Stick your panpipes where the sun don´t shine!

Trip Start Dec 26, 2006
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Trip End Dec 25, 2007


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Flag of Ecuador  ,
Sunday, June 3, 2007

And then the Lonely Planetīs "Best Journey" beckoned, a bus trip from Baņos to Guaranda and Guaranda to Riobamba. And who could complain as the bus kept heading up high into the Andes, passed the tree line as our bus hit snow and there out to the left in all her glory was Volcan Chimborazo. Sure we were sitting on the wrong side of the bus, a packed bus at that but the camera managed to get a few shots in while we made a note to sit on the other side for the return journey back. And as for Guaranda....well it did what it seems to have done a lot in Ecuador, and come to think of it, since Bogota...it bloody rained, chucked it down in fact. Sure one minute before as I stood in the church I wished for rain so we had an excuse to head back to our room and watch cable tv...wish granted!
 
And the realisation that I may indeed be chasing winter down to Argentina set in, and that blue sky would be at a premium was a bloody depressing thought. Everyone at home in Oz is in winter I thought, I at least should be enjoying a summer...and with much brain crunching I came to the realisation that I am in the damn southern hemisphere so why should the weather be any different to winter back home...bugger!
 
And before you could say "crazed Aussie guy" Guaranda became number three on the list of "I did not get a single freakinīminutes sleep" listing, following close on the heels of San Agustin (the broken window incident) and the night of the landslide in Deliverance, Colombia. The reason being we were sold the front room, street light next to room angled directly into face through paper thin white curtains and Discoteca across the road, firing up Electronica Panpipes (I kid you not, panpipes on acid, some songs lasting 20 minutes and were usually repeated straight after). Ear plugs could not dampen this indestructable force of musical hell. An yes, the locals decided to wind up with a punchup out front, cue screaming and hysterical girlfriends around about 7.30am, after beginning at 8pm the night before. And the shower was cold, stone-motherless cold!

Apologies here to Tiffany as my usually cool, take-it-in-your-stride exterior was shattered into thousands of tiny pieces as I let fly at nightclub and its inhabitants, the shower, the hotel owner who in my crazed opinion "deliberately put us in this god-forsaken room" and the inventor of pan-pipes in general. I was a man without sleep waiting for the men in white coats to appear straitjacket in tow!
 
As I finally composed myself and climbed aboard the bus to take us to Riobamba skirting the base of Volcan Chimborazo, Ecuadorīs highest peak at 6310m. And for once our tickets had us on the right side of the bus, viewing gold, luckily for the other passengers given my current state of mind. And with the peak covered in snow and the Lonely Planets insistence on "mind-blowing" views being realised,  it truly was an awesome site and dare I say it worth the non-stop pan-pipes of the night before. Oh who am I kidding, nothing is worth the ear bleeding, head splitting, experience that is Electronica Pan Pipes!
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