Torro! Torro! Torro!

Trip Start Jun 07, 2008

Trip End Sep 14, 2008

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Flag of Ecuador Alausi, Ecuador
Saturday, June 28, 2008

After a few hours at the market in Zumbahua, I took a series of busses south to Alausi. This is the starting point for the rooftop train ride through the Nariz de Diablo; yes that's the Devil's Nose. I timed this arrival to coincide with the Sunday departure (it only runs 3 days a week), but was surprised to discover that I had also arrived on the weekend of the region's biggest festival. This proved to be a bit of an inconvenience as an hour of hunting turned up not a single free room in town. Luckily, I bumped into the Australian girls from Chugchilan (Kate and Nadine), who'd made a reservation, and they offered to share their room with me.

Directly across from our hostel, we found a giant scaffold structure that was the makeshift bullring for this event. We met a local cowboy and joined him in the ring to watch the music and dance performance that was going on. When that was over, with very little warning, they released a bull into the ring and most of us scrambled for the fences. Before long, a kind man invited us to join him in his box to watch the action from above. There were aparently no professional matadors for this event. Just dozens of foolhardy men with varying degrees of inebriation and courage, and a lot of bulls. Saw a several guys get a taste of the horns, but only one looked especially nasty. One of the more pleasant aspects of this event was that they didn't kill any of the bulls. Just a lot of teasing.

When the bullfighting was over, the party in the street got going, with plenty of music and dancing of course.

1 Run!

We took a wild ride on a kiddie train, ate some cotton candy, and watched the fireworks before calling it an early night. (We'd been up since 3am as you may recall from the previous post).

The next day, after a terribly frustrating hour dealing with the arcane ticket purchasing process, we took that ride down the Nariz de Diablo. Half the passengers ride on the roof going down, then everyone switches going back up. The train tracks were laid around 1900 and employ an innovative method for getting up and down a steep rock face: the train navigates a series of switchbacks by alternating going forward and backwards. No need to turn. Despite the hordes of fellow tourists, it was worth the trouble.

Afterwards, back in town, we watched an unending parade of Latin American dance troupes march through town. When we'd had enough, we hiked up to the hill overlooking the town and stumbled upon some budding Ecuadorian pop star filming scenes for a music video. (I know what your thinking. Will our luck never end?) We watched the beginning of the day's bullfighting from the hill surrounded by a mass of indigenous families, and eventually went back down and got invited into another family's scaffolded box. More moderately perturbed bulls chasing increasingly timid local guys. The bravery/stupidity award goes to the guy who kept leaping over the bull, usually from the side, but one time by straddling him head-on. Feeling perhaps a bit overstimulated, we left town before the street party got going that night.

Lotsagoodphotos from Alausi on flickr.