Ecuador Part 1: Quito, Riobamba and Banos

We were in Ecuador. My first impressions and my lasting ones were that Ecuador is very much like a Central American country. Guatemala is the obvious comparison. Most of the people in the tourist industry are lying, incompetent shits. They are not quite as bad as Guatemala though. It has great public transport, the women are uglier though. Such a contrast coming from Colombia. Also everyone is here is noticeably stupid. Obviously so. They can't even do the most basic maths and are always making mistakes with change. Most people are very slow and dim. Its a bit like Honduras in that respect. I don't much like this country though we managed to pack a lot in to the time here. I am imagining that Peru and Bolivia are very similar. The only reason tourists would spend a long time here is because it is cheap and they get to feel like kings while apparently appreciating native culture. Ill educated backwardness. That's what it really is. Colombians would slaughter Ecuadorians in an iq test. No wonder these countries elect pals for Hugo Chavez to control like puppet rulers. I am not sure what is Venezuela's excuse. I will see in about 6 days I suppose. Anyway I will give a fair and accurate description of my travels and travails here and you can make up your own mind.

Immediately at the bus station we were hassled by peddlars and bundled onto a bus without much call for what we wanted or even a breath of air for some oxygen. Then we were assaulted by various peddlars of crap that noone in their right mind would want to by. Following this they loaded too many people onto the bus like sardines and we were off and running. So far, so backward. We got to watch 'Hotel for Dogs' and 'The Marine' on the bus. The usual shitty films you get in Mexico and hopefully I would get one cracker of a film as you often do there, but not on this ride. We arrived in Quito and it dawned on me that this was my first time in the Southern Hemisphere. It has taken 43 countries to reach that mark, but it could not help send a little shiver of excitement through my spine. We checked into a hotel right next to the bus station as we had a healthy appreciation of Quito's danger level. Dom was talking to some guy in Spanish and he was asking Dom if he spoke English. He is from Spain you retard. I said yes I do and then they asked me for my name in Spanish anyway. Then they gave us the wrong change in the restaurant for dinner, and almost gave Dom back more money than he paid. That's incompetence I won't complain about, but its incompetence nonetheless. The bus station was surrounded by crackhead tramps. That was our first impression of the country.

Last night my book was viciously kidnapped and Dom has defaced it with his handwriting. I shall leave it unmentioned, but it was something to do with me scratching my arse. If you happen upon the original book you will know which part is not my own. My alarm died in the night and so we were a little late getting up. It has tortured so many people on this trip that I was surprised noone finished it off when they had the chance earlier. The shower was freezing again. I left it running in vain hope while I went to fetch my forgotten towel. When I returned there was a strange sensation. The air was not cold and then it started steaming. Hot water. Scolding water in fact. It could have stripped your skin off. I believe it is the first time on this trip that I have had to apply cold water to moderate the shower. We went to drop our bags off in the station equipaje. The first guy we asked said they did not have one and then remembered they did and told us not to trust them. We had no choice. And anyway I did not trust him. I trust noone here. We got free internet that morning, because it broke down. You don't get so angry over crappy service when the people have the good grace not to charge you for it. We set off on a bus to Mittal Del Mundo. The bus dropped us closer to The Museo Solar Intio Nan though. We were told this was good by LP and I decided against my better judgment to trust them. They were right for once. This museum was quite cool. It started off by giving us some indigenous history and some parts of the Amazon which we cared not for. Then they showed us the process of shrinking a human head as a trophy. That was interesting. The big Mittal Del Mundo monument is supposedly on the Equator line according some old French astronomers. GPS has however proven it runs through this museum. Very fortunate for the museum. We then got to demonstrate some tricks of the equator. Water spirals one way on the north side and another on the south. On the equator it goes straight down as the forces collide. This means gravity is especially pronounced on the equator. This the guide demonstrated by showing how much easier it is to pull someones fingers apart on the equator (as the forces pull in two directions) and to push arms down (as the force nosedives). We did some egg balancing on a pin as well. I only took 4 seconds to balance mine. About half of the group managed it, but I was pleasantly surprised as tricksy, delicate processes are not my forte. We could get a certificate for achieving this but I did not take one as I would only have binned it like I did the coffee tour certificate. Dom thinks I have no respect for people's efforts. Personally I attach no sentimental significance to anything, I hate carrying things worth anything as you fear losing them, I hate shows of pomp and grandure, I have no time for history and only carry things while they have a practical usage. Dom bought two more wristband things from here as he wanetd two from the equator. He lost one at Mittal Del Mundo and had to buy a new one. He was devastated at first, because we had hunted high and low to no avail. Then he realised that the gift shops were on either side of the equator and now he had one from the south and the north. Mittal Del Mundo is a waste of money and completely shit. Its a theme park Disneyland complex with none of the rides and all of the gift shops. It has one colossal statue that's not even on the equator and you have to pay again for everything else. I would not even bother. I am sorry I wasted some of the light my eyes are allowed in their lifetime absorbing this pile of shit. Don't tell me I ddi not warn you. Just go to the museum which has the actual equator and is actually interesting. On the plus side Dom had only paid $1 to enter instead of $2 which I paid. The guy had no change. Noone in this country ever has change and this is despite the fact I had just paid him $2. So a major tourist attraction can't break a $5 note when he has $2 just handed to him and the fee is $2. He did not have $1. Fuck this country, but it was making things cheaper. We had to enter again later to search for the bracelet and the guy let us pass. Dom must be the only person in history to pay half the entrance price and yet get to enter it twice. Again I mentioned nobody in this country being able to do maths. Its very true. We got a bus back and the bint told us she would take us all the way to the university. We said we wanted the old town. She said, yes yes, we would go to the university. We want the old town. Oh yeah we can take you there. Can they bollocks. They dropped Dom off in the middle of nowhere and due to me being blocked by an old woman they dropped me off 200m further down the road. Bitch. We had to get a taxi as we needed to make the last bus to Riobamba. We said fixed fare and he said $4. Taxis should not be more than $2 apparently. We said by metre. He said it would be $0.50 more for the delay in deciding and then drove into the most traffic jammed road in Quito. We crawled along for ages arguing with him and then paid $1 and got out to walk. I hate these people. After millions of incorrect directions and massive differences in predictions of time and distance, some young school girls put us on the right bus. I asked the conductor where to get off. Dom said 'commander', but I heard 'recommendar' and thought I needed to get a recommendation. So I started asking the conductor. He can't speak properly and both Dom and him got into an argument over who's Spanish was shitter. I think it was the conductors. This is the only Latin American country where the Big Mac is not discounted. Here its the McFine. A second rate burger for a second rate country. We got a nightbus to Riobamba and had to pay $0.20 to enter the fucking platform and then they lock the bus toilets so I had to pay again to use the toilet. I am surprised they don't charge me for the oxygen. On the plus side they showed Scarface of all films on the bus, except they did not turn the volume up loudly enough and cut it off before the end. We were ion Riobamba. We got a good taxi driver to take us to the hotel around half eleven at night. Naturally all the hotels were shut. Who wanted business. We found one open and they wanted $10 per person a night. We said it was too much and they went ok. These fuckwits have no business sense. They may use American currency, but they have inherited none of their commercial savvy along with it. Any American hotel at midnight would know they could not fill the room and would charge whatever the prospective client would pay in order to secure some income. Not these idiots. We found one for $5 a person and bedded in.

We got up early and there were no train tickets left for that day. So we reserved them for friday. He only wrote our names on a bit of paper and told us to get there before 6pm the next day. We said we would not be back until later and he gave us his mobile number and said to ring him tomorrow to confirm it before midnight. You can guess what happened, but more on that later. Not really comforted by his methods, we decided to head off to Banos and return tomorrow night. We grabbed a bus to Banos. The first hostel was too expensive again. They call everything hostels here. Its confusing to us. It means hotel here. I think they realised backpackers like hostels and called them all hostels to rip off unsuspecting tourists. We went to one next door and the woman said she had an apartment for $6 each. This was more than an apartment. We had a room with 3 beds, another room with a double bed, a kitchen, a bathroom and a huge lounge with a dining room table and a lounge area. All this for $6 each. She said it was good value for money. That was the biggest understatement I had ever heard. This was a great place and Banos looked like a good town. Very touristy true and it did not seem to have anywhere to actually eat. Just tour agencies, hostels and internet cafes. It was useful for half the stuff and we got our washing done. His sign said $0.70 for a kg, which turned out to be $0.80. So naturally he calculated it in pounds at a rate of 2:1. I pointed out it said kilograms on the tour and the correct exchange value was 2.2:1. This saved us some money and slightly aggravated the laundry guy. Slight of hand can't fool a maths teacher. Not in a country of mathematics illiterates anyway. We had a great breakfast and admired the town. It was very much like Santa Elena/Monteverde in Costa Rica and so far its the only Ecuadorean town that does not look like a shithole, but I won't see Cuenca until august. We decided to hire some bicycles and take on the Banos to Puyo 60km cycle. It was the second thing from 'The Book' in South America and would be harder than it had any right to be. We should have tested the bikes thoroughly. We did not. We paid for it. Although not literally considering they had my passport details. We paid $5 for the full days rental and they had to be back for 7pm. Presumably if not they turned into pumpkins.

This deserves its own paragraph. We cycled the first 18km with limited incidence. It was tiring and I did not know why. I only realised after the waterfall that the front break pad was locked on the wheel and I had been peddling furiously against gravity. At one point you have to cycle through a tunnel in the mountains. Dom went ahead of a bus. I let it pass. Then it blocked off all light in the tunnel and I was cycling purely by aiming at its breaklights. There were many tunnels on the opening 18km, but most of the time there were pathways for the tourists round the outside. It was a picturesque cycle for the whole way and I will get a little scenic description out of the way before I get to the fun stuff. The road snakes for 60km from the Andean town of Banos all the way to the Amazonian town of Puyo. It is mostly downhill, but definitely not totally. All the way the road plunges to the right into the valley of the Rio Negro and waterfalls explode out of the rockface at regular intervals. The scenery is lush and if we had had more luck we could have appreciated it more. At 18km is the point where all the bike tours end and most people who tell you they have cycled this road have only come this far. They are liars, pussies or deluded. The huge waterfall is called Devils something or other. I am too lazy to check the correct name now. Its impressive though. It blasts from the rock and down a gulley much more pòwerfully than Chiflon in Mexico. That was the previous most powerful I have seen. You walk across a ropey bridge to view it. There was a local tour guide there who was chatting with us for a bit. You then pay to crawl up some caves behind it. This is a truly spectacular viewpoint and you have to duck and squirm while avoiding being blasted by the waterfall. There are staggered viewing points as well. We went down one and it was like being on a sailing ship in a huge sea storm. We were blasted and buffeted by tidal waves of water. I only just managed to salvage my passport from ruin. Dom's camera was not so lucky but recovered the next day. We got monsooned and were drenched at every part of the body. It was a rainy day. We had 42km more to cycle. It was not a smart move. The guide told us to go tomorrow. We said we had to go today. He said take a bus. He did not understand. 'The book' was compelling us to this madness. We bidded farewell to the guy and mounted the bikes. Then the fun began. Oh yeah someone conveniently left a towel in the bathroom. This took off some of the monsoon water and made me a little happier. About 2km from the waterfall is where I realised that my front break was locked up. Dom and I undid the front break while we checked for a spanner. Here we left the spare tyre and the pump behind but had not realised it. That was the first thing we would have to pay for. I was now riding mainly downhill, surrounded by Ecuadorean drivers and with one break that gave me a breaking distance of 300m. Very safe. This was causing some problems and I realised that I was having to take the downhills slowly and lose ground on Dom. Then after another 5km or so I realised the break seemed to be locked on. It turned out that my back break pad had now also locked to the wheel. I could not take it off however or I would be cycling with no breaks whatsoever. This then resulted in the back wheel buckling and for the last 25km I was travelling with a bike that had a buckled wheel and permanant break locked on. This made it very, very hard work. Worse was to come though. Dom was unable to switch his gears and eventually after about 30km the gear switching lever just came clean off and he was going to have to ride with one gear only, uphill or down. If mine switched gear it leapt like a bucking bronco and every third pedal slipped a disk and cost me energy. We were thinking this was not going well when disaster struck. On an innocuous bend about 15km from the end the cog on the wheel snapped clean off Dom's bike and he no longer had any chain. We picked up the scattered bits of his bike and put them in the bag. Here we realised the pump etc was missing but this was the least of our problems. Dom could not pedal now and could only go downhill with momentum. On the flats he had to push it with his feet like a scooter. I could not go uphill because the back wheel was locked on fully and would only revolve every third attempt without serious downhill velocity. Basically we found ourselves thus. Downhill we could both roll. Uphill we had to both walk and push. On flat ground Dom could punt his and with great exertion mine moved. We thought about giving up, but we were determined to finish this. Come hell nor highwater. Which would make a good chapter heading for this cycling and the monsoon waterfall. I thouht the only thing worse was if a wheel came off and mine was buckling so badly and ricocheting off the frame of the bike all the time downhill that Dom thought I would lose it. Misfortune was our bedfellow. How could two bikes as shitty as this exist. We were making very slow progress and every few miles was killing us. We then stumbled across an ingenious scheme. On the flats I would pedal with my breaklocked bike and Dom would cling to my elbow to be towed along. This was tough. Basically a bike with no pedals was being towed by a bike with permanent breaks on. Rough work. Then Dom's front break locked up and we had to take that off. Both of us had one break between us now. The police never stopped us for that infernal passport check. They probably took pity on the pitiful sight that crawled past them. There was no danger of us breaking the speed limit. We asked some locals how long to Puyo. They said 40 minutes by bicycle. I said not on these. 12km to go in this condition. It was tough. Please God give us some downhill. Anything to help us. Did he help us? Did he bollocks. He had more fun with us. We cycled into the town of Shell 6km from the finishing line. And the town had a parade on. They had a carnival like parade with dancers, floats etc. Into this revelry comes our sorry looking bike convoy. We had to cycle amongst the dancers and confused crowd, we became part of the parade and they probably assumed we had been laid on for comic relief. I started laughing. This could not get more ridiculous. Police and guards just looked at us in confused silence and initially the crowd refused to part to let us through. They probably thought we were going the wrong way with the carnival. We struggled and we vexed. We were even tortured by a sign for Puyo, but it was for Puyo county, not Puyo town. We were almost finished and then we saw it. A downhill roll brought us to Puyo. Dom punched the air like he had won the tour de france and fuck it felt like it. How we had ever got these lumps of shit over the finishing line, God only knows. It was a triumph for willpower, a thumb in the face of shoddy machinery and another task completed. We thought this would be the hardest. Yet only three days later we would have something harder still. Now we had to explain these bikes to the bike shop. When we took them they were bikes. Poor bikes, but bikes. Now they were piles of scrap metal. We knew we would have to pay for the pump etc. We were fucking angry at the shitty condition of the bikes. Dom reckoned they sold shit bikes to tourists in order to charge them money when they were brought back broken. Its possible. I wondered how much a new bike would cost in Ecuador. I thought in the dark I might be able to pass mine off as working. Most buses refused to give us a lift back, but eventually one stopped for us and we headed back to Banos. He was fast and we got back in time to drop off the bikes before they closed, but not quick enough to get our washing. I only had my drenched cycle clothes. The bike guy asked us what the matter was. We showed them the scrap metal. They said nothing and nothing about the missing equipment either. We were relieved. We were scared they would charge us, they were probably scared we would sue them for damages. What a pile of shit shop. What hard work. We met the tour guide from earlier by accident and went for dinner with him and an Israeli girl. Then we turfed in. Banos looked like a good party town, but we were knackered and had agreed not to drink since Colombia and before Cotopaxi because it would be a beast.

In the morning we got up late and had wanted to go to the thermal baths. Instead we picked up our washing from the swindler and went to rent a buggy. They were like dune buggies. Apparently they are weak though and can't go uphills. We opted for quad bikes instead. They said we could take them over the bridge. Fuck that. We were going to take them up the active volcano. We paid for an hour with an option to keep it longer if we were enjoying it. Mine and the other one they were going to give me had flooded engines, but the yellow one limped into action. Bloody yellow. I hate that colour. Nominally Dom's was weaker but it slaughtered my bike on the flat. Mine was curiously faster uphill. I thought Dom was actually taking the piss and not accelerating, but apparently it was genuine. Meanwhile he suggested I accelerate fully on the roads, which I was doing. Mine had no ooomph. Still at least it had not fallen to pieces. That was a plus already. We took it to the turnoff for the volcano. Some old man stopped us. The sign said it was prohibited to go up the volcano, because it had the bad habit of blowing up and destroying everything around it. There was a village 7km up the hill and we assured him we were only heading there. There and beyond. Prohibited my arse crack. We launched the quad bikes up into the clouds and it was up, up and away. It was going to be fun racing them down the hill afterwards. We climbed up to the village and carried on. We got as high as we could. I love quad bikes. I need to find out whether I need a driving licence or a bike licence to ride one. Then i will get one and ride all over Australia and Asia with one. i may even do it in Europe as well. They are awesome. Fast, stable and you can offroad them. Stability of a car with the open air thrill of a bike. Perfecty combination. We took it all the way to the destroyed trail to the Refugio. We did not have time to hike that sadly so we floored it to a mirador that looked out over all of the town. On the way down we let it go. I rode through some shit that sprayed all over the side of the bike, we hit through water patches and bumped over the grounds, cobble stones and smooth dust roads. I almost stacked it and went onto two wheels turning for the lake. This hill was steep. My bike and later Dom's stopped on the hill and with full acceleration stood still for 30 seconds before crawling over the hill. The lake was not worth it. It was a puddle. Then we took it full gas down the hill. I was too close to Dom as dust was spraying in my eyes, so I dropped back to gain a good run. Dom waited for me however as he thought I had a problem and that experiment failed. His bike had a good run on mine as well. The second bike can always go faster though as it can see when the bike in front brakes and what for. We flew into town and got bollocked by the police for breaking the speed limit. So we swung them around and crossed the bridge because we had half an hour left of the second hour. We went up the other hill and then my bike went all chug-a-boom as the engine started to flood. Shit. Dom had roared off ahead so I swung a u-turn just after some roadworks and made the guys move out of my way twice in 10 seconds. With Dom's u-turn as well they got no work done for 10 minutes. They probably loved it. My bike was dying under me, but it had enough oomph to get back to the garage. Dom's passport had fallen apart a bit at this point, with the sleeve falling off. I am not sure how that will effect his abilities to leave the country. Some guy enxt to me is complaining I am listening to Guns and Roses too loud. He can kiss my arse. We opted out of the thermal baths so we could get to Riobamba and confirm our train tickets (oooh this was going to be fun). Dom went shopping for a bit and was half an hour late in getting back. We grabbed a bus to Riobamba. Ecuador was stupidity incarnate, but it gratingly reminded me of those hippy bastards we keep meeting everywhere who talk firmly out of their arse crack. I postulate that I can tolerate stupidity, but I can't abide stupidity masquerading as wisdom. That is exactly what these hippies propagate. Bugger I got bugspray over all of my stuff and on my fingers. I then stupidly stuck my fingers in my mouth. Disgusting. At least if a fly lands in my soup it will leap out from the deet if it comes close to my mouth. What a shit joke to end on. Anyway we hit Riobamba again.