Ephemerica

Our time spent in Quito waiting for Cindy’s pannier to be constructed was pretty uneventful. save for a few tourist activities we got in. We spent a day on the bus going north of Quito to Otavalo, a cute little town in the mountains that has a large craft market. The bus ride was pretty horrendous—there was construction on the main highway from Quito to Otavalo, so we had to take a much more sinuous route on a skinny dirt road that turned a 2 hr ride into a 4 hr ride. Both of us were pretty carsick when we arrived in Otavalo. We went mid-week, so we didn’t get to see the market at its most active, but there were still plenty of people hawking their wares. Since we were both feeling a little cold in Quito, we bought a couple of wool sweaters there…we were assured by the person that sold them to us that we were getting a good deal because it was dead and we were the only tourists there. Well, at least the second part (the town being dead) was true. After cruising the market for a bit, we ate lunch and ran into somebody that was on our Galapagos cruise with us. We delayed our bus ride back to Quito as long as we could with a little Internet time, but eventually we had to face up to the fact that we were going to have to take that same crappy bus ride again. Reminiscent of our market experience in Chichicastenango, Guatemala, we ended up on a bus for 8 hrs to spend 3 hrs in Otavalo, of which probably less than 1 hr was actually spent at the market. Cindy ended up getting sick later that night…we weren’t sure if it was the bus or food or both, although I ate pretty much the same thing she had for lunch and I wasn’t nearly as bad off as she was. Anyway, we’re all even now at one puke for each of us on this trip—not bad for almost 9 months on the road!

We spent another day visiting the Mitad del Mundo “city” (also north of Quito), which celebrates the passing of the Equator. This excursion was much closer than Otavalo, but still somewhat of a logistical nightmare, as we had to catch 3 different buses to get there. We didn’t know it at the time, but we happened to go on a very special day—the equinox (I guess you can’t really call it spring or fall equinox when you’re on the equator). The Mitad del Mundo complex consists of a giant monument on the equator that houses a museum, and then a bunch of craft shops and restaurants. They had some groups performing traditional music and dance on the main plaza, and I think we managed to get some pretty good pics we’ll post at some point. Here’s a video of one of the acts. However, the thing is that the Mitad del Mundo isn’t really on the equator—although it was measured as accurately as possible at the time, it’s about 200 m south of the actual equator. So we went to the Intiñan museum up the road where the equator really is (according to GPS; see photo above). There were some interesting aspects to the museum, such as talking about various indigenous groups that used to live in the area, and how they lived and worshipped the sun. But then they throw in a bunch of BS about how the laws of physics are actually different when you are standing on the equator versus when you are standing a few meters away from the equator. Cindy and I just kind of rolled our eyes as our guide ran us through these tests. The museum was good fun nonetheless.

After Cindy’s bags were finished, and my achilles tendon got back to normal, we finally got back on the bikes. It’s been pretty slow going so far…pretty hard to believe how little we’ve ridden in the 3 months since our robbery. The mountains here are not super steep, but the climbs are long. We met some Colombian bikers in Latacunga who started in Popayan and are heading to Punta Arenas, Chile. After chatting with them a bit, we learned that they rode from Quito to Latacunga (about 100 km) in one day, where it took us three days. We said goodbye to each other, and they said “maybe we’ll see you on the road”, but we knew that unless something unexpected happens to them, they are moving too fast for us to run into them again. But we do expect to bus through quite a bit of Peru, so maybe we’ll catch them that way

We have taken one detour from the Panamericana so far to visit the town of Baños. The ride to Baños is pretty spectacular, a 40 km ride east from the Panamericana, dropping about 1000 m of altitude through a beautiful valley to a very cute (but touristy) town. We decided to spend a couple of days relaxing there before continuing south. Our first day there, we didn’t do too much (we had ridden almost 90 km the day before) except visit some of the thermal baths that give Baños its name. It was very relaxing to go between the pools of different temperatures, and then cool off by spending a few seconds underneath some runoff from a waterfall that had been diverted to the pool. Wow, that water was cold!!! One popular activity for tourists visiting Baños is to rent bicycles and continue on the road east (the “avenue of the waterfalls”) to the town of Puyo. It’s a 60 km ride, but mostly downhill, and you can put your bike on the bus to return to Baños. We only made it 20 km to the waterfall called Pailon del Diablo (amazing, but we couldn’t get any good pics because the spray was also amazing), although we did ride back uphill to Baños from there, which was not too horrible considering we weren’t carrying our bags.

After Baños, we bussed back up to the Panamericana and started south again. Cindy has been having some problems with her knees that have been due to her seat being too low. Apparently, when we reassembled the bikes after our flight to Colombia, we didn’t get the fit right, and it’s taken us until now to ride enough to see the problem. Note to self: mark the seat position next time you take the seat posts out! We are hoping that now that the seat problem is better that the riding will come easier for us.

Posted by Matthew on October 7th, 2007 | Filed under: Movies, Ecuador