For a country roughly the size of the UK, Ecuador has some truly incredible climatic contrasts. The mainland can be roughly divided into three stripes running from north to south down the country, going from the stifling heat and humidity of the tropical coastal region in the west, climbing sharply and suddenly up to the breathtaking (literally) peaks of the Andean backbone, and finally dropping down just as steeply to richly biodiverse cloudforest and jungle in the east. These huge contrasts are so greatly condensed that it's possibly to get a good flavour of all of these regions in less than a week's travelling from Quito, as we proved.
Mountains
The disadvantage of crisscrossing the Andes in this way is that you spend far too many hours being thrown around by painfully slow buses on windy mountain roads. This was certainly the case for our first stop as we torturously ascended up to the hot springs at Papallacta, where we bathed in hot volcanic water at an altitude (3250m) which would leave your whole skin blue if you found yourself that high in just your swimming trunks in Europe. We were only robbed of a truly great experience by the clouds which completely enveloped us, hiding the actual volcanoes from us.
We next hopped onto a further bus to Baeza and stayed in a truck driver's hotel with the hope of making it to the San Rafael falls in the actual jungle. Instead we found ourselves with practically no cash in a small town whose only ATM only took local cards and whose bank didn't much fancy changing a €50 note. We were forced to sell back a carton of chocolate milk to a confused shopkeeper in order to pay for a bus to the next village and get money, before getting on a 90 minute bus to the falls to find they'd been closed for weeks. I must have mentioned this to 6 or 7 people but they all would presumably have rather seen the gringos get lost than mention this detail to us.
Jungle
The one positive from an otherwise crappy day was that we found a bus onwards to dive down to the delightful Tena on the edge of the Amazon, from where we planned a day trip into the actual jungle. $65 dollars got us a motorised canoe up the river to a lodge from where we trekked 3 hours through the jungle. Due to it being a day trip from a town we didn't see any big creatures but we had the good fortune of a local guide in tune with the surroundings and seeing army ants moving in a huge single file, discovering a tree that moves using fake roots to catch precious sunlight or just closing our eyes and hearing the hundreds of noises made me feel that I was in the liveliest place on earth.
After lunch we crossed the river to visit an indigenous family and be shown how they farm and use yucca (a kind of tasteless potato, also known by me as yuk-urgh) as not only a staple food but also to make a potent alcoholic drink called chicha. Traditionally the yucca is put in a big pot, mushed up, the roots are removed and the family gathers around and chews and spits out each bit of yucca. This aides the fermentation process and in 5 days you have a drink that had me reaching for support and unable to concentrate on words after a couple of sips, and which is offered to guests in much the same way as we would offer a cup of tea in England. It is of high importance - families have been refused help by the whole community because they once shunned a cup of chicha when offered.
Another very prevalent plant in this region is the cocoa bean, and we were finally offered the chance to make just about the purest and freshest chocolate possible. We roasted cocoa beans over an open fire,
popped them out of their shells, ground them down to a paste, mixed this with a bit of water and sugar over the fire again, and before long we had a liquidy chocolate which was 96% cocoa. It was far more bitter than anything you'd care to find down Tesco, but dip a bit of banana in there and it was one of the best things I had in Ecuador.
One final insight from the jungle: the question came up about why Ecuador exports so much cocoa when they have enough to make a serious industry out of it and with that some very good money. The truth is that the families are happy with their simple lives and don't want more than the modest amounts they get for their product. In this capitalist society of constant striving for more at the expense of everything and everyone else, it was very heartening to meet people living happily within their means.
Mountains again
We tubed down the river in time to catch the bus from a the slightly dodgy bus station in Tena (one guy was so desperate for me to travel with his company that he offered me his car keys to drive there myself) to spend the night in Ambato, from where we took another 3 hour journey the next day via the wrong bus and a pickup ride with a clearly insane quechua man and far too many locals to Laguna Quilotoa. This is a crystal blue lake inside a huge volcanic crater, almost weirdly beautiful. Unfortunately we were ridiculously tired from all the buses of the past few days and were just about able to drag our sorry bums to the lake's edge before a quechua girl guided us back atop some poor horses.
As we lay in bed suffering, we realised that travelling is not about getting around to as many places as possible using as many buses you can, because you might find yourself somewhere you'd dreamed of for months in a crappy mood.
By then it was carnival weekend, where all of Latin America dresses up, throws all sorts of liquids over each other and generally has a massive party. All of Latin America except Ambato, where water throwing is banned and instead the people have a festival of flowers, fruits and bread, with huge sculptures made from those three elements, kamikaze go-cart races in little soap boxes and folk dances in a huge arena from around South America, Israel, Poland and Ukraine.
The coast
That was all well and good, but we wanted to get a proper carnival experience, and that could only be done in Montañita, the slackly policed surfing capital of Ecuador. We were made to earn it with a 16 hour journey on a bus playing traditional meringue music all night so loudly that it cut through your soul and a changeover in a bus station where everyone we spoke to sent us the wrong way, but it was worth it.
We wisely stayed in nearby Olon to avoid the true craziness, and we had a wicked 48 hours between those two places. That included street cocktail sellers who pour in alcohol until you say stop for 3 dollars, skinnydipping under a clear night sky after seeing the sun dip into the waves, and being squirted with foam and water by just about everyone. And rum. Lots of rum.
And then it was back to the mountains and good old Loja again.
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