Ecuador (Jason's perspective)

Well, computers have been few and far between for a few days, not because there aren't any, but because we've been non-stop! Subsequently this is a long post. There will be a test.

We've been on a tour of Ecuador for the last 9 days. We've been to quite a few places in the Capital city of Quito, we crossed the Andes and decended into the Amazon Jungle, we travelled to Baños then climbed the highest active volcano in the world. Very busy!

I've found South America to be fantastic fun, but quite draining. The language barrier can be difficult to overcome. You can get your point across, but you spend a lot of time feeling quite powerless.

On to the stuff you care about-
Amy has told you about the landslide and the jungle, so let me tell you about Baños.

Spot Amy in Baños!


We arrived in Baños after a gruelling 4 hour journey across roads that are barely fit for wheeled vehicles. Motion sickness was a real concern for a large proportion of the group.
When we arrived in Baños we checked into our hotel and went out for a meal. I only bring this up because I love to play pool, yet the pool table at the pub-like place seemed to have developed a personal vendetta against me before I could say to my fellow travellers "Prepare to lose a lot of money".
When I attempted to remove the triangle rack from the balls, they all rolled away from the beautiful shape I'd created with my own blood, sweat and tears.
I seem to have become adept at playing 'curve balls', but have yet to develop any accuracy with them. Perhaps it was due to the fact that the table was not even close to flat. I could almost hear the sound of spirit-levels screaming in the night.

Needless to say, my opponents wallets were quite safe that night.

The next morning I got up early to get ready for the day's activities. Unfortunately Amy had been quite sick for the previous night and all throughout the day (probably due to dodgy prawns at the place the night before) and was not able to join me in attempting to die of adrenaline poisoning.

I got into a van with two other people from my tour. The van was crewed by 5 guys who could only be described as yahoos. They were hooting at women as we passed them, making crude jokes and looking luridly at two girls from our group who grabbed a lift to go Canyoning.
Once we were on the river though, they were all business and very professional.

White water rafting is incredibly fun.
I've never done it before, and due to my uncomfortable relationship with water it wasn't something I'd been planning to do. I'm very glad I plucked up the courage to go because it was no where near as bad as I was imagining. The waves weren't too big, the water didn't shift into a huge face with a gaping maw which would attempt to swallow me whole, only to get indigestion. I didn't die.
We travelled 18 kilometers along a river which has a name that is too hard to type. No-one fell overboard, though not through lack of trying.

The next adventure was Quad-Biking. 5 of us set out, 4 of us on 3 quads, 1 of us on a motorbike. It turned out to be very fortunate that someone took a bike because it was the only reliable vehicle in our little convoy. You get a bike and a map and total freedom. We decided to visit Buenavista, a lookout that provides people with incredible views of the city, as long as they have the vehicle to take them up a mountain. Not even half way up, my quad spluttered and died leaving me stranded. I got the attention of my good mate Lorne (a loud Canadian who is one part awesome and 5 parts incredible fun) and he gave me a ride on the back of the bike back to the place we hired the gear from. They provided me with another quad and took the broken down one away. I finally made it up to the top after getting chased by no less than 5 dogs and took in the view in the 5 minutes I had left before having to return.
On the way back I lagged behind the others due to the fact that my quad was a steaming pile of crap on wheels. On a main road just outside of town, the bike spluttered to a stop. I kicked it. It started. There was nothing wrong with the engine this time, it appeared to be straining against the brakes. A piece of metal had sheared off and gotten stuck in the brake handle, holding it down. I yanked it out and zoomed off on my merry way. When I arrived in town again, a taxi stopped suddenly in front of me so I deaccelarated and hit the brakes. Nothing happend. Evidently the piece of metal I pulled out was important. The brakes no longer worked - I was steaming towards the back of an expensive looking taxi with no way to stop myself. I decided that the only way I was going to come to a halt was to hit something hard so I turned towards the curb. Being an all-terrain quad bike, it jumped up onto the footpath instead of coming to the sudden halt I had been hoping for. So, picture a small footpath, filled with locals and tourists diving out of the way of a frantic Australian wearing a silly helmet doing 30kph directly towards them. Once my brain caught up with my reflexes, I hit the kill-switch to stop the engine and pulled off the footpath and came to a halt in the middle of the road. As I sat there trying to digest what just happened, I looked behind me to see the taxi I'd just 'overtaken' shaking his fist and honking his horn telling me to get out of the way. He was soon joined by no less than 4 other taxis, all making the same gestures and honking their horns.
I gingerly started up again and pulled over, stopping myself with my feet to allow the taxis to pass. I got off the bike and walked back a few metres to collect my courage which must have fallen out somewhere along the way, then returned to the bike and slowly made my way back to the rental place without being able to stop at any stop signs or for pedestrians. Now, just to be clear - its very hard to explain to a woman who speaks naught but Latin-American Spanish that the brakes on a quad bike are actually essential to the experience. She grabbed the brake handle and attempted to move the bike. The damned thing didn't move an inch. The brakes were strong enough to stop the bike from moving from stationary, but not under power. I couldn't be bothered getting the point across and to be frank, didn't want to get back on the hell-bike to show her. I gave her back the helmet, thanked her very much for the adventure and walked away.

Meanwhile, Amy had a bit of a sleep in, did some shopping and drank some passable coffee. It would have been nice if she could have joined me for the day's activities, but she just wasn't well enough. It isn't a huge problem because we can do them all at home anyway, with a modicum of safety.
That said, she did have a brush with danger. While drinking coffee in one of the better cafes in town, a local man approached her with a small child. He stood nearby while the child sat at the same table with Amy and started playing with the sugar. After a minute or so, he told Amy that he didn't want to interrupt and that the child was his nephew. Amy smiled and continued to drink her coffee and write postcards. Eventually the child and the man got bored and left. Immediately, the dutch woman who ran the cafe came out and asked Amy what the man had said to her and explained that he was one of the main drug dealers in town and likes to approach single looking women and "ruin their lives". I'm not sure what this entails, but I'm equally sure I don't want to find out. So much for Baños being a safe city. I guess 'safe' is a relative term.

The cafe


We left Baños the next day and headed up a crazy-bumpy road to Cotapaxi, the tallest active volcano in the world. This wasn't particularly exciting as it was absolutely covered in cloud. We got a photo of the sign telling you in meters how high we were.
This little side trip was probably not worth the effort as we didn't get any views. This was compounded by the fact that one of the ladies in our group had gotten gastro, coupled with the bumpy road, coupled with altitude sickness. We made 4 vomit-stops on the way down. She did a great job though - she didn't get a drop in or on the van.


Thats about all from me for now. Posting next from New York!