Ecuador

 

Back in 2007, we went to Peru and had a wonderful time. The Andes are fascinating and stunningly gorgeous and the people were some of the friendliest I've ever met. But I think we got there just in the nick of time - in other words when it was mostly backpackers visiting and not the giant air-conditioned tour buses that now crowd the parking lot at Machu Picchu. That's not to say it's not still worth a trip but from what I have heard from other travelers it has changed with the influx of world tourism. Doubtless that’s a shame for those of us who don’t subscribe to group tours but with borders opening up all over the world it’s also unavoidable. Which is why we decided on Ecuador for our return southbound.

 

I love traveling in South America. The land is lush and rugged, the Andes so enormous they create their own weather, and the wildlife is outstanding and abundant. Ecuador alone has over 120 recorded species of hummingbirds. The tropical cloud forest, damp and balmy, is one of the world's most biodiverse regions and home to a plethora of bromeliads, orchids, pitcher plants and countless species of ferns and mosses. Above the cloud forest lies the high-altitude scrublands, the paramo, which is home yet another stunning array of flora and fauna, including many species of herbaceous plants and hardy grasses. This is also home to the iconic llama and its wild relative, the vicuna.

Quito from La Catedral

Ecuador does not have the host of ancient ruins found in Peru despite having been briefly conquered by the Incas before the Spanish conquest, but it does have a wealth of natural beauty and comparatively very few visitors. Selfishly, I hope that never changes.

Catedral Metropolitana de Quito (1565), featuring gargoyles in the shape of Ecuador's wildlife

Our journey started in the second-highest capital in the world (La Paz wins that one). Quito sits amid the dramatic peaks of the Cordillera de los Andes, a real gem with a historic center that is both charming and lively. We arrived at midnight only to find out that the hostel we had booked in Mariscal Sucre was full after the arrival of a horde of unexpected nuns and another one was quickly found across the street. The ceiling leaked and intermittently deposited small amounts of popcorn plaster onto the bed but we were tired enough to sleep through it. The following day we got our assigned room at Hostal Huauki, a bit of a party lodge - so we might actually have been better of spending another night in the crumbling ruin amid the cockroaches and asbestos dust. 

After breakfast, we spent the morning wandering around Parque el Ejido. It's a nice big park, lots of tropical flowers and plenty of market stalls with trinkets and foods. We had some humitas (slightly sweet tamale) with coffee, then walked to Parque de Alamada that had a number of statues of local heroes. From there we went up into the tower of the Basilica de Voto National, which has a great view of the city and is adorned with gargoyles but not the usual kind; these were in the shape of Ecuadorian animals. We also walked up the very steep and picturesque Avenida Caldas and eventually found the Centro del Merced where we had lunch. The food was excellent. Quito is known for really good soups which contain a plethora of ingredients including rice, plantain, corn (choclo), meat, potatoes, and a good amount of spice. We visited Santa de Domingo in the afternoon and hung out in the large plaza and just watched people going about their business. It's a very walkable city, especially the old town.

Second day was spent at Jardin Botanica in Parque de Carolina photographing flowers and then eating bollas de platano, fried banana dough balls sprinkled with raw sugar. Delicious! It's a very good botanic garden with a separate greenhouse full of orchids of which Ecuador has some 4,200 species, 1,300 of which are endemic. Lunch was ceviche at Mandolo Cerviceria and it was outstanding! Interestingly, ceviche in Ecuador is usually served with a bowl of popcorn, which turned out to be an excellent good combination.

In the evening we went to a small carnival at Grande Plaza. Lots of kids were playing with spray foam and got us in the end and laughed hysterically. People here are incredibly friendly, helpful and very easy with a smile. We finished off the evening a café where we a local specialty: hot, thick chocolate served with a chunk of fresh cheese. Apparently it's well known that "chocolate without cheese is like love without kisses." News to me but the chocolate was spicy, bitter and incredibly tasty.

We left for Tena early the next day on the local bus for a six hour ride. At 518 meters elevation, Tena sits far below Quito (2,850) in the Oriente region and the ride took us through pampas and cloud forest before finally plunging to a pleasantly balmy jungle littered with waterfalls and stunning vegetation. We took a taxi to Hostal Yutzos and were given a room overlooking Rio Pano for a mere $25 including hot water and breakfast. Nice! We had a quick pizza at Bella Selva, then took a narrow canoe with a boatman across to the island where Rio Tena and Rio Pana meet. It's an animal sanctuary with rather small cages but funds are tight in most places here and it was nice to see the Capuchin monkeys. One of the rangers offered to show us around and he was knowledgeable and did not even ask for payment though we gave him a nice tip. There was a good birding tower that reached all the way to the tree tops.

We hooked up with the Amarongachi agency in Tena and booked a 3 night trip to a little eco-lodge called Shangrila Cabins 30 km outside of town. There were only 3 other couples and we each got a little cabin overhanging the jungle and the snaking Rio Tena, absolutely gorgeous. The veranda was draped with enormous cob webs with some beautiful huge spiders that fortunately stayed on the veranda. I had an interesting encounter in the middle of the night with a giant tarantula in the bathroom during which we stared at each other for a while and each decided we'd both stay where we were and not bother one another. This is not a place for arachnophobes. I've never seen so many spiders in my life!

Room with a view

One of the many arachnid visitors outside our room

Our guide shows us how to drink chicha

Local delicacy - grub cooked on an open fire

For the next three day we traversed the jungle with our Kichwa guide, rafted down the river and had some wonderful food, most of which was sources from the jungle. We also visited a little village, Santa Monica, where they grew cacao and where the guide offered us a very unique treat (of sorts): grub grilled in banana leaf. A little creepy, but it tasted like butter and was actually really good. Would have gone well with the cold beers that always awaited us when we got back from hiking. We were also offered chichi, a local fermented corn drink that was not as good as the grub. The afternoon was spent floating down the river in inner tubes, with warnings not to pee in the water because there were candiru (little fish that allegedly swim up the urine stream and into the urethra). So many fun things live in the jungle...

Having successfully tackled waterfall-climbing!

The following day one of the Kichwa guides took us to a beautiful waterfall where we swam in the lagoon that spilled into the Napo river. It was a beautiful spot and we did some more hiking, saw snakes and army ants and some interesting spiny trees. On the way back we bought cacique, a local and pungent rum that was very good with cola and our dinner of river fish and sweet potatoes.

View from our room

The morning was beautiful, fog clouding the forests below our cabin like a thick blanket. The sounds of howler monkeys and a myriad of birds drifted upwards. It was simply magical. 

We went to Jumandy Cave which has 25 types of bats, some we saw hanging from the ceiling. We climbed through a waterfall and through some very narrow tunnels into a hall full of stalactites and stalagmites, which ended in a mud pool. Jumandy, a tribal leader, had hid in the cave with his people for three years while the Conquistadors looked for him. When he eventually emerged, he was taken and dragged to Quito where he was publicly executed.

Kate from California, me and Mike

We left the jungle the following day and had a whole day of travel from Sangrila in a truck and then a couple of chicken buses until we finally arrived in Latacunga around 10 pm and checked into Hostal Tiana. Breakfast was included - good croissants and café con leche. There was a nice market in town since it was Sunday and Cotopaxi, one of Ecuador's largest volcanoes, loomed not too far away. 

Sunday Market, Latacunga

Imposing Cotopaxi

In the afternoon we took a bus towards Quilotoa and eventually arrived in tiny little Chugchilan (population about 100) after a harrowing two hours on a mudslide-victim of a dirt road that was barely wide enough for the bus, let alone oncoming traffic. It's cloud forest up there and rains a lot. And it's absolutely gorgeous. The elevation at Chugchilan is about 9,000 feet, whereas Quilotoa is around 11,000, but by then we were well acclimatized.

Town party along the way to Quilotoa

Great view along one of the world's narrowest roads

Sheep outside Chugchilan

The bus driver showed us where the town's only hostel was, Mama Hilda's, and we were welcomed graciously by its very kind owner. Not many people outside of Quito speak English, except for a few guides but with a little Spanish we had no problem getting a room for about $20. It was a very pretty place with a nice common room and a huge fireplace - it gets cold at night - and a garden with lots of flowers. The owner gave us a rough drawn map with hiking trails so we did a gorgeous ridge hike in the afternoon where we saw several hummingbirds and some huge flowering puyas, one of Ecuador's most iconic plants.

The next day we and a few other people from the hostel rented horses and rode up through the cloud forest, abundant with tiny native orchids and huge bromeliads. 

The guide took us to a small co-op cheese factory started by a Swiss guy. We got a good tour of the process and ended up buying a nice chunk of mozzarella.

Mozzarella

Chugchilan has a little market that sells fruit, veg and live chickens. There were no food stalls so we had lunch at the only eatery. Not surprisingly, they had excellent fried chicken. Though it's bit of a journey to get to this pleasant little village, it's well worth the trip. Be prepared for cold nights though - we slept under 3 incredibly itchy llama wool blankets and that was barely enough!

The following day we headed back and got a hostel in Quilotoa, then took a wonderful hike 1200 feet down into the Quilotoa Crater in the afternoon. There was an amazing array of hummingbirds and plants, and you can rent kayaks to sail the lake on the bottom. It's worth spending some time in the town itself since there are a number of small art galleries, aka people selling their paintings and handicrafts from their homes, and some good food stalls. During the day, it was nice and warm but at night, it dropped to below freezing.

My happy place

Our Quilatoa hostel

The next morning we were off on the back of a truck with a bunch of school kids, since the promised public bus never arrived, to Zumbahua, then on a bus to Quevado, then a bus to Porto Viejo out towards the coast, then yet another bus to Jipijapa, then on the final bus to Puerto Lopez which was hauntingly familiar for anyone who saw that Harry Potter movie with the night bus - sparkling lights, Rasta rap music and all. Although honestly, at that point, we were too tired to care. We'd been on the road for well over 14 hours, descending ten thousand feet over varying degrees of muddy, bumpy roads. We did finally arrive and got a true Thai-style tuk-tuk to a wonderful little hostel at the end of a quiet strip of beach lit by colorful lanterns. Hosteria Mandala was a great place to stay, with a very good restaurant, private huts quirkily named after sea creatures - we stayed in Pulpo - and surrounded by lovely gardens. We got there just minutes before the kitchen closed. Cold beers and shrimp coconut stew joy!

Puerto Lopez fishermen

Besides spending days lounging on the beach watching the fishing boats haul in their daily loads, Puerto Lopez is the jumping off point to take a one hour boat ride to Isla de la Plata (think the Galapagos without the reptiles but a lot cheaper). We took a trip the next day with a naturalist guide and a few other people and spent several hours wandering the trails of the small, hot island in extremely close proximity to hundreds of Peruvian blue-footed and masked boobies. The island also is home to colonies of frigate birds.

Blue-footed booby

Nazca boobys

Brown pelican

Medusa jellyfish

Schools of dolphins and hordes of medusa jellyfish roam the surrounding sea. It was beautiful and made for a great day trip. Go if you can't afford the Galapagos and even if you can, go anyway. It's a great way to support the marine research being done out there and because of the limited tourism - most people go to the Galapagos - they desperately need the money.

The following day we went to Los Frailes beach, which our guide had recommended yesterday. It was almost entirely empty of people - the reason for that, we soon discovered, was hordes of almost invisible little wicked jellyfish. Both stung, we scampered out of the invitingly turquoise water and retired to the beach. Having spent years in Australia (home of the dreaded bluebottle), I have to certain panicked aversion when it comes to jellies but these were not bad, as such things go. We soothed our bruised egos with encocado, a delicious soup made with peanuts, plantains and fish back at the hostel.

The following day we were off to the airport in Portoviejo on a short flight back to Quito. Despite it being a fine looking little airbus, the flight attendant crossed herself ominously before reading us the safe instructions... I guess you never can be too safe?

Back at Hostal Huauki, because we're gluttons for punishment in the form of very loud dance music, we got settled in and did a bit of shopping at an indoor market and the booths in Parque el Ejido. You can't go wrong with finger puppets. Dinner was spent at awesome little Paella de Valenciana. 

In the morning, we were picked up by Juan from the Santa Lucia Cloud Forest Ecolodge where we would staying for the next three days. It's located a couple of hours north of Quito by regular car, then we were loaded into a 4-wheel drive for a couple of hours and dropped off at a trailhead leading steeply up into the cloud forest. There, our guide Maurito waited with a donkey. He smiled and nodded at our hiking shoes and then handed us 2 pairs of rubbed boots instead. "No good," he said, pointing at the waterproof hikers. We donned the boots while Maurito loaded our backpacks onto the donkey and then we were off. 

Our burro

The ecolodge sits at the top of hill overlooking the beautiful Santa Lucia Bosque Nobla and is made up of the lodge itself, aka the common room and kitchen, and a bunch of small primitive huts. They grow most of their own fruits and vegetable, making good us of international volunteers. The rest of the income comes from donations and visitors like us. Our hut overlooked the whole valley and came with all meals for the bargain price of $60 a night. It was teeming with hummingbirds. Perfect.

Everyone ate lunch together in the main house - a mash of plantains, peanuts, spices and green beans - and it was fun to talk to the volunteers. There was electricity for exactly one hour a day, right before dinner, so everyone clustered around the outlets that looked like something out of the Griswold's Christmas Vacation. Fortunately, we were provided with plenty of candles and had our headlights. 

After sunset, the insects turned up the volume as the lights died out, leaving the forest around us a cacophony of noise - only to be replaced with the chirps and screeches of myriads of birds as the sun rose again. With all that life around, I spent the day photographing and wandering around the forest with Maurice and my new favorite footwear. 
 

From Santa Lucia's miniature native species orchid collection

That evening, sitting around the dinner table with Maurice drinking cheap beer, he persuaded us to get up at 3 am for a "short  hike" to see the cortinga (aka cock-of-the-rock) utter his mating call. It seemed like a great idea at the time. We are both early risers. What Maurice failed to mention was the two hour hike in deep mud to get to a small perch on the edge of a valley crowded with bugs and thick vegetation, pre-coffee. It did end up being an entirely amazing experience, of course. Such things usually are. The birds were beautiful, their croaking calls resounding through the jungle like a prehistoric noisemaker. The walk back was almost all uphill but fortunately pancakes and coffee awaited us. The kitchen staff was fabulous!

The rather elusive and hard to photograph Cock-of-the-Rock

 

On the last day we saw several toucanets. It was truly an amazing place. By the time we left, the volunteers had started working on a new trail so I guess we have to come back and see that.

View from our room

Back in Quito, after miles of snaking roads, we settled back into Huauki and spent our final day wandering around looking at art, eating chocolate from Choco & Choco, and having dinner at Uncle Ho's, And yes, they do have tee shirts there that say "I love Hos," in case you were wondering.

It was amazing trip that made me fall in love with Ecuador over and over again. I would go back any day.