall. If the visitors weren’t already wet from the rain they would be from the spray of the impressive Pailón del Diablo waterfall. Conveniently there were locals offering to transport us and the bikes back up the valley to Baños. There were several other cyclists like us that didn’t fancy the long uphill ride back in the rain and so we all shared a ride back into town. We spent the rest of the day looking around the town of Baños. The next morning we were off again and most of the day was spent on the bus to Alusí via Riobamba. The bus dropped us off on the edge of town so we walked down the hill to the centre and struggled for a while to find our hostal. Eventully we found it after a friendly women walked us there. We soon discovered that the only two restaurants in town were closed so our evening meal consisted of snacks from the local bakery.

At the bottom of the Devil's Nose

Railway Points on the Devil's Nose track

The reason for coming to Alusí was to ride on the famous “Devil’s Nose Train” and experience the way the train manages to descend approximately 800 meters down the mountain side in just a few kilometers. The track was finished in 1908 and used switch backs as a way of managing the very steep terrain. The train stops, the points are changed and the train reverses onto the new part of the track taking it either up or down. The journey took about an hour and gave some impressive views of the valley.

Dancers at the Devil's Nose station

The New Cathedral in Cuenca

At the end of the line was a small station where some traditional dancers entertained the tourists as we looked around the museum and ate lunch. After the journey back up the side of the Devil’s Nose mountain we collected our bags from the hostel and made our way back to flag down another bus to Cuenca. After having waited about half an hour a small minibus with a few passengers on it stopped and the driver asked if we wanted a lift to Cuenca. We paid a couple of dollars each and were driven the 3 hours or so to Cuenca.

Inca pot, Cuenca

Indoor market in Cuenca

Cuenca was regarded as the second Inca capital after Cuzco in Peru. The centre of the city today, as is the case for many places, bears witness to how the Spanish changed it in the colonial period that started after 1557. It was a busy place with lots of tourists and interesting to look around. Our hotel/hostel was only a few minutes walk from the main square, the Parque Calderõn which has the old and new cathedral on opposite sides. We spent 3 nights in Cuenca which we thought was about right.

Inside Cuenca's old cathedral

Guayaquil in the evening

One of the museums contained lots of Inca artifacts which we enjoyed looking around. It was nearly time to leave Ecuador and travel south to Peru where we hoped to really get immersed in Inca history. We were unsure of how to get down to Lima. The tourist bus was fairly cheap but took about 28 hours. The plane was more expensive but only took 3 hours. We decided on the plane with a flight from Ecuadors second city, Guayaquil. The next day we took a short afternoon flight from Cuenca to Guayaquil where we spent the evening walking around it's busy streets and a very pleasant walk along the prominade area by the river. The next day had a very early start with a flight to Lima with a connecting flight to Cuzco, the capital and navel of the Inca world.

Ecuador - Learning Spanish in Quito

Typical dinner with our friendly host family 

After landing back at the airport we were met by a representative from the Simon Bolivar School. He drove us the half hour or so to the house of the host family that would also be our home for the next week. We were looking forward to meeting the family although we were a bit worried since we don't speak any Spanish and we didn't know what is was going to be like there.

We have thought about making a serious effort to learn some Spanish before but nothing had come of our good intentions. We found out that Quito was a good place to learn Spanish since they have the closest dialect to “Spanish Spanish” in Ecuador. Before we left home we used the internet to find a Spanish language school in Quito and booked our place on a 1 week introductory course. There were several schools and in the end we chose the Simon Bolivar School. They also offered various forms of accommodation. We thought the option of staying with a host family for a week sounded an interesting way to also experience how a typical Ecuadorian family lived and of course to get to know them.

After meeting our host family, it soon became clear that with our limited (almost non-existent) Spanish and their equally limited English, communication would be difficult. Luckily they had Wi-Fi and so once again, as in Italy, Google's iTranslate came to the rescue. We didn't use it all the time but sometimes, no matter how hard you try and gesticulate, mime or use whatever comes to hand to try and be understood it is impossible to communicate and iTranslate was the only answer. On the first evening we found out that we were not the only pupils from the language school staying at the house. Christina, from Houston Texas, had been there for about a month and was going to be there for at least another month if not two. It was a great advantage for us having Christina there since she could help with communication when we were struggling. The course started at 08:30 each morning and lasted for 4 hours. Our class consisted of just the two of us and our teacher, Carlos. On the first morning Carlos taught us in his office dressed in a smart suit and tie.  He suggested that we try and sit outside for the second day. The rest of the course was conducted in the less formal atmosphere of the garden and without the suit and tie. Carlos was a great teacher and managed to remain enthusiastic throughout the whole week. We had plenty of homework to do. We did most of this in the afternoons in various cafes in the centre of Quito. We both agreed that learning Spanish in this way for four hours each morning was very effective. There is no way that we would have had the discipline to do four hours each day without being on the course.

On a couple of the afternoons after our homework was finished we visited some of the sites in or around Quito. Since Quito is more or less on the equator we had to make the short trip north to the actual equator. They have set up a kind of Equator Theme Park, which we were afraid would turn out to be a bit of tourist trap. In the end it was actually quite good. There were lots of small demonstrations about the peculiarities of being on the equator, all of them fascinating. I have often heard people discuss or ask whether water goes down the plughole in the opposite direction on the other side of the equator or not. I thought that in theory it would but it is difficult to test in practice since there are so many things that can interfer and influence the flow. However, here they had a very simple test to demonstrate water going down the plughole in different directions depending on which hemisphere it was done in. Whether it was a trick or not everyone seemed to enjoy it. 

After the week we had learned a fair amount of vocabulary and how the present tense works. I'm sure we'll forget a lot of what we've learnt during the week but hopefully when we try to learn some more at a later date it will come back to us. I think we'll find an evening course back home and sign up for something like one evening a week. It was interesting to live with our host family for the week. They were all very friendly to us and tried to understand what we said. They were very used to having people like us staying with them and evidence of this was everywhere to see. There were pictures on the walls and hanging from strings across the ceiling of all the students that had stayed with them over the last ten years. The family was proud of all the connections that they had with people from all over the world. We'll send them a picture of us when we get back home to add to their collection of satisfied students. We really appreciated the hospitality!