Down We Go In Ecuador

Begin this in Otovalo
You can stay a week in this Indian enclave, but if you don’t have that kind of time, make it either a Tuesday or Saturday and do the sweater market. It’s about a mile long. Then stop in the pie shop on the corner of the main square for strawberry pie al la mode! YES! Then take the bus down into the jungle to Puno. It’s a start in a heavy sweater to just wearing sweat. But you go under three water falls! UNDER! Also you skirt drop offs to a rushing river sometimes 1000 feet below. The birds dive bomb you. Birds with so much color they look like carved pieces of wood you’ve seen in every market you’ve hit. Puno is no place you want to stay. It’s hot and humid and they don’t have much to eat but beans and rice. They tell you they have carne but it’s a lie. And the town is logs and grass roofs.But the tripis outstanding! Come back the same day.

Then next day take another bus to Ibarra and get a ticket on the autoferro going to Esmeraldas on the coast. You’re going to drop about 10,000 feet, travel from tropical highlands, to middle elevations and finally right to the steamy coast. But you have to get the seat on the train, not the truck that’s pulled behind it. Yes. A truck, but it’s South America and quaint.
It’s not a train, it’s a street car! And it does have a truck attached, and it is on tracks and I assure you that it is one of the most insanely wonderful trips you can do in this country. There’s only the front door. And the car is packed with people, goats, little pigs and kids, kids kids. If it’s not the rainy season, you might want to climb up on the roof. Still need a ticket. It stops at every little village and people climb through the windows to sell you fruit...GOOD! Fried Bananas . . . .BETTER and eggs anyway you want them. They walk across the tops of the seats to get to you, and never touch any part of you. No I don’t know how they can do this.

The car flattens out for a long run through jungle, lumber tracts, and weird wild animals sitting by hoping we run over something they can eat. Sometimes it’s an ambulance. (The day we rode, they carried on a woman suffering from what was probably malaria.) Always a school bus.

Esmeraldas is no gem. We took the hotel with the least number of holes in the mosquito netting. It was clean and the shower was out on the porch. The one dressed stands guard. Water was hot and shower great. And if you like sea food you’re going to die for the seafood chowder! If you don’t go for seafood, then try the chicken. Better still get both! A walk around the town is a fifteen minute thing. And then you hit the hay, for tomorrow you are taking la Launcha down the coast. It was the rainy season when we were there, so it was raining when we found la launcha. A long open dug out canoe, with two huge out board motors attached. And oh yes, a great big blue vinyl tarp to cover all of us from the rain. But that way you can’t see the coast, the jungle, the crocs swimming out to see what’s to eat and the herds of little deer like creatures roaming the banks. So I refused to use it and every one got soaked. So it goes!

Our stop at Limones, the rat capitol of South America was a gas! It’s a village on stilts sitting half a mile out in the Pacific Ocean. I know! Tidal waves and hurricanes! What the hell! You only live once. The boat did not stop long enough to go ashore. But we all had a great time watching the hordes of rats running up and down the pilings and leaping into the ocean whenever someone tried to catch one for dinner.


Other villages were on the shore, they didn’t have to slide down poles,so we pulled in and folks in their Sunday best hitched up their skirts or slacks and waded through the mud and climbed on. Once off, they dragged their feet in the wake, got the mud off and put on the high heels or boots. They all had an interest in The Gringos. Where we were from. What were we doing in this hell hole etc. But it wasn’t a hell hole at all. We did miss out on the boat which went up each and every river to pick up passages. I wish we had taken that one. Go! It’s blast! All of the country is.