Exploring North Ecuador 7-13 Dec

Back to Quito 7 Dec
Tristan and I successfully navigated our way back to Fabiola, Rebecca and Karina’s house in the South of Quito, with only one error that took us through the centre of the city instead of going round the edge, but Tristan is getting very good at map reading!
It is so noticeable how dry the air is in Quito, and I really noticed the altitude this time when climbing the two flights of stairs to the flat. That evening Tristan got locked into the bedroom, the door handle turned but did not pull the catch open so in the end we had to break the door handle off with a hammer!
It rained and rained on the 8th, we replaced the door handle, took Omara (the dog) for a walk and pumped up the air bed for Tristan and me to sleep on. When we went to pick up mum from the airport at around 11pm it was chucking it down. The bureaucracy at the airport was the same as ever so it took mum at least an hour and a quarter to get through passport control and get her bags and finally appear through the gates. Then we had to brave the rain to get to the car and then find our way back to the South of Quito with very poor visibility. Luckily Karina had agreed to come with us to help us find our way back to the flat.
Wednesday the 9th was a frustrating, frustrating, frustrating day. When we bought the car we paid the dealership to sort out all the papers (or so we thought), and today was the day that we needed to go and pick them up and then go and get some stamp from another office. NO, NO, NO, it can never be THAT simple in Ecuador. First to an office with the notarised (authenticated by a solicitor) contract of sale (this is what the dealership had got done for us), so that they could tell us how much tax we had to pay. Then to a bank to actually pay that amount. Then to another type of bank called a ServiPago (basically you can pay all your bills there, e.g. electric, water etc) to pay to have a Revision (like an MOT) only to find that we needed to have had the car booked into a computer, so to another office to get it booked in, only to find that, because of the type of car we have bought (a Vitara) that a Revision is not necessary as it has already had one in the last 12 months. Then to the Transit Police to get the car registration changed over into my name, called Matriculation, but there was a power cut so they were not working. However we did manage to ask a couple of questions and find out that 1) I needed to get the compulsory Ecuadorian Insurance document changed into my name, and 2) that I needed to bring the car with me in order to get the registration document in my name and that they were open at 8:30 am the next morning. So off we went to get the insurance changed over.

This whole process had taken over 5 hours as we had to drive from place to place and at each queue or fill in forms etc. Poor mum and Tris had been very patient just looking at what was going on, but we did drop them off for about 1.5 hours in a big shopping centre whilst we tried to go to the police. We returned to the house with me a great deal frustrated by the whole experience, how can they make it so complicated and have no list of things that need to be done. Each of the offices seems to work completely oblivious of what the other offices do so they are unable to tell you what documents you need or where you need to go next.... and worst of all these offices are situated all over the place so you have to negotiate your way around Quito with its incredibly poor signage.
At 6am on Thursday 10th I set off back to the Transport Police. There was a huge queue of cars outside and I asked what this was a queue for. I was told by a policeman that it was for the Revision (the MOT thing), I told him that I was here for Matriculation and that my car already had a Revision so he told me to join a queue of people waiting on the pavement. I parked the car and waited in a long queue of people at the gate. Finally we were allowed in and I got myself in the queue for the Matriculation. After about ½ an hour a man came along the queue checking that everyone waiting had all the documentation that was needed, he told me that all my documents were in order and asked which was my car, pointing down to the cars that had been brought in for the Revision. I told him that my car was parked outside and he wagged his finger at me and told me that I needed to bring it in so that they could check the Chassis number matched my documentation before they would give me the new document. Well, fuming, but what could I do but go and join the queue of cars that now stretched around 3 sides of a 200m or so block. We sat and sat and eventually I went to ask how long it usually takes to see the cars and was told that probably I wouldn’t be seen today but I could wait if I wanted to.

So back to the flat I went and was there by 10.30am so that at least I wouldn’t waste another whole day.
Tris, mum and I set out on a Quito sightseeing tour. We went by Trolley (tram) to the old centre, to the old colonial style squares and the churches. Outside one of the government offices were police with machine guns slung over their shoulders, the other police and many security guards carry pistols, but it was a little alarming to see the machine guns and made us feel that there must be some high alert security status. The churches are completely amazing with their intricate gold leaf, gaudy statues and amazingly detailed carving but at the same time incredibly ugly. The expense makes you feel sick when you see the poor who have nothing, and the shock tactics used in the paintings of sinners in hell are really quite awful. We started a slow walk up to another church, The Basilica which stands on the top of a high hill in the centre of the old town. You are allowed to climb up into the bell towers and then you have a view across the old city to the south towards the Panecillo, another hill with what looks to me like an angel on the top, but apparently it is the Virgin! Also you can look north to the new city with its modern high rise buildings and wide streets. As we approached the front of the church we had to descend a very steep one way street with the cars coming up towards us. Mum was taking a picture of the church when two boys on a motorbike going the wrong way down the street whizzed past and ripped the camera out of her hands. It gave mum a real shock and it was so sad that she lost all the photos she had taken. After climbing to the bell tower (which is absolutely exhausting at this altitude (2800m or so) and taking in the sights, including the fabulous Galapagos animal gargoyles, we went to the Basilica Police station just outside the church to report the theft (we had tried before but the door was locked, I presume because they had all gone to lunch!).
We were taken by 3 police in their pick-up truck down to the Tourist Police office, occasionally when the traffic was too slow they blasted their siren but it made little difference. After waiting another half hour for this lot to come back from lunch, we filled out a form that was officially stamped and signed so that mum can claim on her insurance.
We caught a bus to the North side of town and ate some lunch in a shopping centre with marble floors and sparkling windows, Christmas decorations and clean loos! It is such a contrast to the other parts of Quito with the rubbish, the uneven flooring and loos without seats and sometimes without doors where you have to pay for a small bit of loo paper before you go in!
Mum bought herself another camera very similar to the one she had just lost and then we caught a taxi up a steep hill to the Guayasamin Foundation. Oswaldo Guayasamin was a famous Ecuadorian painter something in the style of Picasso. Marios, who we had stayed with in New York, had asked if I could get him some paintings whilst I was in Quito so this was our chance to look through all the prints and find what he wanted. The foundation is housed in Guayasamin’s old home which was a charming walled villa with beautiful gardens dotted with great sculptures. Having found 2 that were on Marios’ list we took another taxi back to the flat in the south with a great taxi driver called Miguel who was very chatty and charming even though we were taking him away from the good rush hour fares in the North.
It was an exhausting day but 100 times better than yesterday!

Otavalo 11-13 Dec
At about 11am we (Tris, mum, Pablo (who was allowed to miss school to come with us) and I) packed into our little Vitara and set off North for Otavalo. We took the bypass road around Quito again and this time the signs to the Pan American Highway, which runs from Colombia right the way down to Chile, were not too bad at all. The road was really good and now has two toll gates where we paid 60c and $1. We were also stopped by some police who checked my vehicle documents and driving licence. The policeman accepted the old Matricula (vehicle registration document) and my contract of sale so at least I Know that all of that is in order!
We arrived in Otavalo at around 1:30pm and dropped off our bags in our hotel (that I had booked via the internet but who had absolutely no record of our arrival!) then we went to a local restaurant to have our lunch or almuerzo. The dish of the day was rice, chicken and lentils at $1.25 and it was delicious!
Next we drove out of Otavalo and up the mountains to Lake Cuicocha which sits in an enormous volcano crater, probably about a mile across. The huge eruption that made the crater occurred around 4000 years ago and then, about 2000 years ago, another smaller eruption formed two mounds in the centre of the original crater which are now islands in the middle of the lake. The water is a clear aquamarine but there are no fish in the lake as the only water that enters is either rain or seeps through the mountains.
We took a boat out to the islands, which Pablo and Tris loved, and our boat driver stopped at the point where bubbles of gas leak up through the lake showing us that the volcano is still active. However the water is not warm so I don’t think an eruption is anywhere near imminent. There didn’t appear to be much sign of life at all around the lake, we saw some moorhens, a few egrets and were told that there were Guinea Pigs and rabbits on the islands brought there by past inhabitants. There weren’t even any water boatmen or midges in the water – it was all very strange.
We climbed up onto the path that circumnavigates the crater, there were masses of different plants and flowers and fantastic views across the lake and also down over Otavalo and the surrounding mountains. We were now up at about 3100m so again it was very tiring but worth the effort.
We rolled back down into town and parked the car in the Municipal car park (that gets locked up at night) and then went to have showers. Just as mum was finishing her shower the electricity was cut, but luckily the hot water was from a tank so Tristan and I were able to shower in hot water by candle light! Afterwards we went out to find something to eat and had the most enormous amount of food in a local Chinese restaurant, about half of which we had to bring back to the hotel in a doggy bag, we intend to make it into soup tomorrow for lunch as the kitchen in the hotel is open for us to use after 2pm.
Saturday
We got up at 6am and made our way across town through streets of people setting up for the artisan market to the farmers market. Pigs were squealing, some were refusing to budge and were being pulled from one end and poked from the other, corals filled with guinea pigs seethed like a moving sea, kittens meowed, puppies barked, chicks were squawking, cows stood serenely and chewed the cud. We bought 4 ducklings, that we were assured were 3 females and 1 male, to take to Carmen in Misahualli and we have kept them in the bath most of the day. They were very hungry and thirsty but seemed quite happy to waddle up and down in the bath.
After a breakfast of fruit, muesli and yogurt in the hotel we went out to the artisan market and wandered around for over 4 hours browsing through the amazing stalls. The amount of work that goes into all the weaving and crocheting, jewellery and painting, basket work and carving is just incredible. Mum bought some gorgeous little alpaca hats for 2 neighbours that are going to give birth any time now, a fabulous alpaca jumper and Panama hat (which are actually an indigenous female hat from one of the tribes in Ecuador) for herself. We also wandered through the local produce market which was full of fruit and vedge stalls with neat little piles of fruits and an amazing variety of colours.
In the afternoon we walked along an old railway track to see the Peguche waterfall which was a real disappointment as it was really small and the road had been built right on top of the falls! However it did give us a chance to see the ´normal´side of Otavalo with loads of sports going on, young couples wandering the streets, cows, pigs and sheep tied up by the road or tended by young boys, the small fields of potato or maize crops and the general comings and goings of all the Otavalenians who were not interested in the Artesan market.
Sunday
A much more leisurely morning; we sat out in the hotel garden and ate yogurt and cereal and freshly baked bread. We set off to visit some pyramids near Tabacundo at the Cochasqui archeological site. I visited these about 14 years ago when I was first in Ecuador. Before the Incas came North to conquer the Ecuadorians there was a thriving matriarchal culture. The Queen of the Tigres ruled a huge area of northern Ecuador and there is evidence that they had trade routes to the coast and to the Amazon region. They built several pyramids (not the Egyptian pointy kind but more like the Aztec or Mayan ones) with long ceremonial walkways to the top platform. The pyramids are lined up with major constellations and had shadow sticks on the tops that were either designed to work with the moon or the sun. The shadows of the sticks would obviously move throughout the year and markings on the surface of the pyramid would be covered by the shadow indicating that crops should be planted, crops should be harvested, that it was a good time to get pregnant etc. We had a guide who was 70 years old and, although he had only primary schooling, was very knowledgeable about the site as he had worked there for over 20 years. He was very interested in teaching about all the indigenous knowledge that was being lost and told us about plants and their uses, about how many of the things they were discovering about the site were still in use by the indigenous people of today.
There is evidence that the area was very fertile, and our guide even remembers that as a child there were many more crops grown and the region was much wetter with huge forests covering the valley between the fields and houses. However in the 1950s an American firm stripped the valley of its trees and started a tea plantation. Once they had destroyed the soil with their over farming they planted Eucalyptus trees and left. Eucalyptus is a real pest, it is so thirsty and sucks all the water from the soil leaving it dry and susceptible to wind erosion.
Our guide was also very keen to let us know how easy it is to damage these archeological sites. There has been some robbing out of the pyramids and the surrounding tombs but the culture had no knowledge of gold or any other metals so the robbers smashed up the pottery and other finds because they thought them to be of little value.
We got to one part where a reconstruction of an indigenous house had been made and mum was particularly interested in the similarities between the beliefs here and those she has seen in Nepal. For instance, people were not invited into the house because they might bring in bad energy, so every house had a portion a bit like a porch where visitors could be entertained. Also Guinea Pigs and other plants were kept in the house because they absorbed bad energy. (Guinea pigs are also a staple in this area!) The cooking fire is surrounded by three stones and the stones used to grind foods are very similar.
It was a very interesting couple of hours and then we returned to Quito and this time managed not to get lost.