Christmas at Las Cascadas

On Christmas Day, it was back on the bus. We hiked from our hotel to Centro and caught a bus back toward Misahuallí, but we told the driver to let us off at el camino a las cascadas (the trail to the waterfalls). Cascada Las Latas is series of waterfall we'd been told would be worth a one-hour hike to see, and we could swim when we got there.  

                                                                                     

Quick directions send us up the river.

The entrance to the trail was well marked at the highway, but after several yards, we questioned if we were at the right place. It looked like we were walking onto private property as we approached a little shed. However, soon a soft-voiced gentleman appeared who gave us a crudely drawn map and some directions and pointed us in the direction of the falls, upstream along the Río Lata.                               

After that, we hiked. It was a great hike, but not unlike any other hike through a forest alongside a river. Once we got to the falls, we opened our backpack and feasted on fruit, cheese and bread, rested a bit and then had a swim in the cold, cold, cold water in the pool under the falls.

As we were packing up for the hike back, another group of people arrived. They were a woman about my age, her son and the son's friend, all Ecuadorean but well traveled. The woman knew something about ayahuasca. 

Just as we were leaving, the afternoon rain set in. Our hair was already wet from swimming, but the rain also soaked our clothing and shoes. It made for a long trek out. When we finally made it back to the highway, the wait for the bus was not over long, but it seemed like forever. Eventually, a bus headed toward Tena came barreling around a curve and we were able to flag it down. It was nearly empty, but when we started to take seats, the driver forbade us to sit. Our wet clothes condemned us to stand in the aisle for the entire drive back to Tena.

The falls were spectacular, and the swim was refreshing after our long hike.

The typical afternoon rain began just as we were leaving the falls.

The bus driver made us stand the whole trip back to Tena
so our wet clothes would not soak the bus seats.

MORE PHOTOS

Christmas Eve With the Quichua

We hiked across this bridge to board a rowboat
for the first part of our Quichua adventure.

We caught a bus from Puyo to Tena, another small edge-of-the-Amazon city that sits at the junction of two rivers and caters to backpackers and adventure tourists. We arrived late in the afternoon on December 23 and caught a taxi from the bus station to the riverside hotel we had chosen from our tour book. It was simple, clean and walking distance to Centro. It was getting dark as we walked into town to look for food, and it being Sunday, we were lucky to find a Chinese restaurant open for dinner. After we ate, we walked around a bit more to familiarize ourselves with the layout, then returned to our room for the night.

The next day, Christmas Eve, we were able to book a tour of the Quichua village outside the neighboring town of Misahuallí. Our guide left his car at a park in Misahuallí and led us across a rickety bridge to a dock where a rowboat was tied. He rowed us around a few bends of the river, pointing out significant trees and wildlife. 

A visitor from Quito holds the banana leaf wrapper
while a Quichua woman fills it with chicha pulp to ferment.

When we reached the Quichua village, we joined several other small groups for a show of native customs that they put on at least once a day. Inside their meeting hall, a large split-bamboo enclosure with a thatched roof and dirt floor, a Quichua woman demonstrated how they make chicha, their traditional drink, from pulverized (in the old days, masticated) and fermented manioc root. Then a group of girls and women performed a tribal dance.

Afterward, the visitors filtered out of the meeting hall and wandered around the village while waiting for lunch to be ready. One little boy from the village approached us carrying a backpack. He invited us to see what he had inside. Larry gave him a coin, and the boy unzipped his pack to reveal the head of a fairly large snake. That cleared a ten-foot circle around the kid, but he reached inside and began unwinding foot after foot of reptile. Would anyone like to hold him, the little showman wondered. I decided to be brave. I let him feed the snake onto my shoulders while I held my arms straight out. When the snake circled its head around and started back toward my chest, I caught it in both hands while Larry caught a picture. Then it glided back into the boy's backpack, waiting for the next group of tourists.

Wanna see what I have in my pack?

Sure, I'll hold your snake.

When lunch was ready, we each picked up a plate of tilapia steamed in banana leaves, boiled yucca, and salad, and made our way to the common dining room. The food was simple, filling and good, cooked on a mound of earth with a wood fire in the middle.

The Quichua kitchen: All the food was cooked on this earthen stove,
either over the fire or with heat accumulated in the dirt.

Lunch was a whole tilapia steamed in banana leaves,
boiled yucca root and a salad of tomatoes and onions.

The last stop before leaving the village was the equivalent of a museum store. A large hut was filled with tables loaded with crafts made by the villagers: ceramics pots and figurines, jewelry made from horsehair and pierced seeds, handmade fabrics, leather goods and carved masks. We choose necklaces for Johanna and and me, small items that we could easily fit into our backpacks and get home intact.

The best thing in Misahuallí 
was the Capuchin monkeys
begging in the trees.

Then it was on to Misahuallí, where we were accosted by a gang of thieving monkeys, and back to Tena. During the drive, the guide pointed out the crossroads where we would stop the bus to hike up to Las Cascadas, a waterfall and swimming hole that was on our list to see before leaving Tena. This day had gone so well, we figured, Why not?

¿Porque Puyo?

On our last morning in Baños, the rain we'd been so eager for set in for a long soak.  Rather than embark on one last outing, we cleaned the parts of the house that we'd used, brushed Maxwell and put him in the playroom, along with his food, water and favorite toys, locked the doors and climbed in a taxi just past noon.

Our hosts were returning from Puyo that afternoon, so we'd decided to share the cost of the taxi with them. We'd pay for the trip down and they'd take the same taxi back.  The taxi driver would transfer their keys back to them.  Ordinarily we'd have taken the bus, but we liked the idea of the apparent efficiency of this arrangement.  And considering the weather, it felt safer.  We had not asked the cost of the trip in advance, but we figured it was half the distance to Quito, which cost $80 round trip, so we expected this trip would be $40 round trip and our half would be $20.  When we arrived in Puyo, the driver wanted $30.  We gave it to him, but did not give him any tip.  We should have taken the bus.

Ice cream advertisement over a store in Puyo

We saw a lot of Puyo on the drive in, primarily because the driver did not know where our hotel was.  We were not in the nicer part of town – and that's a relative term for Puyo – but we were close to the centro.  Our first impression, however, was decidedly negative.  The sense that we'd made a bad decision about the taxi, together with the dreary weather and the rugged appearance of the town, had us questioning our choice of hotel and our decision to come to Puyo at all.

We'd reserved a room at Hostal Kanoas on the main street in the centro, a few blocks from the central park, from the mercado in another direction, and many restaurants and shops in all directions.  The lobby was empty when we arrived – not even a desk, much less a clerk.  We ventured up some stairs from the lobby and found the reception desk on the second floor, where a pleasant young woman welcomed us and showed us our room.  The room was large, but crowded with a full-size bed and two twin beds arrayed across its length.  The bathroom was small, but clean and it had hot water from a tank, not a "suicide" electric heater attached to the shower head.  In fact, it had no shower head, just a pipe extending from the wall, but at least it had faucet handles for both hot and cold water.  The room was $10 per person, or $12  with breakfast

After resting a bit, we ventured out to explore the town.  A little rest and a clearing sky brought a better perspective and a more positive outlook, and Puyo turned out not to be quite as bad as we'd first thought.

Rio Puyo – swimming is not recommended.

Puyo is built along the west side of the Puyo river.  To the east side lies the Amazon jungle, and access to the jungle is about the only reason to go to Puyo.  The town of Tena, two and a half hours to the north, has better jungle access, however, so we decided to stay only one night in Puyo and go on to Tena the next day.  We'd read about two possibilities for an entertaining afternoon in Puyo, an orchid farm that also has lots of other native plants, and an ethnobotanical reserve whose proprietors are experts in native medicinal plants.  You have to call ahead for the orchid farm, and since that was our second choice anyway, we headed to the ethnobotanical park.

After first finding the tourist office and getting an excellent map of the city, we got a taxi.  The taxi driver had no idea what we were talking about.  He called his office and got directions, and after 15 or 20 minutes of driving through the wilds on the edge of the jungle, he stopped in front of the orchid farm. "No," we both said.  After taking a look at our map, the driver headed off at high speed in another direction, bouncing us over dirt roads with little sign of civilization.  We didn't want to alarm each other, but privately, both of us were thinking these might be our last moments on earth.  Before long, however, we emerged back onto a paved road that looked familiar from our first ride into town.  Soon, we were headed north along the riverfront and here we saw the nicer hotels and the malecon, an attractive pedestrian area lined with shops and restaurants.  Much better.

Arriving at Parque Omaere, the ethnobotanical park, at about 4:30, we met Chris Canaday, who runs the park with his wife, Teresa Shiki.  Chris was in the middle of a consultation with a guy that looked like a lawyer, and since he was the only English-speaking guide, we decided to come back the next morning at 9.  We walked a little way up the pedestrian path along the river, but with rain again threatening and evening coming on, we decided to turn back.  We stopped for a Pilsener at one of the restaurants on the malecon, and waved to Chris and his son Alan as they walked by on their way home a half-hour later.

Geni's steak

It took us another half-hour to walk back to our hotel, as we only got a little lost.  We found a pretty good restaurant and had steak and fish, then stopped for ice cream and picked up a copy of "Ted" on a pirated DVD to watch on the laptop in our room.

Larry's fish

The next morning, our $2 breakfast at the hotel consisted of a bun with a slice of farmer's cheese, a cup of hot chocolate and a scrambled egg, same as we'd seen in Ibarra and Otavalo.

We packed up all our belongings and left our bags in our room, then hustled back up to Parque Omaere. 

We got there about 20 minutes before 9 and the gate was still locked.  While we waited, a young German couple showed up, students who had spent a season volunteering at a reserve for injured animals outside Tena.  Chris arrived shortly and began the tour, but before he was far into it, a couple from Colombia arrived and joined us, making it a good size group and worth Chris's time.

Much of the tour revolved around the living habits of the Shaur and Huaorani people, indigenous groups that still live in the Amazon and maintain their traditional patterns, for the most part.  We saw a Shaur house, a sturdy structure made of split wood planks, but the Huaorani houses are made of leaves and last only for about a year, so we didn't see one of those.  We saw hundreds of native plant species and learned (temporarily, anyway) how they are used, whether for food, medicine or ritual.  We even marveled at – and tried out – Chris's pride and joy, a pair of dry toilets that fertilize the plants, don't contribute to wastewater problems, never overflow, and best of all, and don't smell.

The footbridge across the Rio Puyo to Parque Omaere.

Chris's wife Teresa is an expert in native herbal medicines, and we bought a nasal decongestant and a cough syrup that definitely helped our worsening respiratory symptoms after breathing volcano dust, and a skin remedy that soothed our sunburn after a rafting trip in Tena some days later.

Parque Omaere was the only tourist attraction that we visited in Puyo, but it made the trip to the town worthwhile and we are likely to return there.

Thunder on the Mountain

On the first or second night of our housesitting stint in Baños, the Geminids meteor shower was presenting a magnificent display of shooting stars in the northern hemisphere, and some of the "how-to-watch" articles I read said that they might be visible past the equator.  At about 11 p.m., I turned off the lights in the house and stepped carefully off the porch and up the driveway toward the back of house, away from the lights of town.  My view of the sky was limited by the roof of the house on my left, mountains straight ahead,  the lights of Baños to my right and Tungurahua and her sisters behind me.  But the dome of the heavens directly overhead was undiminished by these limitations; rather, the boundaries provided focus so that my eyes and attention did not wander across miles of undifferentiated sky.

It was a perfect night for stargazing. No moon, no clouds and the volcano had not yet begun filling the sky with detritus from the bowels of the earth.  Although Baños, at some 3,400 feet is about a third the altitude of Quito, the stars seemed closer here – closer, in fact, than anywhere I'd ever seen them. "Twinkle" is too small a word, too tame an activity, for what those stars did. Rather than tiny specks of distant flickering light, some of them looked to be an inch across and only a mile or two away. Surely this was how the stars looked to the first humans who looked up and wondered "why?"
"To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free ..."

 It was a night such as this in Puerto Morelos, a Mexican seaside village, that first made Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" one of my favorite songs. That night I did lift one hand to the stars and dance on the circus sands. There was no dancing on this night, not perched on the side of a mountain in darkness so dense I could not see my feet. This night I just watched.

I looked for familiar constellations, wondering how different the sky would be this far south. I had not done my homework, so all I could do was wonder. Was that Orion? Was that a dipper? Surely those two are planets ... can I see the Southern Cross from here?

I saw no shooting stars that night, but I felt no disappointment. In all my years of watching "Star Trek," I'd never been this close to the stars.

THE MOUNTAIN AWAKENS

The plume rising from Tungurahua

Tungurahua awoke on December 14, a Friday, the day after we took up our temporary residence in Baños.  We were oblivious both to the fact of the imminent eruption and its consequences to us.  That day we may have heard an explosion or two and attributed it to some local celebration.  We may have heard a deep rolling rumble and thought it was distant thunder. 

We had walked into town the afternoon before and stocked up on the foods we'd need, so we spent that day and the next getting comfortable in our new surroundings.  One of the attractions of the house is a huge semi-outdoor playroom furnished with a foosball table, a basketball hoop and a ping-pong table, as well as lots of potted plants, hammocks, a dining table and still with plenty of room for us to do yoga. For two days, we played ping-pong. Lots of ping-pong. And although the thunder became more frequent and the wind had picked up, the rain did not come.

On Sunday we decided to walk back into Baños. We didn't need anything in particular except a change of scenery, but the large outdoor market would be open and those are always appealing.  And I wanted to stop by a pharmacy and pick up some decongestant.  The wind made the walk unpleasant.  It carried a load of grit that got in our eyes, noses and hair.  As we reached the edge of town, we began to notice the locals had their faces covered with scarves or dust masks.  This wind must be a regular feature of life in Baños, I thought.  Just then, a loud explosion rocked the street.  We looked at each other and said, "Could that be the volcano?  I bet it is!"

Lunch in the making.

Bourdain, eat your heart out.

We continued into town and found the market in full swing.  We wound our way among the displays of exotic fruits, tempting fresh veggies and live and dead animals until we reached a lunch stand that we could not have passed by under any circumstances.

A large part of a roasted pig was displayed on a folding table, along with a sort of fried dumpling made from yuca (manioc in U.S. textbooks), luscious red tomatoes, pickled onion slices, chickpeas and shredded lettuce. All of this was piled in layers in a Melamine bowl, lettuce on the bottom and meat on the top.  We ate it right down to the lettuce, and if a shred or two got onto the fork by accident, well, life is an adventure.  We were sitting under a volcano that was hailing rocks down on the roof over our heads and were going to worry about a little lettuce?

After lunch, we hurried to pick up my medicine and caught a taxi back to the house.  By now, the explosions were coming regularly and we noticed the plume rising directly in front of our house and blowing back across Baños. 

 Another mountain stands between Tungurahua and the house, hiding the volcano from our direct view, so we could never see whether Tungurahua was living up to its Quichua name, which means "throat of fire."  A more appropriate name, from our experience, would translate as "fountain of grit.

Plants collected a heavy load of volcanic debris.

Over the next several days, the grit covered everything – the porch, the flowers in the yard, the potted plants, even the ping-pong table.  The column of cloud spread out until it covered the whole sky, and the only time we ventured outside was to let Maxwell do his business in the yard and to try to capture images and video of new clouds rising over the mountain after each wall-rattling explosion.

 Rain would save us, we thought, and we began examining the clouds for signs that they held water instead of ash.  Finally, the wind shifted and the blessed rain came, washing away the grit and ash, clearing the air and luring us outdoors once again.  We found it funny and maybe a bit ironic that we'd often misstate the natural disaster we were experiencing. "Volcano" just wasn't in our usual lexicon; we'd call it "the tornado," laugh, correct it to "the hurricane," and laugh again.  The natural disasters that come easily to our minds both have to do with rain, but this time the rain was what we wanted most.

A ZOO AND A BATH
After three days inside, we started back toward Baños.  We got only as far as the crossroads at the head of the gorge, deciding to turn left to explore.  We were looking for a footpath leading down into the gorge.  We didn't find that, but we did find a great little zoo – I read later that this is considered to be the best zoo in all of Ecuador.  There's also an aquarium and a serpentarium across the street, but by the time we'd seen the zoo, we were tired and looking for lunch.

With our time in Baños growing short and the volcano's spume still blowing away from us, we decided that we really wanted to try out the attraction that gave the town its name – the thermal springs.  A city map we'd picked up at the tourist office showed four or five spas, the largest of which was on our side of town.  We packed our swimsuits, put on our hiking boots and set out in search of Baños El Salado.  It was not easy to find.  We ended up hiking waaaaay up the mountain in front of our house to a grungy little one-road  village with the spa at the end of the road.  We could see the pools, but the spa was closed.  Why, we never learned. 

Seco de chivo

There was nothing to do but turn around, head back down the mountain and make our way clear across town to the town's most famous spa, Las Piscinas La Virgen.  This one was open and active, but not crowded.  We chose the hottest pool and shared it with one other couple, middle-aged Ecuadorians who insisted that we stand under a shower of cold water funneled straight off a high waterfall.  I'm not much for cold water, but I did it, and it made the water in the pool feel even hotter than before.  After alternating hot and cold a couple of times, we dried off and headed off in search of seco de chivo – goat stew with rice – and Pilseners grandes, the local beer in 20-ounce bottles.

More photos of Banos.

Larry and Geni vs. the Volcano – a Visit to Baños

First of all, Baños is not named after its famous bathrooms, as in "Donde està el baño?"  That is a euphemism; what you are really asking is "where might I take a bath?"  Baños is in fact famous for its hot springs.  We came to find that it is also famous for its volcano.

We had settled in to the foreignness and enormity of Quito, had made a short bus trip to Ibarra and Otavalo, and felt ready for striking out on a genuine adventure. Through an internet forum, we heard about a housesitting opportunity – "nine days of tranquility and relaxation" – so we applied and were accepted.

We have conceived our Ecuador experience as an opportunity to become free-spirit world travelers – just us and a backpack, blowing with the wind and the whim.  So, we packed three days of clothes, two computers, an audio system, pills, and toiletries, and dragged a rolling suitcase and two backpacks down the hill to catch a taxi to the bus station.

We had been invited by our housesitting hosts to use their usual taxi driver for the three hour trip for $80.  The bus cost $5.50. It is easy to say after learning how to do it that using the bus system is easy, convenient, and safe, but first one must learn how to do it. But, to again quote our yoga instructor, "one must become uncomfortable in order to grow."

The Quitumbe (south) bus station in Quito looks like a major airport, with dozens of bus lines.  They are grouped into destinations of Sierra, Costa and Oriente – the central mountains, the beach towns, and the Amazon basin.  Once in the general area of ticket booths, assistants outside call out the immediate departures.  To one we said  'Baños' and he hustled us to the next departing bus line.

The ticket clerk seemed hurried, but efficient, and concluded the transaction with a stern look, saying ''inmediatamente!''  As I tried to form the questions "'what time" and "which portal," it became clear that her message was "GO NOW" or miss the bus.  Just as we were seated, the bus fired up an pulled out.  Unlike the U.S. bus system, there are very frequent connections, and little waiting required.

Once figured out, bus travel is, in fact, comfortable, convenient and safe.  I must add, however, that we just read about a bus accident that killed 13 a couple of days ago, very close to our route.  Ecuador is a very mountainous country, and the most difficult roads are two-laned with steep drop-offs.  Bus travel is still far safer than driving in a rental car.

The views on a bus trip in Ecuador are worth the ticket price.  Rivers, waterfalls, pueblos, Indian villages all are fascinating.  Just reading roadside signs and watching daily life keep the trip interesting.  The best bus lines play DVD movies, although in Spanish.  During brief stops in towns along the way, vendors sell drinks and snacks such as cups of fresh fruit covered with whipped cream or even fried chicken with french fries.

So, a quick three hours end at a much smaller bus station in Baños.  We had selected a hotel from Lonely Planet recommendations, and a few words to the taxi driver is all that is needed to arrive at the front door.  Because I speak some Spanish, he provided an orientation tour of the small city.  He was born and raised in the city and was very proud of it and all of Ecuador.  When I told him that we were scouting for a retirement home, he praised Baños above all areas as "bonito, tranquilo, y seguro" – beautiful, peaceful, and safe.

The garden at La Petite Auberge

We arrived a day early in Baños for our housesitting gig so that the owners could leave early the next day.  The hotel we selected was Hostal La Petite Auberge, a French-owned garden spot.  Our room was rustic, but clean and comfortable.  The view outside the wooden shutters opening on a small terrace was an exotic formal garden with mountains and the town's signature waterfall in the background – all for $20.

We used the first evening to orient ourself to downtown Baños with numerous tour offices, restaurants, and shops.  The government-run tourist office provides a detailed map.  Among our first priorities in learning a new town is to locate the mercado (the local fresh market with numerous informal eating stalls) and the supermercado (the large store for general grocery shopping).  Those were located across form each other; in addition a large regional market is held nearby on Wednesdays and Sundays.

ON TO HOUSESITTING

The next morning we called the favorite taxi driver of the owners of the house, and he drove us to what had been described as the "outskirts" of the city.  The "twenty-minute walk" was for much faster and longer legs than ours.  We were initially a little troubled by the distance, but the first rule of foreign travel is "adapt."

The gorge in Banos

Much of the walk was, in fact, spectacular, fronting a deep gorge with a rushing river at the bottom.  At one point a bridge crosses the gorge; the bridge is used for puenting – not jumping from the bridge, but swinging from a long rope like a pendulum.  Trails lead down to the river and on into the mountains.

I had heard about housesitting previously, but the idea seemed a little strange.  Some people travel widely by housesitting and produce numerous references about their reliability.  In our case, we simply took over the house for the nine days the owners were traveling elsewhere.  They didn't know us from Adam.  They were most concerned about the well-being of their terrier, Maxwell, but also wanted the house occupied to discourage break-ins.  House robbery in Latin America is a serious concern.

I initially felt a little awkward in the role, but, remember, "adapt."  Maxwell the terrier was very congenial and seemed to make the transition easier than I did. He seemed comfortable with a sudden shift in parents.  In fact, the house was comfortable and well-equipped, so eventually I shifted into living there mode.

EXPLOSIONS IN THE NIGHT – Tungurahua Awakens

Geni and I had considerable experience in Mexico with cohuetes – very loud rocket-propelled bombs – at all times of the day or night, so I didn't guess that the nearby volcano had come to life.  I heard an occasional window-rattling boom and thought nothing of it.  The next morning, we heard a more steady booming and assumed there was a distant thunderstorm.  Slowly, as the explosions became louder and more frequent, a dim bulb over our heads began to brighten – that may be the volcano.

Tungurahua, seen from Baños

We looked toward the south and there were no thunderclouds, but there was a mushroom cloud of smoke, vapor, and ash.  The house owners had mentioned the volcano and there was discussion in the guidebooks saying that Tungurahua had periodic active periods over the past several years.  On some occasions, evacuation had been ordered.  There had been some deaths, and roads had been destroyed.

So, it IS a volcano.  Jimmy Buffett came to mind, and a Bob Dylan song about the surreal destruction of "Black Diamond Bay."  But, I think there is a human defense in such situations that insists that danger is interesting and not really dangerous.  We walked down to the town.  The air on the hill at the house was only slightly dusty.  As we walked into the valley of the town it thickened.  Shopkeepers covered their stock with heavy plastic sheeting and we saw more and more people wearing face masks.

We shopped and had lunch at the Wednesday regional mercado which is held in a large tin-covered structure.  No one seemed at all alarmed, but following large explosions, a rain of small debris swept over the roof.  We cut our visit to town short and caught a taxi back to the house, and then just looked at each other.  It IS a volcano.

Maxwell, the Adorable (that's his name)

All of a sudden, it seemed that a volcano could be dangerous.  I thought about transportation being blocked, I though about lava flows.  I thought about Maxwell the terrier.  We had made a commitment to take care of the little fellow and to protect the house.  Otherwise, I would have been finagling a seat on a bus out of town.  I pictured hauling Maxwell to the next big city of Ambato and trying to explain everything to the house owners.

But I didn't.  Geni and I made our peace with fate and battened down.  The situation worsened.

More in the next episode.