May 27th-June 3rd, 2008 Ecuador
Piura to Loja to Cuenca
My buddy Kevin has a roommate from college who was a volunteer in the jungle of Ecuador. So we decided to use our last few vacation days to visit him. Tuesday night we hopped on an overnight bus from Piura to Loja for 7 seven hours and then immediately caught an early morning bus 6 hours to Cuenca.
Cuenca
Cuenca is a colonially city set in the valley of small mountains. The surroundings were absolutely beautiful and since Cuenca is the third largest city in Ecuador it was fairly modern. Unfortunately the weather was somewhat miserable so were not able to enjoy our day hike in the nearby national park as much as we would have liked to. Kevin is from Boston so we watched the Celtics in a really cool sports bar. Due to stupid TV rights, I had to listen to the Spurs on the radio while they lost the next night.
Kevin and I were very impressed with Ecuador in general. It is much cleaner than Peru since people take time to properly throw their trash away. The public transportation was also much more organized. These differences are to be expected in areas like Chile and Argentina whose GDPs per capita are significantly higher but Ecuador´s GDP is relatively equal to Peru´s. That goes to show that money isn´t necessary to improve the circumstances. But the nicest thing was the absence of jerks. Instead of always getting in our faces to try to sell us something, people were chill.
Baños
The next morning we headed to Ambato en route to Baños, a small tourist town where people undertake rafting trips or take dips in the naturally heated pools. Since we were only staying the night, we grabbed some dinner while the Celtics advanced to the NBA finals. We then headed to a local night club to dance with some locals but unfortunately it was mostly just a big gringo party.
The Landslide
We wanted to get to the jungle as soon as possible this morning but ran into a bit of a delay. About 30 minutes outside of Baños the bus stopped all of sudden. As I looked out the window I wondered why there was a brown water fall in the middle of the road. As boulders the size of semi-truck tires bounded down the mountain I realized I was witnessing a landslide. It was kind of unnerving considering we were only 3 bus lengths away and two cars back from the craziness. Since the landslide appeared over, a few idiots thought they would try to cross over the boulders. Unfortunately that triggered the mountain again and more although smaller boulders came crashing down again. I had a feeling this would happen and grabbed most of the occurrence on tape. After about 3 hours, a bulldozer came and removed the obstacle and we continued on our way.
Tena
After a pretty rough bus ride we eventually found ourselves in the largest city in the jungle of Ecuador, Tena. It was much smaller and less modern than Iquitos, the largest city in the jungle of Peru. We checked into a rustic hostal and grabbed some lunch before meeting up with Kevin´s old college roommate, Jay. We headed to a little bar where Kevin and Jay caught up about the good times. Later that night we went dancing with Jay and his Ecuadorian wife.
Monkey Island
After a quick breakfast we headed out to a little tourist island that is overrun with monkeys. You have to be careful because the monkeys will be reach into your pockets and steal whatever valuables you may have. The locals love to sit and around watch the befuddled tourists when the monkeys run off with their beloved necklace or what not. The municipality has posted warning signs, so you are at your own risk. The island was pretty chill. Later, in Tena, we had dinner with another former Peace Corps Volunteer from Ecuador who had married an Ecuadorian. They had just got back from the States where they had spent the past year.
A PCV site
Jay lived where I always dreamed my Peace Corps site would be like. We took a bus for about an hour from Tena. Then we had to cross a bridge over a rather fast-flowing river. From there we walked another 20 minutes before arriving at Jay´s house. His house was a wooden cabin located on the outskirts of the really thick parts of the jungle. On one side of the house is the large river and on the backside a nice little stream flows. His family has over 100 acres of jungle land. Jay had to learn to Quichua, a derivative of the Peruvian Quechua which was spoken by the native tribes before even the times of the Inca. Almost all the people speak Spanish as a second language but in order to truly integrate into town it was necessary to learn the native language. His wife´s mother doesn´t even speak Spanish, as many women of that generation didn´t learn Spanish.
For dinner they prepared a traditional jungle meal. They cut down a palm tree and served us heart of palm, which is a tasty vegetable kind of like artichoke. Along with rice we were also served suri, large grub worms that have been roasted. In all seriousness, they were delicious. The texture was a little chewy but the flavor was exactly that of roasted peanuts. I thought I was being the cool gringo by eating worm after worm but later found out that the worms are actually quite expensive, at least in the city, because they are hard to find in abundance. Ours came straight from the backyard. You can check out pictures by clicking on the link to my photos.
Kevin and I had to start our trip back to Peru that night so we thanked the family and hopped on a bus.
Trip Back
The trip back was a mini-preview of what our road trip back to the States will probably be like. We got on a bus at 9:45 pm and then pulled into the Guayaquil terminal at 9am. Since we needed to get back to Peru as soon as possible in order to comply with Peace Corps rules and the vacation request we had made we then got on another bus at 9:45am. We took this to Tumbes on the border before taking a minivan at 6:00pm to Piura. All said and done we arrived in Piura at 9:30pm after about 24 hours of constant traveling.
