Unexpectedly bounced into Bogota

Well here we sit totally unexpectedly in Bogota a month before we were planning to get here and after the first major backtrack we have had to take.

After Mindo in the cloud forest we headed to the beautiful town of Otavalo which is in the bottom of a valley surrounded by stunning mountains which has a stupendous large market every Sunday which we had, through pure luck hit upon so we spent the day wandering and spending next to nothing.

 We were really impressed with the stained glass additions to the street lights.

 Otavalo square, immaculate as we have come to expect in Latin America.

We left Otavalo and caught the short 3 hour bus north to the boarder town of Tulcan where we planned to cross into southern Colombia.

The scenery as we climbed became the most English we have seen on the trip with hedges, black & white cows, and low rolling hills. Not enough to make us home sick though.

 Tulcan is a bit of a dump but it did provide the cheapest (and largest) room we have had in Ecuador as well as the weirdest meal we have had in Latin America. Wanting a small snack we opted for a slice of  pizza each, Mine - the tropicana came with glace cherries, sultanas, ham and caramelized pineapple, Liza's Hawaiian  just had the ham and caramelized pineapple. We didn't quite finish them!

The next morning we got a minibus to the boarder where we were confronted with the Ecuadorian immigration guard telling us with very limited English that there was 'trouble' in Colombia and although we could cross he advised us not to. When confronted with information like this one tends to think it wise to listen.

Milling around at the boarder we hit the internet and tried to find out more. Nothing in English seemed to give us any help and after fractured conversations and finally finding a Spanish language Korean student we worked out that there were farmers strikes all over Colombia but especially in the south which have blocked the roads and after working through our options discovered that we had no choice but to back track all the way to Quito and fly to Bogota. (curses and a flight we really did not want to buy!)

 Still it allowed us to take a couple of pictures I did not have the camera for the last time we were in Quito; me in this beautiful ceramic chair in the grounds of the Ecuador national museum and...

the store I have not told people I have been investing in for years just outside Quito's old town!

Since arriving in Bogota I have received travel alerts from the British gov. travel advice service telling us about these road closures, I'm not sure if better late than never applies here!

We are still not sure how much of the country is affected and if we are going to have to fly around Colombia or can go by bus.Hopefully the strike will resolve itself and luckily the planes are almost the same price as the bus so we are fine whatever we do.

In a years travel it is the only major blockage over which we have had no control we encountered (Our attempt to arrive in Myanmar overland was only due to us not doing the proper research.)

Now we are here in Bogota we plan to circle the country to return at the end of the month for our flight out on the 26th September.

Quito the quiet city & into the cloud forest in Mindo

  We really enjoyed the wonderfully located city of Quito, it is a long thin city in a very large very steep valley.

We were continuing to be amazed at how quiet it is as the week progressed, it hardly got more frantic on Monday than it had on Sunday.

The total lack of car horns unless necessary made a total change from every other country we have been.

 Note the 'Madonna with wings' statue top left this is a main guide pont in Quito and can be seen from most of the old town.

 As you can one of the newer cathedrals, this one was finished in 1929.

 While this one is about 150 years older and has more embossed gold than we have ever seen in any other church.

 We followed the guide book to a view point that gave us a chance to see the whole city.

 It also housed the Ecuadorian equivalent of the Imperial War Museum, not somewhere we would have visited if it hadn't been for the view point but once inside well worth the visit as it had been done out in 1970's concrete brutalism.

 However the favorite view was the house with pigs on the roof. Pig with a view!!

 We have seen earthquake evacuation and Tsunami evacuation notices all along the coast. The building regs to prevent them falling down in an earthquake is however totally non existent.

 A view of yet another immaculate square.... Everywhere in Latin America has them.
After about 4 days in Quito we caught the two & a half hour bus to the small town of Mindo in the Ecuadorian cloud forest, here we went to another butterfly park.. (we seem to like them), this Owl Eye butterfly also has a snakes head (nose bottom left if you can't see it)

 However why we really went was not the butterflys but the hummingbirds. I managed to get a number of shots I was quite pleased with even if we did spend a bit of a while doing it!

 They also had orchids...!

However the video of then is more informative:- Hummingbirds video

 The next day we took a walk into the cloud forest, very green, very full of waterfalls and very up and down.

To get there this bloke drove a car engine attached to....

 This cable car, which swept us across the valley to the paths.

 The same afternoon saw a schools parade in town... It seemed a little silly to hold it in the late afternoon as that is when it always rains and this was no exception.

 Not that it seemed to make any difference to the enjoyment of everyone taking place and watching.

As usual by dusk the rain had stopped but the cloud forest certainly lives up to its name.

Ecuadorian explorations

The country where the food is worth waiting before.

We spent a wonderful four days just watching the world go by and catching up with the paperwork in Cuenca in the southern highlands of Equador, a very Swiss looking environment, green mountains, not nearly as epic as in Bolivia and Argentina. Our cottage was in the grounds of the overland truck parking space in town consequently we ran into a couple of American overlanders heading down to the south for the summer. As well as an epic travelling German couple en route south from Canada. We enjoyed a couple of boisterous evenings testing the local gin.

 The old town of Cuenca is gourgous, we enjoyed a stroll around and were confronted with some of the harsh realities of Ecuadorian life:-
1. The food is worth waiting for...... service here is very very, slow, polite but slow. However when it does arrive  it is very good, so far by far the best we have had in Latin America, except for Donald's BBQ.
2.(Ian.... this one is for you!) No one in the country uses their horn other than in real need. This is a world wide first and as we sit in the center of the capital not a horn can be heard.
3. Ecuadorian road users are the politest we have ever encountered, they wave you across roads... after 11 months of anything but it gave us a very nasty turn.

We stayed longer than intended on the farm because of things like hot springs and advice that our intended destination was a dump from different sources.  Eventually we hightailed it from Cuenca to the recommended village of Ayangue on the southern coast. A cab and three bus epic made perfect by the 2 mile walk in the drizzle at the end. Strangely enough it all went like the wind with not a 5 minute wait at any of our change over periods and were in a hotel overlooking the sea by about 4 pm.

Ayangue is a really delightful fishing and beach town.  We had lobster for dinner for 5$ each, served in a shack on plastic plates with kitchen roll to wipe our fingers and ketchup if we wanted it,  it was gorgeous as it was, so we didn't take them up on the ketchup offer. We resolved that if the drizzle stopped and the sun came out we would stay. It didn't so we headed up the coast 20 km to the surfers party hang out town of Montanita.

The first line of the guide book says bring earplugs or sleep on the outskirts, so we checked into the cheapest room in town above a restaurant and next to the night club...... We had an eventful night! We liked the town and the long beach but again the sea mist and drizzle moved us on up the coast to Purto Lopez from whence you can take the day trip to the poor mans Galapagos the Isla del Plata.

Purto Lopez boasts the best fish restaurant we have ever encountered although again service was slow.

 The green, more rolling hills of the Ecuadorian Andes

 We have been climbing narrow and steep staircases all year and had never come across this design before..... Why not!

 Well here are my Humpback whale shots, all too quick and camera too slow for anything but proof of we were there!

But it was absolutely fabulous to see them, they are really beautiful and so graceful despite being so massive.

 Blue footed Boobies, however, seem to be birds of totally different feather!

 They pose

 They have cute furry chicks.

And they DANCE....Bobbie dance

 The frigates were also very much in evidence, just doing what they do..... just drift and chill on the breeze.......They have an extraordinary shape and look quiet like pterodactyls from underneath.

 And going silly red when they fancied sex.

Apart from when there was the chance of a meal in the offing!

In fact the birds of the Ecuadorian coast come in all variety.... this lot liked to hang out in the noisy part of town all night!

We left Purto Lopez on the '10 hour' ride to Quito, this was apparently a none stop service. Instead we took 13 hours and the bus stopped at every little place along the way. I think it improved the journey as there was always something interesting happening although the later than expected finish was of irritation.

We are currently planning on staying for a couple of days in Quito to do the sights then head by way of the cloud forests in northern Ecuador into Colombia.