heading south to Alausi

Tuesday 29th
Everybody was up early to get ready for their departures. Rebecca, Karina, Pablo, Darwin and O'mara were all going on the 8:30 am bus to Quito so we got them ready first and after long goodbyes they were off. Then mum, Tris, Celso and I packed up our car and set off too. We are a bit cramped in the car but it will only be for a few days until we drop mum in Guayaquill on the 2nd.
We drove back to Banos, stopping on the way to eat brunch. Mum was map reading for the road beyond Banos. We had to turn left about 5 miles past Banos to go to Riobamba but a left turn never materialised, instead we drove through loads of dust and an incredible amount of work going on both on and around the roads. After about half an hour we reached a town that was definately on the wrong road... we had headed North out of Banos rather than South. We stopped at a garage to ask for directions to be told that the road we had been looking for no longer existed. A volcanic eruption of Tungarhua about 7 years ago had completely covered the road, it had not been recovered and was probably never likely to be due to continued volcanic activity. So now we had to continue our route North with about an 80 km detour via Ambato. The road was terrible but there was loads of work going on to try to improve the situation, I don't know whether the road condition was due to the volcanoe or just bad maintenance. The Ecuadorian drivers are just crazy, they overtake on blind corners taking theirs, and everyone around thems, lives into their manic hands!
On the map the roads look fairly direct and the distances look fairly short but in reality the roads curve their way around the mountains and we went up and down and up and down so we finally reached our destination - Alausi - at around 6pm whilst all the animals were being driven down off the hillside to where ever they were going to spend the night. We had passed up and over the Alps again with amazing views across patchwork quilt mountains where all the little fields were either tilled or planted with an amazing variety of colours. The sad thing is the lack of trees and the incredible dryness of some areas.

We had come to Alausi to see if we could do the 'Devil's Nose' which is rated as one of the 7 best train rides in the world as the train climbs out of Alausi over a mountain by completing a series of switchbacks. This is the 3rd time I have been here to attempt the journey, the first time 14 years ago the train tracks had been damaged by an earthquake and whilst I was there I had the worst case of diahorrea ever and so my memories of Alausi are not that favourable! The nest time was about 13.5 years ago but still the track had not been repaired. This time the train wasn't running but some replacement tram like buses that ran on the rails were.... but they were fully booked for 2 weeks in advance so again my plans were foiled!

Never mind, we found a hotel and decided to carry on South the next day.

Early on the 30th we spent a half day wandering around Alausi which was full of people of various indigenous tribes who had come into town to visit the market. Only the women seem to continue to wear the traditional dress, though we saw a couple of boys with the traditional ponchos. The men used to wear leather trousers still complete with fur so I assume that it is just too inconvenient to continue wearing them. Anyway we had a fabulous couple of hours snapping like Paparazzi before we set off south again for Cuenca.

Again the road looked really short on the map but our route took us winding through the mountains. We passed loads of people in the fields, some ploughing with pairs of cows or oxen. The men seemed to e doing all the ploughing and the women followed behind planting the seed. There were some lovely green patches but also some areas that looked so dry it would seem impossible to grow anything. The views over the mountains were breathtaking. After about 2 hours we found a sign to IngaPirca (the most northerly Inca site of note) and travelled 12km along a twisting, bumpy and mainly unpaved road to reach the site.

The original occupants of the site were the Canares (meant to be spelt with and enye) who were here from 500BC (at least) and were worshippers of the moon. They had lunar calendars which were huge stones with 28 holes drilled into them. It is believed that seeds were placed in the holes and when they sprouted it indicated the date on which crops should be sown or harvested. Many Ecuadorians still use the phases of the moon to indicate when to sow or harvest crops, and when to chop wood for various different uses. The Canares built their structures from stones taken from rivers or found on the land and built eliptical structures. A series of their circular storage pits still remain with built in ventilation channels, but the structures over the tops were all natural plant material and so of course there is no sign of them. There are not many trees at this altitude so they used the long shoots that come out of a cactus like plant to build all their structures, (I have some photos of these from Otavalo) and the plant itself to make string for tying down roof beams and thatch (this plant is still used to make string today).
On site there was a tree with beautiful bell shaped flowers which were, drug, medicine or poison, depending on how you used them (and still used today by Shaman).
Around 1000AD the Inca came North out of Peru to this area to try to conquer the Canares. A 30 year war was fought before they decided to coexist peacefully. So opposite the Canares' temple to the moon the Inca built a temple to the sun. The construction is so completely different with the Incan cut rocks (all had to be of a certain height but the width didn't seem to matter). The stones all fit beautifully together but noone knows how they cut the rocks so precisely as the Incas only had gold and bronze and neither of these metals would be strong enough to cut stone, one theory is that they used some sort of acid treatment.
Below the temple are loads of stones from the temple that have been recovered from local villages where they have been robbed over the years and used for buildings. It means of course that we don't know the true structure of the temple... there is only one original wall remaining (the front of the temple) the rest are attempted reconstruction with the recovered stone... but it shows how skillful the Inca were as the modern reconstruction just isn't up to standard.

The whole site was abandoned when the Conquistadors arrived, and their treatment of the locals meant that the knowledge of many of the techniques used was not passed on, so much of the information that we were told is speculation.