Loja is a great place to live but one thing it doesn’t have going for it is proximity to anything in particular. In fact, you could just as easily say that it’s in the middle of flippin’ nowhere. It requires a bus to make a perilous upward journey for 20 minutes, gaining 1000m in the process (first time my ears had ever popped whilst in a land-dwelling vehicle) before you even make it out of the valley, and the next decent-sized town is 4 hours of lurching, windy roads away. Little wonder that many residents don’t bother ever leaving the town.
However I happen to be of the opinion that there’s more to life than Loja so I packed the old travel sickness tablets and my Boot’s travel pillow and strapped myself in for the ride. Not literally of course – seatbelts are seen here as an optional extra rather than a safety essential.
The first weekend away, on 28th Sept, was to Zamora, a small mining town deep in the cloud forest of the Podocarpus National Park. For those unfamiliar with cloud forests, it’s kind of like an Amazon-lite, where it rains less and is merely cloudy all the time. This may not sound very exciting but it covers an elevation of 1000 to 3000m and has 560 different bird species so it’s a bit of alright really.
The bus journey over there was worth dedicating a weekend to on its own, with an embarrassment of little roadside waterfalls and sheer drops to tree-lined enclaves below, and I felt a genuine rush of excitement to be heading up into the ACTUAL CLOUDS. Once there, and after a night of eating meat on a stick (pincha) and savouring the local German beer, Pilsener, we trekked into the trees (minus Oliver who unfortunately chose chicken on a stick instead of beef). I soon realized that I wasn’t as fit as my strolls through the Yorkshire Dales had had me believe as I fought my way up half an hour of sheer climb, but the view of a valley of endless lush green steeply sloping hills was a fair trade-off for a lost pint of sweat. Once I’d stumbled back down, there was the small matter of a massive waterfall in which to go behind and underneath ( the ultimate power shower) before a ride back perched on a ledge next to the driver with a nail sticking in my back. Lovely.
Two weeks later I had learned my lesson and sat on a luxury overnight coach on the way to Baños, the adventure capital of Ecuador. Although nothing there was quite as adventurous as that coach journey, I managed to cycle 15km to stand behind another scarily powerful fountain, zipline 100m above the valley and get back to the town in time to see Ecuador all but secure world cup qualification. This was celebrated later with an impromptu street party – rum, percussion band and crazy topless bald blokes all included.
The next day was necessarily quieter, but that didn't stop me, Oliver, Ross (an Englishman in Loja the past 2 years), Diana (a big reason why) and their friend Tania heading up into the chill of the mountains firstly during the day for photos ops with the 5000m (very) active volcano that towers over Baños and then for an overnight stay with an indigenous family up there in the hope of seeing some glowing magma. Well we happened to choose the night where it stayed cloudy all night but we still enjoyed huddling by the fire and sipping an unidentified warm glowing orange alcoholic liquid for warmth.
Sunday involved the ticking of some more adventurous boxes, with white water rafting in the morning and the genuine insanity of 'puenting' in the afternoon. For the uninitiated, this involves jumping off a bridge attached to a few ropes, and then swinging down from said 100m high bridge after a second or so of free fall. I didn't have the balls to jump but I was more than happy to be pushed backwards off the edge, and all I can say is that the $20 was worth it for that moment of relief at feeling the tension in the rope after the fall. An amazing experience.
Ah in all that excitement I forgot to mention eating the national delicacy, guinea pig! You get the whole thing served in 6 pieces after it's been spit roasted over a grill, head and all (pictures below). It was very tasty actually, kind of like a gamey pork, and now I've eaten it I can rest safely in the knowledge that I won't have to see that terrifying head staring at me from my plate for a while yet.
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