Floating around on the 'titty-poopoo lake': 23rd - 25th March

The next stop on the gringo trail after Cuzco is Lake Titicaca, a huge mass of water at 3400m and the largest high-altitude lake in the world. All well and good, but my German girlfriend and I were more excited by the prospect of visiting somewhere whose name translates as 'lake titty-poopoo' in German. Each to their own.

We had had many problems in Cuzco with finding a bus company willing to take us on the Sunday due to a miner's strike bang on the intersection of three roads between Cuzco and Puno on the banks of the lake. We finally found a company unscrupulous enough to take us an 'alternative route' which required us to get out of the bus at one point and walk a few hundred metres whilst it took an offroad route across a field. Another hour or so along a dirt track and we were back on the road and made it to Puno only three hours late (not bad even in normal circumstances).

The trip the next day was to the Islas Uros, a group of floating islands on the lake constructed entirely of the totora reeds that grow there. On these islands lives a centuries-old indigenous race, that survived the Inca invasion by moving onto the lake, which the Incas could not bring themselves to set foot on due to water being sacred in their beliefs.

It is therefore a shame that all that history and fight to survive should be undermined by the floating islands and their proud residents being whored out to tourists as it is. We took a boat into the community and landed on one of the islands whose day it was to receive visitors. Each small island has no more than 20 people living on it in five small hatched houses, presumably for fear of falling through the reeds. We were meet with an indigenous greeting that we had been taught, sat down for a short demonstration of how the islands are constructed, ate some reeds (tastes a bit like celery) and then the local women came and performed for us.

I say 'performed' because it did feel very forced. They sang three songs - a local song, a Spanish song all about reaching out to people from all around the world, and then bizarrely 'My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean'. We visited their humble living quarters (although it turns out you can still get satellite TV on a floating reed islands) and tried on their clothes, before leaving on a reed boat to another island, seen off with a choreographed 'hasta la vista, baby' routine from the local folk.

Once the tour company was satisfied that we had bought enough drinks and postcards from the next island, we headed back to the mainland for our bus to Bolivia with a slightly nasty aftertaste in our mouths from that fun but exploitative experience.

Border formalities were done with relative ease (it's great to be British and not need to pay for a visa for any of these places - unlike Americans who get hit with the petty 'reciprocation fee' wherever they go), and we arrived in the town of Copacabana to a lakeside double room for $4 each organised by our bus company and a wild party on the shore with old ladies off their faces and drinking from the bottle at 7pm on a Monday evening. Welcome to Bolivia indeed.

One thing we noticed quite early about Bolivia is that people are much more upfront about ripping off gringos than merely switching your bus to a different and far cheaper company at the last minute without refunding the price, as happened in Peru. Firstly the old bloke on the hotel reception tried to add 50% to the price of the room, before accepting the original price with a cheeky wink, and then we had a child asking for money after I took a photo of a llama on the Isla del Sol. A sign of a poor folk doing what they can to earn a little more money I guess.

The isla itself was lovely - a small car-free island on the Lake Titicaca with little traditional farms clinging to the hillside, archaeological sites and great views from the top. By the time we'd slogged it up there (the altitude again played a big role) it was just about time to swig a final glass of Inca Cola (a florescent fizzy drink we'd got addicted to in Peru) to catch the boat back and ultimately the three hour bus to La Paz at 7pm.

Walking high, travelling far, and generally looking up

It really is time that I wrote something more positive here. Luckily my neck issues are now sorting themselves out and I've been able to make some visits out of Loja, so let's talk about that.

On January 11th I headed out with my Colombian friend James (pronounced ha-mezz) to Vilcabamba, the local laid-back hippie/gringo commune for a spot of hiking. The place is interesting as it not only showcases the huge climatic diversity of Ecuador, since a windy 40 minute bus journey brings you to a slightly lower altitude and with it a sultry tropical world of colour far removed from the monochromatic fresh mountain slopes of Loja, but the influx of gringos on the search for cheap land and daily massages lends it a much more laid back feel than Loja.

After said bus journey we headed straight for mandango, one of the many mountains that tower over the village. Not knowing the way to the path, we stopped by 'Hostal Mandango' in the presumption that the owner would have some inkling as to the whereabouts of the hotel after which he named his business. As it was his terrible directions cost us a good half an hour of walking time. We finally found the actual path, and after a decent slog up the top (some of the time on our hands and knees up a rubble path with a sheer drop to one side), we were soon making Jesus poses on the cross at the top. Most exciting of all was the wildlife - we saw an iguana camouflaging itself in the dry grass, had to poke a tarantula out of our path with a long stick, and when we reached the top a grand old eagle swooped over to say hi.

After we stopped for pizza in a well established American-owned joint where the owners spoke barely a single word of Spanish. It left me with a warm glow of self-satisfaction to compare myself with him, out for the day with an entirely non English-speaking friend chatting constant Spanish, and that after only 4 months of learning and immersion. My friendship with James has been funny in a way because it's given me a guide to how I'm improving. When I think back to when I got to know him 2 months ago and was basically latching onto singular words I'd understood and forming any acceptable sentence about the perceived conversation topic, I honestly do feel quite smug that now we can have real back-and-forth conversations, and I understand 95% of what he says. It's strange in a way that a friendship can work in those circumstances but with enough hand signals and 'eyyyy's we somehow muddle through.

The second trip was last weekend, to the village of Zapotillo down by the Peruvian border in order to see the guayacanes trees, which flower brilliant yellow annually, but only for one week, so we knew we had to go for it. Now, due to the the remote Andean location of Loja I've come to approach the interminable slaloming bus journeys required to reach anywhere of note with a Zen-like calm, seeing the endless hours as  opportunity to immerse myself in favourite books and albums, alone withy my thoughts. However this journey tested my tolerance to the i  limit.

We took the bus from Loja at 15.30 on the Saturday, arriving in Zapotillo at 23.00. Due to the one-off nature of the event all hostels were fully booked, so we looked for salvation in the bus station. The building closed for the night at midnight, but the woman kindly offered us some cardboard boxes from the storeroom and some scissors that we might make ourselves some beds and sleep outside on the concrete behind the buses. This actually seemed like our best option until we saw that the bus we'd arrived on was still open and containing several fellow bums sprawled across the seats. There we 'slept' (the bus station was next door to a late night music club) until 5am.

At 5 the engines started up and the bus driver told us he was heading towards the village where all the yellow was. Liar. We overshot the turning for the village by a good 10km and greeted the sunrise with our thumbs out on the side of the road after working our way back there from the dead end village we'd been dropped off in. Luckily hitchhiking is super easy over here due to all the pickup trucks, so three lifts later we made it back to the turning and at 7.30 jumped on the back of one of the many army trucks running a free service to the trees.

I guess you could say we got what we paid for. Between there and the trees was only 2 hours of windy dirt track. Cue much headbanging (ironic since the doc had told me the day before to avoid heavy metal concerts due to my neck) and furious breathing through the nose, if at all. By the time we arrived at 9.30 we'd been on the road and sleeping rough for 18 hours. To be fair the site that met our eyes was beautiful - an entire valley decked out in daffodil yellow, definitely a site for sore eyes and necks, and we gulped down our morning chivo al hueco (goat in the hole) gratefully.

Due to work on Monday and the ridiculously long journey we'd have to take back, we only had 3 hours in the actual village we'd been aiming for. We spent those eating goat, walking alongside a herd of goats towards some old Inca bathing pool before hitching on a pickup instead, which we shared with a travel sick goat on our way back from the baths. To me this was such a south american thing to happen - chilled out about giving us a lift and then springing the surprise of a retching goat in our travel space with no apology or explanation, hilarious. So we huddled at the far end of the back of the truck, grimacing with each goaty retch as we knew that if anything came out of its mouth it would trickle down to us and our bags sitting downhill from it.

After another army truck journey from hell it was back on the bus. Luckily I was armed with my neck brace, which is brilliant for sleeping on buses as it stops your neck moving around with the movement of the bus, and my secret weapon - the unabridged Moby Dick audiobook. Works every time.

Getting to know the bus network of Ecuador

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.

How i ended up here, literally and figuratively

¡Hola! Thank you for taking the time to read my humble little blog - I hope to repay you handsomely with anecdotes, advice and a healthy dollop of cultural awkwardness. To cut a long and rather dull story short, I managed to make a pretty substandard graduate job in Skipton, North Yorks even less palatable by getting seriously ill just before starting it, and after a shoddy 9 months I decided it was time to up sticks and start teaching English in The Canadian House Centre in Loja, Ecuador. Because that's what normal people do, right?

So after giving myself about a week's prep time for starting my new life, I toddled onto a Ryanair flight from Manchester to Madrid on September 18th, rain jacket pockets stuffed with underpants, deodorant and duct tape. I arrived at my hostel in Madrid city centre covered in sweat but praising my own hindsight for having packed clean underpants in such a convenient place. My 4pm flight to Guayaquil gave me the chance to soak up some of the language and the culture (I sneaked in a cheeky morning visit to see Picasso's Guernica and a museum with a garden growing on its wall), before it was time to touch down on thoroughly more latin soil.

Expect from the airline staff refusing to accept my story (and official letter from the school) that an English person might be going to teach English in Ecuador and thus forcing me to buy a 500€ ticket out of Ecuador, the journey passed without a hitch, I settled into my first night in Ecuador by going out with a Chilean bloke for Worcester Sauce, pepper and chilli seasoned beers in a bar in the hillside. Verdict: surprisingly tasty but watch for the burn as it makes its way down your gullet.

After savouring the fresh watermelon juice provided by the hostel and posing for some suitably cheesy tourist shots with a few fellow travellers, (see below) it was time to embark on the final leg of my journey and get over to Loja. I thought I'd given myself enough time by booking a taxi (a footnote from the taxi journey: it's clear that the road markings in this place are more there as guidelines, not as hard, fast rules) to arrive 30 mins before my journey started, little did I know that I'd be departing from a gigantic multi-story headfuck of a bus terminal/shopping mall. Somehow after sprinting up and down various escalators carrying two backpacks I found the ticket window for Loja, and even more miraculously my Spanish was sufficient to book the correct ticket. Sample dialogue: "una billetta para las unas y diez a Loja" "sí, ¿nombre?" "sí, soy un hombre".

The bus ride itself was surprisingly comfortable, and the sights out of the window and in the bus itself made me glad I didn't pay through the nose for a flight over to Loja. Before we set off, various vendors came on offering me porn magazines and ice cream, only to be set down some time later at the side of the road and be replaced by more a few miles later. Generally, despite the distraction of the hilariously inappropriate django unchained playing on the TV in front of a mother and her 3 young children, I spent the whole journey gawping at the changing countryside out of the window. Urban sprawl gave way to hours of banana groves as far as the eye could see, before we spiralled into the mountains which sprung out of the otherwise pancake-flat landscape, stunning tree-lined vista succeeding stunning tree-lined vista.

In stark contrast to this natural beauty were the conditions that the vast majority of locals found themselves living in on our journey. Now forgive me for sounding like a sheltered first-worlder, but the dusty streets lined with mile after mile of houses which amount to little more than a pile of bricks or wood with a tin roof for the lucky ones really brought home to me how poor Ecuadoreans as people generally are. Children playing football barefoot in a dusty gutter seems like something from a far-fetched rags-to-riches film for many Brits, but this is how the country folk here live. I even saw some outhouse-style buildings with the words 'sex club' daubed on the grubby outer walls - I really hope that whatever goes on in those buildings is not as grim as I imagine it.

This is not to give this blog a depressing note, for the positive, laid back and fun attitude of the people here is perceptible most places you go, and I really look forward to experiencing more of it to get the last traces of Yorkshire bile out of my system as soon as possible!

The journey ended with me getting picked up in Loja by Rene (the man who hired me) and Oliver (fellow Sheffielder/English teacher/housemate) at 9pm on Friday the 20th of sept local time, 60 hours after leaving the warm bosom of my home in north yorkshire. After going for pizza and witnessing the festivities for la virgin de cisne (the virgin of the swan) I retired to my room for a little cry and a sleep before getting down to the real business at hand here.

Dali's Big Masterbater

Garden on a wall

Guayaquil

The bus journey