For me the best part of our jungle trip was the feeling of having visited another world entirely, a world with no roads, inhabited by wild animals and people who haven't fully entered this century. It's only been relatively recently that motorized canoes have entered that part of the Rio Cuyabeno so the people who live further east along the river were very isolated. Very few have running water. Many have electricity but no radio, TV, or newspapers. I find this lack of access to news very interesting given that voting is mandatory in Ecuador.
The jungle was relatively physically comfortable. It wasn't especially hot and the river had tannins that prevented mosquito larvae from developing so we didn't have to take anti- malarial pills or fend off too many flying insects. In fact, the only people who got sick in our group, got sick from the anti-malarial pills they were taking. Our lodge did provide indoor plumbing but we did not have hot water. Jungle dirt is dirty, even if you've gone swimming with the piranhas. The hot shower that I took in Quito was one of my favorite showers ever.
In Quito we stayed at a hotel that some Canadian friends of ours from Cuenca had recommended as they gave a discount for kids. In Ecuador most places charge by the person, rather than by the room. You can get great bargains as a single person but when you multiply everything by four the numbers get bigger. Our friends from Canada, Garth and Tia and their two daughters, spent their their last day in Quito with us before they headed back to Canada after a seven month stay in Cuenca. I have to say that we feel somewhat bereft without them as they were the best friends that we had made and now they're gone.
The more time I spend in Quito the more I like it. It's a very long city that stretches out in a high Andean valley but the two main areas that tourists/travellers go are the Old Town and the Mariscal. The Mariscal is where you go if you need to get laundry done or buy an English language book or go out late at night. It has good cheap food, tons of tourists and to my mind, very little else. Old Town, on the other hand, is a thriving city with beautiful colonial buildings, narrow streets, fruit markets, outdoor cafes It would exist without the tourists whereas the Mariscal exists for the tourists. Most tourists stay in the Mariscal and take a taxi to Old Town. We were lucky in that our hotel was in the Old Town so we could walk around Old Town at our leisure. Mark is a hard core traveller so when we needed to take our laundry into the Mariscal we consulted a map and figured out what bus to take. (If only Cuenca had a transit map! We're thinking of taking every bus just to take note of the different routes.) The buses are a little intense in Quito. They are often crowded and thievery is common so you have to be totally aware of your surroundings. Unlike some acquaintances of ours, we survived unscathed.
One of our jaunts took us to the Basilica. It's a beautiful church whose spires you can climb. It's the kind of thing that would never be permitted in the United States because of liability concerns. Once you get to the top there are amazing views of the city. The picture above shows the city in the background and me feeling some trepidation.
Another of our jaunts nearly took Mark into the sewer. Mark stepped backwards to get a better look at a building and his leg went into the hole up to his crotch. Who nows how far he would have gone if his crotch hadn't been there to stop him. I turned around to look at him and saw him basically lying in the street, one leg gone. After he got out and we figured out that he hadn't been seriously injured I couldn't stop laughing. The sewer gunk only went up as far as his ankle and we weren't far from the hotel so he could get cleaned up.
After saying our good-byes to Garth and Tia and getting our laundry done, we headed north to Otavalo. Otavalo is home to one of the most famous indigenous markets in the world. As a people Otavaleños have figured out how to maintain their own identity and culture while using the tourist dollar to their advantage. There is still poverty in Otavalo but the feeling of the city overall is prosperous. There are nice wide sidewalks, traffic signals at every intersection, and very little garbage. They seem to have used the tourist money that comes in to develop infrastructure.
Mark and I woke early every morning we were in Otavalo and went searching for coffee. (I've learned to love a good cup of coffee.) The town was completely quiet until around seven. On Saturday, market day, we got up again for our early morning stroll to find the town transformed. It was actually bustling at six in the morning. People come from all over Ecuador to sell their wares and the streets were already full of vendors setting up shop. People come from the surrounding hills dressed in their finest clothing to buy, sell, see and be seen. Much of what is sold goes to the busloads of tourists who come in from Quito for the day (alpaca sweaters, hats, woven blouses, etc) but there are many streets full of the daily necessities of life including underwear, socks, cutlery. There's a whole section across the highway that is for people buying and selling live animals. Kittens, rabbits, cuys, chickens, pigs, an occassional cow filled the parking lot. We were travelling with backpacks and the stop in Otavalo was relatively early in our summer travels so we didn't purchase much even though some of those cuy sure were cute.
The area around Otavalo is known for some beautiful walks and hikes. We took a particularly memorable hike around Lago Cuicocha (so named because one of the little islands in the middle looks like a cuy). It is a sparkling blue lake formed about three thousand years ago when a volcano collapsed. Depite the high altitude (about 11,000 feet) this hike reminded us very much of some of our favorite hikes in Marin. I guess it's a sign that although we have been having some great adventures, in some fundamental ways we've left our hearts in San Francisco.
Sheilah
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