Cuenca, Dia de los Difuntos

Cemetery in Cuenca

 In Ecuador, el Dia de los Difuntos is celebrated on November 2nd to remember the deceased. This past week, we had Wednesday through Friday off, and the majority of high schools and universities have the entire week off for the feriados. For the Day of the Deceased, families made a traditional drink called colada morada and a bread called pan de guagua which date back to pre-colonial indigenous traditions. The drink is made with several types of fruits typical to the region, especially pineapple and blackberries--the blackberries give the drink the characteristic dark purple color, as well as many spices including cinnamon.
The bread is made in the shape of a baby--guagua is Kichwa for baby--and has a sweet flavor. Families typically bring a large pot of the drink to the cemeteries in which their loved ones are buried and use the day to remember them.

In Guayaquil, this day is typically a calm day for families to spend together. However, Cuenca's foundation day is Nov 3, creating a more upbeat atmosphere through the smaller, highland city.

I arrived in Cuenca with Dave and a few friends around 10pm on the 2nd and headed to the house of a friend. Rather than taking a regular bus that costs roughly $8 for the 4 hour trek into the mountains, my friends wanted to take a van, for which we paid $12 each to a company called Atenas that does direct routes exclusively between Cuenca and Guayaquil. Although I'd rather pay less, it was far more comfortable and we arrived sooner than we expected.

We spent a little bit of time relaxing at our friend's house, where the rest of my friends would be staying, before we took taxis into the city to find the hostel Dave and I had reserved. When we finally located it (Hostal Hogar Cuencano), we were greeted by a tired owner who told us there were no rooms available. After going back and forth explaining to him we had made a reservation a while back and establishing the fact that he was in fact the person that emailed Dave back earlier that day telling him it'd be no problem if we got in a little late, he realized that he had mistaken two other travelers for us. The two guys, also New Yorkers had apparently reserved a room for the next night but decided to come early and try to get what they could. They ended up tricking the owner into thinking one of them was the Dave he had been in contact with, and they had already headed out to the city by the time we got there.

The owner's only solution at first was to give us his maid's room, since she had gone off on vacation, and only charge us half price ($5/each). After looking it over, I told him we'd leave our bags with him, head out and wait for a phone call from him that the two guys had arrived back at the hostel and were moving their stuff into the maid's room. We went off to get a late dinner, explored some of the city and returned back to have our bags all moved into the room we had reserved. I was frustrated with Celso, the owner, at first but I appreciated that he took the blame and was able to solve the issue for us.


The next day we went off to explore the markets and the city. We found markets and fairs everywhere we went, with bands playing the local Andean music throughout the city. Each day we spent in Cuenca we followed a fairly similar routine of searching for delicious food, good deals at the markets and enjoying the city.

The view of the large three domed cathedral seen above is taken from the San Francisco Market. The Cathedral is located in the central part of the city with a park located in front, as is typical for many South American cities to be based around the most important church and a central plaza. Much of the festivities that took place over the long weekend were also centered around this area. The main flower market is also very close, where Dave snuck off to buy a flower for me, and decided against it when the woman told him the cost was 25. His assumption meant that this woman was trying to get 25 dollars out of him; until he realized she was referring to cents. 

Note: This post was written in November 2011 although unpublished until July 2012. 

La Nariz del Diablo

I've been pretty busy with school and realized I had not yet written about the train I took a few weeks back to La Nariz del Diablo. I ended up heading there with some of the French speaking international students so it was a good weekend of mainly Spanish (with them occasionally reverting to French or me reverting to English). The train typically runs between Riobamba, a city that I had stayed in when we had traveled to climb Chimborazo, and a small town called Alausi. Our original plan had been to take a bus into Riobamba, stay the night and take the train ride in the morning. However, we found out that the tracks near Riobamba are currently in construction so we instead decided to head to Alausi.

When we got to the bus station around 10 am we found that the next bus to Alausi (direct) wouldn't be leaving till 130. My friends wanted to get going as soon as they could so we decided to take an indirect route--first going south toward Ingapirca--Ecuador's most notable Incan ruins, and then catching a second bus on the side of the road to Alausi. The bus driver signaled for us to hop off when we reached a side of the road where there was a restaurant and a  couple trinket stores--and nothing else really in view. They drove off and since it was past lunch time at that point we decided to sit down to eat. Just as we had all sat down the bus arrived (which we had been told would be arriving in an hour or so) so we all sprinted to it as it was starting to take off. All the seats were full so we all had to brace ourselves for an hour/ hour and a half standing with all our bags while the bus went up and down the Andes mountains. As locals started to get off the bus along the way we were eventually able to get seats and we arrived soon after. The indirect bus route ended up arriving just around the same time we would've arrived if we had taken the direct bus (as I had tried to point out at the bus station) but we ended up meeting another French girl on the second bus--who seemed thrilled to be around French speakers again.

We ended up finding a hostel called the Panamericano for 8/each and then headed to get dinner. We found that the majority of restaurants were closed--one restaurant owner told me that most places shut down on Saturday afternoons so families can spend time together. We eventually found a small place to eat seco de pollo and ended up chatting with the owner for a while after. Like many small towns in the Andes here, the electricity was shut off until about 6 or 7 at night for construction. When we arrived back at the hostel we found all the doors locked and had to bang on the doors for about 10-15 minutes before we were finally buzzed in. We ended up deciding to stay in the rest of the night rather than risk getting locked out again and woke up early for the train.

While we had been told we'd be able to buy tickets the day of the train, we found the next morning that they were all booked through the day till 2. We all needed to get back to Guayaquil, and I had to prepare for a class presentation for Comercio Internacional but we ended up getting helped out by the man managing the ticket sales. He told us to be patient while he scanned the computer for cancellations. One couple almost was unable to get on the train despite the fact that they had made reservations a month back. He found room for us in the 9oclock autoferro, a little bit cheaper than taking the actual train but it goes the exact same route along the tracks, just doesn't include food. When he asked for our passports I realized I didn't have my copy and blanked on the numbers. Eventually he turned to me and quietly said, please--just invent some numbers. We were told by him to tell anyone who asked us that we had reservations a month back, or he could get in a lot of trouble. However once the train got going, it was more than half empty, so I'm not quite sure why getting the tickets had become such a process.

In the past, passengers had been allowed to ride just on top of the train, for more thrills. A couple years back a couple of tourists didn't see a cable coming and ended up getting knocked down the mountains so it's now prohibited. It was still a good mini trip. We enjoyed being in such a small peaceful town--a huge change from Guayaquil.

Orientation Tour

So my camera has slowly deteriorated to the point that it now is, where less than half the screen is completely black and taking pictures is useless.The good thing is that this has happened at the point where I was just starting orientation and have already done/seen quite a few of the things that are included in the orientation. For some of the new sights, I used the camera on my phone. The first day was a pretty simple, laid back day and most of the students had not yet arrived by the time some of us went out to get dinner and drinks.

For Tuesday morning our group of about 40something international students (from US, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, Belgium, Sierra Leone and Mexico) were divided into two groups to explore the old city (Centro Historico) of Quito and to visit Capilla del Hombre--a museum of Ecuador's most famous artist, Oswaldo Guayasamin's--most famous works. This year no photographs were permitted inside the museum but fortunately for me, I was able to last year. For dinner, I brought a bunch of us to La Ronda (since not many others have ever been to Quito before) for dinner but we were split up into two restaurants because there was way too many of us.

On Wednesday we headed off to Otavalo in the same two groups, with stops at nearby towns to meet with the Cotocachi weaver family, to listen to traditional indigenous music and to a shaman's house to see a ritual cleansing with Axel, one of the students, as the volunteer. The ritual was the only new thing that I had seen so far on orientation, and  I asked to be the volunteer but because the ritual involves flames and requires most of your clothes to be removed to prevent the fire from catching, my director thought it would be better to have a male volunteer.

Thursday morning we all went to Otavalo's market but since I had just been there last Saturday, I didn't buy too much. After we finished up at the market we headed to Cuicocha, an active crater lake. We took a boat trip around the lake and were given canelazo after we got off. At Cuicocha they served us canelazo without any sugar cane liquor, which made it to cinnamon-y and not sweet enough for my tastes. We headed back to Quito for the night and some of us went salsa dancing in the Mariscal district after dinner.

On Friday morning we woke up early (again) to head down toward Riobamba. We stopped at Salasaca for lunch where we had a typical lunch of choclo (corn), potatoes, and vegetables. After lunch a few people demonstrated a ritual dance and then some of the students joined in. After that we split up and learned about the dyes used for the artisan crafts (basically larvae guts) and the process of weaving.

Chimborazo

Yesterday morning we woke up, had breakfast and headed to Chimborazo--an inactive volcano that has the highest summit in Ecuador--to do a short climb from the first refuge to the second one. Although there wasn't a ton of distance between the two refuges, we were about 5,000 meters above sea level (just over 16,000 feet), making it a little bit more difficult to breathe.


I reached the second refuge with the first group, where we rested and took a bunch of pictures before heading back down. When everyone returned to the buses we started our trip down to Guayaquil, where the weather is so much warmer. We arrived around 6pm and I headed back to my host family's house. Tomorrow we will be meeting up for a city tour and picking classes.

Martin resting on the way up Chimborazo

Quito and Pululahua

We left Baños last Sunday morning. Before we could leave though, we had to go back to Arome Cafe y Chocolate for breakfast. We had crepes and pancakes with chocolate syrup and strawberries, chocolate fondue with strawberries, and I had a hot chocolate made from Amazonian cocao. We bought some bars of chocolate, baking cocoa and coffee to bring back home and they also have a spice shop in town where they have everything I could ever want. The restaurant is run by a husband and wife, with their two year old daughter laughing on the counter playing peek a boo with customers.

from the terrace of our hostel

The bus to Quito only took 3 1-2 hours or so and when we got to the Quitumbe terminal we took the city bus 17 stops to a hostel that we reserved in the Old Town part of Quito. A German girl ended up staying in the same dorm as us so I took her and Dave around to show them the parts of Quito that I remembered from last year--the Basilica, the presidential palace and the million churches around the plaza.

On Tuesday Dave and I decided to head to Mitad del Mundo and the Pululahua crater for the day while our friend decided to stay back and book a trip to the Galapagos. The Mitad del Mundo is a little park like thing with the Equatorial monument set where the equatorial line is supposed to be (after GPS, it was discovered that the monument is about 200 meters off), some restaurants and artisan crafts, llamas and little museums.

After taking the routine picture at the monument, we took a bus to Pululahua, an active volcano that contains an agricultural town within the crater. Because of the altitude and the mountains, visibility becomes impossible by about 3pm but we were able to get a decent view around 2pm from the lookout point we hiked to when the clouds passed for a few moments. Because of the constant presence of clouds, our guide told us that the entire town gets water from the clouds and the soil is perfect, making irrigation unnecessary.

from the top of Teleferiqo

On Wednesday we took a taxi to the Teleferiqo--a cable car that climbs up the top of the Pichincha volcano that towers over the city. At the top there are a couple of restaurants, more used to be there when the cable car first opened up but now there are small empty buildings at the top. There are paths to explore more of the volcano but we didn´t spend too much time up there because it was freezing. When we got back into town, we went to La Compañia--a beautiful church that is all gold on the inside--but we were not allowed to take any pictures. After that we got lunch, bought new shoes and met up with Dave´s friend Javier who is originally from Quito.

End of Montañita and Beginning of Baños

We found how different Montañita becomes by Sunday afternoon, most of the tourists had left and very few of the stands were open along the beach, and even those that were open were just selling juice and soups. On Monday morning before departing the town was even more bare, with most all of the restaurants closed and the only people out were those cleaning up the streets from the weekend.

view from the bus of a peak in the Andes

We headed out at 10am and arrived in Guayaquil with enough time to eat a quick lunch before transferring to our bus to Baños. We ended up having to do another transfer in Ambato, in which we had to chase after this man our former bus driver told us to follow while he sprinted across the terminal. Although the ride shouldn´t have taken much longer than an hour we were stuck for about an hour right before what looked like a bridge because of the cut off of two way traffic and stalled buses ahead of us. After traveling for 12 hours we went to the first hostel we could find, ate dinner and looked up options for Amazon travel in the next few days.

This morning we woke up early, found a new (better) hostel, explored the town and then took a chiva bus around the mountains.

There were stops along the way for things like ziplining and bungee jumping but the final stop was a climb down to a waterfall. It was slippery and I might´ve fallen (once) on the bridge but it was beautiful anyway. We got back a little while ago and are headed up to the volcano tonight.