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November 28, 2004

South From Quito

Quito, Ecuador

Sunday, November 28, 2004:

Sleep, blissful sleep. 10 hours worth, in a comfortable bed, without once being interrupted by crying children or ambitious roosters at 3 AM.

Laura and I arrived back in Quito on Saturday. Leaving the Galapagos had been somewhat traumatic (to everything but our finances), but our accomodations at the Secret Garden allowed us to catch up on needed rest.

We head out to run errands in Quito´s New Town. The plan is to catch an afternoon bus to the town of Baños, spend a day or two riding horses (something I have never done before) and lolling around in the thermal hot springs, and then move on to the city of Cuenca and the valley of Vilcabamba. After that, Peru.

As we are about to leave the hostal, we run into Stephanie, a friendly, outgoing Dutch girl I had met during my two and a half weeks in Quito. It turns out that she is planning to go to Baños that day as well. Can she come with us? Of course. We make plans to meet her at the hostal at 2 PM. We then turn up an hour late when Laura is unable to retrieve a few items of luggage she had left at her previous hostal (the one she had stayed in before going to the Galapagos), because the only person with access to the storage room, the manager, is not back until after 2. While waiting for the manager at the hostal, we did hear one bit of interesting news: The roads to Baños are closed. Why? Strikes. I don´t quite understand how strikes can close a road down but the explanation we are given by staff at the hostal is that people are striking in the roads. I reluctantly accept this as a valid answer, though I can´t help but recall that I have yet to see a vehicle in Ecuador brake for a pedestrian in the street. Why start now? Why not send these pesky strikers a message? Drive on! (Perhaps I have a future career in labor law when I return back home. Who knows.)

The question now is what we do about the strike situation. It might last a day, it might last a lot longer. We decide to head to the bus station and figure out an alternative destination, perhaps a town or city that is half-way to Baños or at least a bit further south. In Quito´s hectic Terminal Terrestra, we discover that a bus to the village of Teña is leaving in several minutes. Teña is to the south and east of Quito, at the juncture where the Andes descend into the Amazon Basin. Its a place to take excursions into the jungle. What is more, it is considered a world-class white water rafting destination. We´re sold and we board the bus.

B is for Bus.

B is for Bumpy.

B is for Boring.

The roads taking us down from Quito´s 2800 meters to Teña 600 meters are in horrible shape (we later discover that this is an oddity, because the area around Teña is one of the richest in Ecuador due to oil drilling in certain locations there). We bounce along for a full 6 hours. The bus is at full capacity and at certain stops groups of 10 to 20 people pile on and stand in the aisle. Not everybody is riding long-distance; many people are farmers hopping a 10 minute ride into the next village. I have an aisle seat and am not pleased with one man standing next to me who continuously tries to rest his buttocks on my outside arm-rest. He tries successfully, as it turns out, because I am not going to push the offending (in several ways) anatomy away with my arm or hands.

We get into Teña at about 9 PM. We check into a German-run hostal called Limon Cocha and obtain a 3-person room with TV and private bathroom for a total of $12 per night. Teña is hot and humid. It feels like... jungle.

Tri-lingual Laura talks to the German owner (very pleasant, very accomodating, doesn´t speak English) and finds out that he can arrange a river rafting trip for us starting the next morning if we want. We do. We then catch a nice, greasy dinner in town before getting some sleep.

Posted by Joshua on November 28, 2004 11:48 PM
Category: Ecuador
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