Future plans...

We're leaving Cuenca tomorrow, southwards once more to Loja. We're rapidly approaching the Peruvian border, and hopefully we'll cross on Wednesday. Before we do, we'll explore Loja (not much there, it seems), and visit Vilcabamba. This village gained international notoriety a couple of decades ago when scientists proclaimed that its inhabitants were some of the longest lived people on Earth. Actually, it's a bit of a myth, but people do seem to live for longer than average there, so maybe a bit of that might rub off on us!

There are various ways of crossing the Peruvian border, and we haven't yet decided which is best. The two options are (a) easy: get an international bus from Loja to Piura or (b) hard: go through a tortuous series of stops down to Zumba towards Cachapoyas. At the moment (a) is winning!

The Sun Temple at Ingapirca

The Inca's Sun Temple appeals to me in all sorts of geeky ways (much like riding on the roof of a train, come to think of it!).

It is an oval base, exactly three times as long as it is wide, with a square building atop. The base lies on a precise east-west access, and the square building has two doors, one looking east and the other looking west. (Actually, even the pre-Inca Cañar ruins lie on the same axis). Around the base are remains of smaller buildings, apparently where the priests and virgins lived when they weren't performing rituals.

Unforunately, the Sun Temple must have been broken the day we visited, because there wasn't a lot of sun in evidence. :(

The Devil's Nose

... is the odd name of Ecuador's most famous section of railway. Just a few decades ago, the country had a trans-Andean railway that stretched from lowlands of the south up to Quito in the north and beyond. Years of neglect and El Niño storms have put paid to most of it, however, and only short lengths remain. Indeed, the only trains still running are largely for tourists, and priced accordingly.

The Nariz del Diablo was internationally famous when it was constructed - the engineers constructing the line from south to north ran into a problem just before the town of Alausí: a huge mountain in the way! Their solution was to construct a series of switchbacks up the sheer cliff face, and they still survive today.

Gringos (and a couple of Ecuadorian tourists too) pay $11 for a return ticket. The train leaves Riobamba at 0700, heads south and arrives for the first time in Alausí at about 1130, continues southwards down the Devil's Nose switchbacks. When it reaches the bottom, after about an hour, the train turns round, goes back up and terminates in Alausi.

So we bought our tickets the day before, and turned up at 0645 on Friday morning (the train only runs three days a week). An Intercity 225 it is not: the rolling stock is probably twice as old as us, at least, and the engine is a noisy old diesel thing that trundles along belching out fumes.

And it was rather lucky that it did only trundle: we were sitting on the roof! With scant regard for personal safety, most of the passengers elect to sit up on the roof of the cars, rather than inside them. It's all a bit precarious - there's not really anything to hold on to, just a low bar welded to the roof to rest your feet against; you sit in the middle facing outwards. If you're brave you can stand up, but you have to keep an eye out to duck the electricity wires that the train occassionally runs under.

Katherine wasn't sure - given her recent record of falling off things :( - but in the end I convinced her, and she spent the rest of the journey holding on to me! The stretch from Riobamba to Alausí is uneventful, but the scenery - all volcanoes and picturesque Andean hamlets - is spectacular. In the style of the Railway Children, Ecuadorean kids wave at the passing train. They seem to expect people to lob sweets at them - some do, but Katherine and I don't think that that's really a great idea (apparently it encourages begging) so we ate all ours ourselves :).

The train winds its way through valleys and over bridges, passengers clinging on all the way, passing indigenous farmsteads with tiny plots of land, until it reaches Alausí. The railway line runs right through the streets of the town, stops for a break at the station, and then lurches away once more to traverse the Devil's Nose. (The track is in pretty rotten condition - at one point we had to stop for engineers to repair a bit of it).

The switchbacks were great fun. The train moves forward into the first one, engineers leap out and change the points, and then reverses downhill onto the new track. The process is then repeated in reverse. Eventually the train reaches the bottom, facing forwards, where it stops, and after a bit of shunting and clanking the engine reattaches itself onto the other end of the carriages and sets off back up the same way it came.

We were on the 'wrong' side on the way down - facing the mountain side rather than the drop - so we switched sides for the way back up. I leant over precariously to take some exciting photos, but Katherine kept shouting at me so I had to sit still. We arrived back in Alausí about two hours later, where we disembarked (or rather, climbed down :).

I know it sounds daft, catching a train that goes nowhere, then turns round and comes back, but Alausí is a convenient place to stop on our route southwards. We didn't stay long, but caught a bus from there to Cuenca. After a four hour journey we arrived in Cuenca at about six o'clock, walked into town and got ourselves a room at the well-recommended (and cheap :) Hotel Pichincha.

Well, I've never sat on the roof of a train before (wait a minute - I've thought of a way of solving Railtrack's - or whatever it's called now - woes...), much less been onboard as it traverses switchbacks up and down a mountain. It's totally touristy, of course, but a great laugh nevertheless.

I took lots of crazy photos - too many, as usual - and I'll try and get them on-line when I can.

Now, here's Katherine to tell you all about Cuenca and Ingapirca.

"A fruit experiment"

I love that!

Going to have a cheese experiment next...

Speaking of which, I took a picture of some queso de hoja for you to marvel at.

The baños in Baños

Baños is famous for its baños - baths -, thermal-powered hot springs. The setting is stunning, surrounded by near-vertical cliffs on two sides with a waterfall spilling down next door. The baths themselves are, sadly, pretty ugly, enclosed in a monstruous concrete edifice, painted garish yellow and blue. There are three pools, a super-hot one (practically boiling!, just about tolerable), a mixed one (somewhat cooler, more like a bath) and an icy cold one (unspeakably horrible, nearly killed me!). Pay your dollar and you can spend as long as you want in all three.

They're said to have curative powers (of course), and Katherine did seem a bit more glowing when we emerged, so maybe they do have some effect!

The stitches are out of Katherine's cut in her chin, she's got shiny new glasses, teeth are all fixed, and she's looking less scaborous every day, so at some point soon we're going to moving on.

The next stop on the Gringo Trail running southwards in Riobamba. Ecuador used to have a giant rail network, an engineering marvel apparently, but El Niño floods put paid to that, and only tiny sections remain operational. Most now serve tourists, not locals. One such section is the Devil's Nose, a series of switchbacks that let the train descend a very steep gradient. The train leaves three times a week from Riobamba, goes a couple of hours south, down the hill, then turns round and comes back. You can sit on the roof (jury's still out as to whether or not Katherine will be allowed), and it is said to be much fun. From there we'll bus to Cuenca, Ecuador's third city, and its intellectual centre... So that's the plan - when we set off is another matter, but we'll let you know when we get there!

Quito - Latacunga / Saquisilí - Baños

We spent our last day in Quito exploring the bits of Old Town that we'd missed (too busy gawking at Kofi Annan). In the afternoon we went to the New Town, passing some sort of student demonstration on the way, but we couldn't make out what they were complaining about (top-up fees? ;).

I selfishly went to the cinema to watch Matrix Revolutions (in English, with Spanish subtitles) - which I enjoyed far more than the previous effort, but not as much as the original -, while Katherine sat outside reading Wuthering Heights. Poor girl!

The next day (Wednesday) we caught the bus from Quito to Latacunga, a small town a couple of hours south. There's nothing particularly exciting about Latacunga, although it has a nice central square - we were really there to visit the indigenous market that takes place in the tiny town of Saquisilí (try pronouncing that!) nearby early on Thursday morning.

And visit we did. The Saquisilí market is, according to Ecuadorean economists, the most important one of its kind in the country, and you can tell why. Literally every street and square of the small town is filled with people - and since it's intended for Ecuadoreans rather than gringos it's somewhat more authentic: less arts-and-crafts and more food, clothing and raw materials. We didn't make any big purchases - just looking around was interesting enough -, but I invested in a coco frío (at least, that's what the Venezuelans call them; an unripe coconut with the top lopped off, into which you stick and straw and drink); some freshly fried fish (better than Bimbis); and some deep-fried bananas in batter. Just writing about it makes me feel hungry!

There's not much else in the area. Latacunga is a nice enough place, and the horizon around it is dotted with (active!) volcanoes, but most days were pretty cloudy, so we didn't get to see much.

Back in Latacunga, Katherine bought herself a new watch. She lost her old one, and we had been on the look-out for some time. (We had almost bought one in Bogotá duty-free, but they didn't take Visa, bah!). In the end she decided on an 'ultra-stylish' little black one. Price: $3.20.

Jealous of Katherine's new watch, I bought myself a "Brick-Game", a plastic little battery-powered thing that blurts out tinny tunes and has eighteen versions of Tetris. Katherine in particular is no doubt delighted that I spend every waking hour lining up falling bricks etc. Price: $1.50.

On the way back to our hotel in Latacunga we couldn't resist buying some queso de hoja from the bakery next door. It's a stringy kind of white cheese (hence queso), and - for whatever reason - comes wrapped up in a big green leaf (hence de hoja). It's also very nice, on a par with Venezuelan queso de mano (which, unsurprisingly, does not come wrapped up in a hand... :)

And so we moved on to Baños, which will probably now be synonymous with Katherine jumping off her bike ... but shouldn't be, because it's been a very nice place to spend the last ten days in!

Tom's Top Five Favourite Places in Venezuela

1. Mérida: going up the Teleférico to Pico Espejo
   
2. Catatumbo: watching the lightning storm from the safety of our lake hut
   
3. Barinas: white-water rafting, grade 4 rapids!
   
4. Isla Margarita: evening swim in the Caribbean
   
5. Caracas: watching Cosita Rica, and actually understanding it :P

Tom's Top Ten Favourite Places in USA / Canada

1. Prince Edward Island: driving, eating and sleeping (by the ocean) in our Chrysler PT Cruiser
   
2. Seattle: the Mariners game - if only they hadn't lost!
   
3. New York: Late Night with Conan O'Brien
   
4. Monument Valley: going off-road in our old blue Hyundai Accent (complete with flat tyre and dodgy battery :)
   
5. Washington DC: the Capitol Building (visiting the Senate and the House of Representatives)
   
6. Chicago: downtown - riding the L, expensive tea, Apple Store, Wrigley Field
   
7. Las Vegas: casinos on the Strip
   
8. Niagara Falls: the Niagara Falls
   
9. Los Angeles: 'Roller-blading' on Venice Beach
   
10. San Francisco: the colony of friendly sea lions on the pier

Needless to say...

Katherine is now forbidden from ever going near a bike again.

So we've been recuperating these last few days, with the help of Ecuadorian TV and Harry Potter audio books (not the Stephen Fry ones, but rather the 'American' edition - hence incongruous transliterations like 'boogers' and 'soccer') and lots of chocolate, yoghurt and ice cream.

New glasses are ready tomorrow, stitches come out on Sunday, and I guess a couple of days after that we'll be moving on, providing everything is OK by then.

Bad news...

Just because we don't post anything here for a while doesn't necessarily mean something unpleasant has happened.

Although in this case it has :-(. Details above...

Kofi Annan

While we were in Otavalo we saw on the news that Kofi Annan was visiting Ecuador, and planning to visit the Galapagos Islands. Fair enough - we thought nothing more of it.

Today we planned to spend wandering the Old and New Towns of Quito. We noticed straight away that there seemed to be a rather heavier-than-usual police presence in the streets, and our suspicions were soon confirmed when we saw a convoy of expensive cars zoom past us at high speed.

We chased after them (in a manner of speaking), and ended up waiting outside one of Quito's many historical museums. After about half an hour there was a bit of a commotion and suddenly out popped Kofi Annan himself, flanked by lots of scary-looking armed guards. Security clearly wasn't that tight however - we were only about two metres away from him. He and his entourage walked along the street, so we dashed in front of him with the TV crews taking photos and gawping. He ended up on Plaza de la Independencia, and went into the Palacio del Gobierno. We noticed later that the square was surrounded by riot police, and there were at least six snipers positioned on the buildings around it! Scary!

Well, that was pretty cool. So far in South America we have seen one head of state (Chavez) and now the Secretary General of the United Nations. Who will we spot next? ;-)

Urban Legend

Or maybe not...

Otavalo - Quito

Hmph. Katherine gets an intricate hand-woven indigenous-American bag and traditional top, and I get a bag of beans and a cup of rice. Great. :-).

Actually, I was this close to buying a panama hat ($7), but lost my confidence at the last minute. We're passing through a couple more market towns as we head south, so I may reconsider at a later date...

We arrived back in Quito and checked into a hotel (this one does have hot water, but costs a couple of dollars more). Then we took a trip into town and bought an Ecuador guide book - up to now we've been making do with a general "South American" one.

There's supposed to be a lunar eclipse tonight, which you can see from Ecuador (and Europe as well, I think), but it's pretty cloudy and miserable at the moment, so there might not be much to look at!

We've got various things left to do around Quito. We'll probably explore the Old Town tomorrow - a UNESCO site of something or other -, and take a trip north to the Equator the day after. The so-called "Mitad del Mundo" is just over 20km north of Quito. It occurred to me that I hadn't crossed the Equator before a couple of days ago - there's a first time for everything! I'm tempted to take a big pot of water to drain out on both sides of the line...

Airport Tax

Here's a learning experience for you.

Leaving Venezuela is ludicrously expensive - the cost of airport tax and exit tax was recently increased to $45 per person. Many airlines include the cost in the ticket, but the values we had apparently pre-paid were the old amounts, only about $25.

Now, here's the problem: Caracas' airport has a pathetic selection of ATMs. The Banco de Venezuela ones are still under construction, and the remaining two don't accept Cirrus or Delta cards. You can only pay the exit taxes in cash, so to be safe we brought with us $90 in bolivares just in case we had to pay all of it.

Of course, it turned out that we didn't have to pay anything - presumably Avianca absorbs the price rises - so we were left with lots of bolivares.

As any fule kno, the bolivar is about to be devalued (or whatever the technical term is) - the official exchange rate is 1600 to the USD, but next year that will change to over 2000. As a result, no one - absolutely no one - wants to touch bolivares, and so they're impossible to change. No one in Venezuela will take them, nor in Ecuador. Countries with weak currencies might, but we didn't want to risk that.

So for the first time in our lives we went on a duty-free splurge at the airport, stocking up on everything you can imagine: chocolate, camera film, Venezuela t-shirts, snack food etc. We were kind of annoyed we had to 'waste' the money, in a sense, but we ended up with plenty of useful (and cool) stuff :-).

Moral of the story: try to avoid having lots of weak currency when you leave a country.

Happily, Ecuador's currency, the sucre, was so useless that they switched to the US dollar in 2000. All the notes are identical to US ones - the coins are the same shape and size but with Ecuadorian stuff on them. And, of course, it's a strong currency, so trivial to change.

Now, I'm off to eat some duty-free Venezuelan chocolate. Katherine can write about the Otavalo market...

Crossing the Equator...

Everything worked out well with the flights, and I'm writing to you from Quito, the capital of Ecuador. We arrived here on Thursday evening, having changed planes in Bogota, Colombia, and took a bus to the Old Town. Our hotel was basic - very basic - but only cost $5.

We woke up early the next day - unable to shower because the water was freezing! - and caught a bus northwards (crossing the Equator, for the second time, incidentally) up to Otavalo. The place is famous for its market, but I'll let Katherine tell you all about that.

Ecuador

Things We Won't Miss About Venezuela

• Inadequate plumbing - having to put used toilet paper in a bin next to the toilet is horrendous
  
• Lumpy pillows
  
• Inept street vendors - why must we haggle over prices for everything?
  
• Shady street money-changers - we don't have any dollars, and we wouldn't change them with you even if we did!
  
• President Chávez's addresses to the nation - simultaneously broadcast on all TV channels: all well and good, but not when we miss the first innings of the fourth World Series game because of it...
  
• Ferry 'schedules' - yeah, right
  
• McDonald's (just for Tom, this one!) - why is it so expensive (more so than USA) here?
  
• People trying to short-change us - just because we're tourists, doesn't mean we can't add up
  
• Ubiquitous Bólivar - I'm sure he was a nice chap, but it all happened a long time ago! Get over it (Venezuelans would kill me for writing this)
  
• Cold showers (I don't mind, but Katherine has an aversion to the things) - strange but true: only the better hotels bother with hot water
  
• The sun (Katherine tends to melt when exposed to high temperatures)

Things We'll Miss About Venezuela

• Arepas, empanadas, cachapas, pabellón criollo (for Tom)
  
• Batidos, merengadas (fresh fruit juices and milkshakes - particularly passion fruit, strawberry and pineapple!)
  
• Tang - ghastly stuff made of pure sugar, to which you add water; Katherine and I appear to be addicted (uh oh)
  
• Mérida - top place, very cheap
  
• Isla Margarita, and the Caribbean coast in general
  
• Cosita Rica - like Neighbours, but with more love triangles, identical twins, armed robberies, long-lost brothers, broken marriages and, um, rappers (or is it hip-hop, I'm never sure)
  
• President Chávez's addresses to the nation - awe-inspiring mastery of rhetoric and propaganda
  
• Por puestos - why don't we have these in England?
  
• The climate (as long as it's not too hot...)
  
• The Andes
  
• Luverly Plaza Bolívars
  
• Polar beer
  
• Palm trees

Caracas

I guess we must be getting used to life in Latin America, as we both hated Caracas the first time, but now we agree it's not so bad! Once you get used to the frenetic bustle and the heat it's actually quite a nice place, and everything seems to make more sense. Now we know, for example, that you need to look out for a centro de communicaciones for Internet access, or that an arepa is a meal in itself, or that passion fruit is the nicest type of fruit juice (don't listen to Katherine, pineapple's not all that great ;-), or that Cosita Rica is the best telenovela, and so on and so on.

We've just been running around trying to get ready for Ecuador today. We bought some (expensive!) APS film for Katherine's camera, and we're about to head to the "American Bookshop" to buy an Ecuador guide book (hopefully).

Our flight leaves at 12.45 tomorrow lunch time, but we're going to get there really early to sort out all the stupid departure tax and passport stamp stuff - leaving Venezuela is a costly affair!

So with a bit of luck we'll touch down in Quito, Ecuador, some time tomorrow evening...

Isla Margarita

Isla Margarita is one of the top tourist destinations in Venezuela, and it really shows. Everything's far cleaner and smarter than most of the rest of the country, and there are loads of proper brand-name shops dotted around the streets. For whatever reason, it's a tax-free zone, so in theory everything's cheap, but we didn't end up buying anything!

Actually, getting there was a real pain. We haven't had too much luck with boats / ferries thus far. Naviarca operate the passenger ferry from Cumaná to Isla Margarita - unfortunately it broke down a couple of days ago and wasn't fixed, so we had to take the car ferry instead. Whereas the passenger ferry operates on a schedule (departures at 2pm and 7pm I think), the car ferry is somewhat less exact. Indeed, "any time between 1pm and 5pm" hardly constitutes a schedule at all! We turned up nice and early (being English), and so of course were stuck waiting for four hours until the thing finally left at 4pm. Sounds bad, but we've grown used to this sort of thing by now!

Anyway, we finally arrived in Margarita at about 8pm. We took a por puesto (small bus) from the port to Porlamar, the island's main city, and found a nice, cheap hotel in which to stay.

The next day we took a por puesto out to La Asunción, the island's tiny capital city. It's a pretty place, all Spanish forts, ancient cathedrals and tidy Plaza Bolívars, but very quiet. We stayed a couple of hours, soaking up the Caribbean atmosphere, and then returned to Porlamar.

After a quick lunch we took another bus to Pampatar, a small city on the island's east coast, with another fort. By chance, someone else decided to visit Pampatar that day, namely El Presidente himself, Hugo Chávez. We stood by the side of the road in a throng of Venezuelans with MVR flags and red berets - after an hour a huge fleet of jeeps and luxury cars zoomed past us. I was busy taking pictures with my camera, and therefore didn't see anything (doh!), but Katherine claims she saw someone's hand waving, so that was probably him... Turns out Chávez had been giving a speech inside the fort in the city, and it was all broadcast live on TV. The newspapers on Margarita were full of it the next day, so we bought one and read all about it!

After all that excitement, we cooled off with a drink of chicha (drink made of rice and milk, sounds weird but very nice) and Katherine swam in the sea for a bit. We returned home in the evening and had dinner in a swish Chinese restaurant.

The next day ended up being devoted almost entirely to tasks. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to confirm a flight with Avianca. The number we got from the website wasn't the right one - I rang it and was given a different one. We tried that from a payphone, but for whatever reason you can't make freephone (0800) calls from payphones, even with a phone card. In the end we went into a centro de communicaciones, but of course you can't ring 0800 numbers from them either. After a lot of frustration we found a New York number for Avianca, and made an international call to America to confirm the flight. Weirdly, it's cheaper to phone USA (about Bs129 a minute = 5 cents) than it is to make a national call to another state in Venezuela. Something to do with competition between phone companies I guess.

So, our flight was confirmed eventually. Next job was to get tickets for the ferry back. You can get to Cumaná and Puerto La Cruz from Margarita. Since we were heading towards Caracas, west, we got the fast ferry to P.L.C., departing 10am the next day. We double-checked that we knew where the buses to the port left from (not an easy task, believe me!), and eventually got back to our hotel in time for an early-evening swim in the Caribbean, from Bella Vista beach in Porlamar.

So that was our time in Margarita. It was really nice, and not as expensive as you might have thought, so we could have done with a couple more days there. Maybe next time! We got the ferry the next morning with no problems, and ended up in P.L.C. at about 1pm. After a brief panic (from me...), we found a bus from P.L.C. to Caracas that left at 2pm.

The bus dropped us off in Caracas' La Bandera terminal (by far the more convenient one, as it's near a Metro station) at 8pm. We took the Metro to Sabana Grande - downtown Caracas is not particularly safe or salubrious - and got a room in a good hotel (1 star! the luxury!).