ECUADOR: Guayaquil>Cuenca>Incapirca>Riobamba
Trip Start
Mar 03, 2006
1
11
23
Trip End
Aug 30, 2006
Riobamba,
Ecuador
Saturday, June 3, 2006
Friday- first day in Southern Continent, now approaching the half way mark of my trip. wow already!? I never planned to hang around, so I just did a speedy once over of the city, Japanese tourist style. Really liked the parks with floods of iguanas being fed freely by the puclic just as pigeons or ducks are back home in Royal Square / reservoirs.. weird.... then the plazas were fab.... plus the Malecon 2000 waterfront promenade looked nice with cafes, statues and watchtowers scattered around. I shopped around a bit and had a cheap as lunch (57p or 1dollar for set menu: soup, drink and rice/meat main...)... the locals in this dingy diner swarmed around me in awe it seemed....then I dashed to the bus terminal and booked my international 24hr bus ride from here, to Lima Peru, where I will meet my new tour group (in a week)...Then I chose to head to Cuenca, Ecuador's 3rd largest but richest, colonial city. Aboard the mid evening bus ride, these two men jumped on and proceeded to entertain the passengers with comedy,questions and games and handed out choccies etc for purchase... is their job so thought Id support their cause....
Anyhow, on arrival, I had the pleasant surprise of cool weather for the first time in 2.5 months... time for a JUMPER.. yes a jumper!!!!! and jeans and socks and shoes...jacket nearly... Found myself a cheap,nearly empty hostel with views of church towers outside etc. met a Dutch bloke in male dorm. They seem to be everywhere?!Was tired from travelling so called it a day...
Saturday: woke to the church bells and bustling noises of the market stalls directly outside. Felt good. Cuenca is a safe, moderately populated colonial city with great architecture, a small INCA ruin site, many museums and varying art galleries, plus a tranquil river bisecting the northern shopping/office/market/churchy side from the southern residential/univeristy/sporty/industrial/park side... here local women still wash their clothing and bathe in peace. Strange (but nice) sight. So I just walked all day long around the easily naviagable city centre - streets, squares and along riverbanks.....photo shoot and lazy, cheap day and nice traditional meal.
In the evening, I randomly decided to go to watch the Da Vinci Code in multicomplex cinema on my own.... was great actually! Really enjoyed it and appreciated subtitles. For a moment, I felt I was "back home". Town was buzzing with student nightlife when I left at midnight. I played the old man and opted to sleep so to rise early for a day trip to Incapirca, a small Inca Ruin in the nearby highlands near Canar.
Sunday: joined the Dutch dude on this trip which ended up consiting of 2 hours on a bus, an hour and a half long guided tour of the site with a group, then the same 2 hour return bus ride to Cuenca. Could have done with more time to explore the site, neatly in between sauring green cattle/lama infested misty mountains and traditional Quechua indigenous towns. The site is nothing comapred to the Mexican ruins but still fascinating. In the afternoon, we lazed in the main square and indulged in deluxe ice-cream and coffee.
Ok so on Mon 29th the two of us upped and left Cuenca for Riobamba, a town 6 hours north pretty much in the centre of the country. Set up in the cool highlands at 3,000 odd metres with the imposing Volcan Chimborazo (6,00m high) in the background, the town doesn't have that much to offer in terms of tourism. We went there initially with the goal of doing this cool train ride between neighbouring towns. This isn't just the average ride though, you are ENCOURAGED to dress for cold weather and sit on cushions on the roof for 5 hours solid to take in the landscape......... When we arrived, the poor guy had to go to bed straight away which didn't look good. So I just went out to dinner wiht some other friendly UK people we met on bus ride (first big english group in fact since Costa Rica).. Had gorgeous pizza and Chilean wine...Couldn't find any decent nightlife afterwards so that was that...
The plan for the following day was to rise at the crack of dawn in order to climb part of this volcano, but had to pass in the end due to the Dutch bloke being bedridden amongst other things eg fianance and fatigue. Instead, I ended up doing a normal thing for the day and shopped around and searched for a widescreen TV to see England vs Hungary pre-World cup friendly...Felt like a right "Brit on Tour" as I was given the task of trying to find a single bar with cable TV and the England match playing. After taxiing round the city centre with the same English guys as dined with the night before, it turned out that noone was playing it in favour of Brazil (vs some crappy Swiss national side?!?!!)...So we had to settle for that match which was great....a few beers and nibbbles accompanied - you know... After that we made it as far as the olympic stadium and happened to bump into some local national athletes who "surprisingly" double up as tourist guides in spare time...intriguing.....
When I returend to the hostel to check how my mate was doing, I learnt form the landlord that he had ben admitted ot the local clinic and diagnosed with a serious bacterial infection or someting along those lines.. prob food poisoning or that with a combination of somehting else.. Was given 5 different medication to take so he was absolutely out of it.
Evening time was passed at the local "in-place to be" with a mixture of locals and gringos... had a couple of oddbods knocking against the glass windows, looking lik sad pups begging for food or money.. not nice but realityI guess... Didn't go hardcore as Wednsday 31st was going to be a long day....
Wed: up at 5:30 for the 5odd hour train ride from Riobamba - Alausi - Devil's Nose - Alausi.
Hung with the Brits again...So yeah, as I mentioned before, the train ride is aimed at gringos - you hire cushions and cram the rooftops of the old train and sit for hours absorbing the winding valley and interlocking mountainside scenery.....food is served aboard with locals dodging in and out of bodies and between the carriages....en route, the kids and oldies wait along he roads and fields and hold their hands out and sometimes run alongside the train in hope of having something thrown down to them eg money or food!!!! sad... the DEVIL'S NOSE bit is the highlight... a suspect-looking carved shape in the mountains apparntly ressembling a face, with jaggered nose as its main feature. This train zig-zagged down the route so we could appreciate from the bottom upwards.....Wasn't all that and I got slightly burnt and dehydrated so grumpy......plus there were about 88 annoying american teenage girls hogging the majority of the carriages around us! Everyone piled aboard a bus to return to Riobamba instead of training it back. Gorget myself through a delicoius Ecuador style cheap as Chinese meal before saying bye to all and heading back to Guayaquil where I would take a 24hour+ bus all the way ot Peru's Capital, LIMA.
Thurs 1st - Fri 2nd. Nothing fab to mention except the journey went quite quick and smoothly with amazing scenery near Lima (huge sand dune and rock formations with the long/straight Pan-American Highway cutting right through this desert-like landscape with hardly any inhabitants).. Watched 4 or 5 movies aborad and had 3 nice meals served. Border crossing was OK as bus was secured in anticipation of raids etc on Peruvian side. Customs as a joke...some cafe 2 hours BEYOND the border towns...about 3 seelct suitcases checked randomly, but no declaration form to be submitted by anyone. hand luggage on the bus not checked nor passports again.... mental... arrived here in Lima at 1pm today and have now 2 days or so to fill before meeting my new 3week long tour buddies on Sunday.
Tis fianlly all for the moment.
Hasta luego.
PS, no mention of Eurovision or Big Brother please. Loving the bliss of sweet ignorance!
