La Mama Negra

Ce wek-end nous sommes allées à Latacunga qui se situe à 80 km au sud de Quito. Tous les ans au mois de septembre, il y a les fêtes de la Mama Negra.

Il y a deux raisons pour expliquer cet événement. Pour une par c’est l’étonnement des indigènes d’avoir vu des noirs pour la première fois (qui travaillaient dans les mines proches) et c’est aussi pour la Vierge de la Merced qui a sauvé la ville plusieurs fois des éruptions du volcan Cotopaxi.

La fête de la Mama Negra ressemble à un carnaval. Il y a plusieurs groupes qui défilent avec des costumes différents et qui dansent. Ils sont accompagnés de musiciens qui jouent avec des trompettes, des saxophones, des cors, des grosses caisses et des timbales. Au bout de chaque groupe il y a quelqu’un qui porte une offrande faite d’un gros cochon avec des poulets, des hamsters et des bouteilles d’alcools. Il y a plusieurs chevaux transportant la Mama Negra, la Vierge, le capitaine etc… et aussi plusieurs clowns habillés de blancs et qui portent un masque couleur arcenciel. Au mileu de la foule ils choisissent quelqu’un pour le bénir, ils l’arrosent d’alcool en même temps et puis ils demandent une petite pièce pour la bénédiction. La fête est animée et pleines de couleurs. Elle est très bruyante aussi…

J’ai mis un album sur ma gallerie de photos : https://www.flickr.com/photos/124600605@N06/sets/.

Samedi, enfin, nous avons eu notre van ! Mais il a fallut revenir aujourd’hui pour qu’ils réglent les roues… Donc on attend encore notre camper !!! J’espère que ça va être finit aujourd’hui !

Après avoir attendu une journée, nous avons récupéré notre camper ! et il marche super bien !

Quito forever...

Today, Thursday 25th of September we have been in Quito for a fortnight and one day… Still waiting for the camper to be fixed, apparently two rubbers parts are still missing. Although Quito is a nice place to be stuck, we want to be back on the road now.

We spend most part of these idle days on the roof-top terrace of our hostel reading and enjoying the fantastic view. We also regularly check on the workshop for any progress… The good thing is that I have now enough time to read all my numerous newspapers and magazines. Since we have arrived at Quito I have downloaded already three weekly issues of “L’Hebdo”, “Newsweek” and “The Economist”, not mentioning the daily issues of “Le Temps”. Thus I am completely up to date with with world affairs these days. We also download plenty of books on our Kindles.

We do some sightseeing too. We visited the Government Palace two days ago. It is open to the public, as according to the incumbent President, it belongs to all Ecuadorian people. The guided visit lasts about 45 minutes  and is free. It is really interesting. We saw the room where the government meets, the banquet hall and the press conference room. Unfortunately, we did not meet with the President, he was not around at that time… I wish the visit would have stayed longer so I could have had a better look at the various official gifts and pictures on display. But there is a guided tour every hour so we had to move on. We received a souvenir picture at the end. Yesterday we visited the house of Ecuador most famous painter Oswaldo Guayasamin, full of his painting and other items from his private collection that he donated to Ecuador when he passed in 1999.

Guayasamin

The other good thing is that we are by now completely used to altitude. We are not even out of breath when climbing the stairs anymore. 

We visit something new everyday, but really, now we are sufficiently rested and it is time to move on…

Backpacking Days

Still in Quito… Just back from a weekend backpacking in Mindo. OK, this is not exactly backpacking as we do not have backpacks, just a normal bag. Mindo is a small village nestled in the cloud forest at an elevation of 1’200 meters (only!!!). We took a bus from Quito and got there in a little more than two hours. Cost: USD 2.5/person, ridiculously cheap. The taxi to get to the station was twice that price… 

The cloud forest is lush in Mindo. There are numerous varieties of  birds, hummingbirds, butterflies and orchids. So we did bird and hummingbird watching and visited butterflies and orchids farms. All this very interesting. We also went hiking in the hills towards some water falls. We took a kind of open-decked gondola that goes back and forth over a valley, quite impressive. The only downside was that winter has started in Ecuador and therefore it was raining quite a lot.

We slept in a lodge full of hummingbirds, actually in the loft of the wooden building. There was only the slanted roof over our head, the rest was open air. Initially I thought we would get bitten by all kinds of bugs and freeze to death at night. Actually it was one of our better night sleep in this journey. And to be awoken by birds singing in the cloud forest in the morning is quite magnificent. Plus, there was plenty of hot water!

We took the last bus back to Quito, leaving at 5pm. As it was the last, it was overcrowded and some people were standing the whole way. But as we are always one step ahead of the crowd we had booked our seats in the morning so were comfortably seated. 

Backpacking is quite nice, but not as nice as having our own vehicle. Always having to rely on public transportation and having to carry our bag back and forth is not really my cup of tea. Therefore, I really hope our camper will be ready soon so we can hit the road again! 

Horseback riding on a brim of a ravine

We are still in Quito… it took longer than expected to collect the spare parts for our van. At one point, we thought we would have to order them in the USA, and this would have meant waiting for at least another four weeks… Fortunately, all parts were available in Ecuador. I prefer not to make any forecast as when the camper will be ready, we will see.

So to kill the time, we have decided to visit central Ecuador without the camper. Quito is quite conveniently located and Ecuador is not a huge country, so we can make one or two-days tour easily.

Yesterday, we visited the laguna Quilotoa. It is a beautiful deep blue crater lake at an elevation of 3’850 meters (12’500 feet) at the rim. We went dow on a very steep path to the shore of the lake. We did not feel like climbing for two hours being at such an high elevation so we rented two horses with a guide to go back up. It was quite pleasant, but I was a bit scared because my horse had the irritating habit of waking near the edge of the path towards the ravine. The ravine was 400 meters high…My horse also always wanted to be the first, so every time the other horse was trying to pass, it would block the way and start trotting to gain some ground. The results of this annoying and not very smart behaviour was that its heart was pounding like a drum. I could feel it under my legs and was wondering whether it would make it to the top alive. Horses also suffer from the thin altitude air. Anyway all ended up well and we were extremely lucky to beat a storm by ten minutes…weather is changing very quickly in the mountains and it is the beginning of the raining season here. Last night we could watch a beautiful storm from the roof-top terrace with a lightning strikes all over the city.

We will spend the weekend in Mindo to do some bird watching in the cloud forest. We go by bus tomorrow morning and be back to Quito to follow up on the camper on Sunday night. Let’s hope we will be back on the road soon!  

¡La revolution está en marcha !

Ca fait déjà une semaine que nous sommes en Equateur.

Le temps passe si vite…

Après avoir quitté Ibarra qui est à 120 kilomètres de la frontière et avant d’aller à Quito nous nous sommes arrêtées à Otavalo qui abrite un des plus grand marché de l’Equateur (dans le guide ils disent de l’Amérique du Sud…). Tous les stands étaient ténues par des Amérindiens. Sur ces étales étaient exposés des ponchos, des pull-overs, des chapeaux de Panama, des sacs avec des couleurs vives, des flutes, des nappes, des couvertures, des peintures, des bijoux etc… Nous avons fait des frais : Xénia a acheté un panama et moi un pull-over.

Nous sommes arrêtées aussi à « la mitad del mundo » (à l’équateur). J’ai attendu que notre GPS disent 0º0’0’’ et c’était là. Il y avait une ligne avec un monument qui marquait Equateur.

Maintenant nous sommes à Quito dans un hôtel de backpackers, avec en terrasse une vue sur toute la ville et les montagnes qui surplombent la capitale. Nous ne sommes pas les plus veilles dans cette auberge. Hier on a rencontré une Américaine de 77 ans qui voyage toute seule. Elle voyage depuis deux ans et elle a fait toute l’Amérique Latine. Elle est journaliste. Elle nous a montré une carte qui compare la colonne vertébrale humaine avec l’Amérique du sud et c’est toute à fait fascinant comme les deux courbes se ressemble. J’aimerais bien à 77 ans déambuler le monde comme elle !

Les Equatoriens sont très sympathiques. Ils nous demandent toujours d’où on vient, où on va, quelle est notre nationalité… On a eu une grande conversation avec un chauffeur de taxi. Il nous a demandé « Comment on voit Raphael Correa à l’étranger ? ». On lui a répondu que de l’étranger on le voyait plutôt comme  communiste. Il a dit qu’il était d’accord mais que le communiste n’était pas la bonne façon de procéder. Il nous a dit que la communication du gouvernement était très bonne et que ça coûtent des millions de dollars mais il qu’il a beaucoup trop de cubains dans le gouvernement. Que l’éducation était bonne mais la santé ce n’était pas vraiment ça. Ce qu’avait fait Correa c’était d’améliorer les routes c’est comme cela qu’il a amélioré la vie des gens (les routes sont superbe !).

Alors faut-il croire tous ces panneaux publicitaire qui nous disent « ¡La revolution está en marcha !

Let's eat meat!

It looks like we are going to stay in Quito for some time. We have finally found a real mechanic (or I want to hope so) who is currently performing a thorough check up on our camper. Once this is completed, we should be able to continue our journey until the end with no more mechanical hassles. These mechanics finally found out what was wrong with the suspension. It is not the s hock absorbers, nor the springs or the struts. It is another part, am not sure what exactly, that needs to be changed on the front wheels. A few rubber parts were also completely worn out, hence this constant irritating clunking noise. We are also changing the brakes as we do not want to have any kind of problems on mountainous roads. After 17’000 miles (25’000 kilometres) through the Americas, this check up was badly needed. So we should be ready and off by middle of the week.

In the meantime we are enjoying Quito. Quito is the capital of Ecuador, 2.5 million people at an elevation of 2’800 meters, surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. It is not the largest city of Ecuador, Guayaquil is with roughly four million people. We are staying in a backpacker hostel right in the historic center. The hostel has a rooftop terrace with amazing views of the city. Dinner is served every night on the rooftop terrace, and there is a wood fire afterwards so we can keep warm. The atmosphere is really nice, with people from all over the world. Most of them are in their twenties, but there are also some older backpackers, in their sixties. The hostel is not heated, but we have good comforters, so do not feel cold, except when getting up in the morning. Showers are heated with these electrical devices found everywhere in Latin America that provide, at best, lukewarm water. This is maybe deliberate so people do not linger too long in the shower. If it is, it works…

Yesterday, we took a small gondola up to a nearby mountain where we enjoyed a fantastic view of the city from above, almost touching the sky!

Since a couple of weeks, I have been feeling constantly hungry; am not sure whether this is due to the altitude, cold weather, old age creeping in or who knows what. Two days ago, I could easily have wolfed down another serving at dinner. And yesterday, I could have had four eggs for breakfast…there were only two, so I bought two chocolate bars. We had lunch but at 5pm I was already hungry again… dinner was not enough, so I went to one the restaurants nearby and ordered a quarter chicken with soup…I had a big piece of beef for lunch today and I feel good! So let’s eat meat!

First Glimpse of Ecuador

We are now in Ecuador, the tenth country in our journey. We crossed the border at Ipiales, the only border crossing point between Colombia and Ecuador at an elevation of 2’800 meters (roughly 8’500 feet). We spent our last night in Colombia in the Sanctuario de las Lajas, with its beautiful gothic cathedral built on a rock at the bottom of a canyon. The image of the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared on the cliff facing the cathedral sometimes in the 18th century. I looked hard, but could not see anything though… the place is crowded on weekends and is very atmospheric. We spent the night in a hostel managed by nuns! We slept actually in a former nun cell! It was a bit cramped and mattresses were quite hard, but there was plenty of hot water and we were awakened in the morning by holy songs!

After this, we embarked on another border crossing; this one went surprisingly fast, only an hour. After a couple of hours drive, interrupted by a long wait due to some rocks having fallen on the road, we reached a very nice campground near Ibarra, run by a German family. There is hot water, electricity and very fast Internet, one cannot ask for more. We are facing two inactive volcanoes and a little lake. The weather is kind of moody: it can be very warm when the sun shows up or quite chilly when cloudy; there are gushes of wind on and off; it changes all day long, so fleeces on and off all the time. But we still sleep at night without heating the camper. Today, we are just staying there, relaxing and planning our route throughout Ecuador. There are plenty of sites to visit: the capital Quito (World Heritage site), active and inactive volcanoes, colonial towns, Inca sites, festivals and a “devil train” running up and down the Andes. More on the coming blogs, but in the meantime, it is so nice to spend a day actually doing nothing!

On a fait notre trek dans les Andes!

Nous avons passé 3 jours dans un camping-hôtel à Salento situé en pleine zone cafetière.

L’hôtel était sur une butte avec une vue magnifique sur des montagnes, des plants de cafés et des bananerais.

Le premier jour nous sommes allées dans une « finca » qui cultivait 4 hectares de café bio : de l’Arabica et du Colombia. Le guide nous a expliqué tout ce dont on pouvait savoir sur le café. L’arabica fait un fruit rouge et le colombia fait un fruit jaune. Soixante dix pour cent est exportés et trente pour cent reste à l’intérieur du pays. Les Colombiens exportent le grain brut. Ils vendent tout à la fédération nationale des producteurs de cafés. Après la visite on nous a proposé un café qui était excellent !

Le lendemain matin nous nous sommes rendues dans la vallée du Cocora. C’est un parc où on peut admirer l’arbre national le palmier à cire du Quindo. On a fait notre premier « trek » dans les Andes ! Six kilomètres de montée et cinq kilomètres de descente… Mais c’était très très beau ! Au sommet il y avait une ferme ou après tant d’efforts on pouvait boire un soda ou du café. La ferme s’appelait la « Finca de los colibris ». Et effectivement il y avait plein de colibris. Après ces 11 kilomètres de marche, on avait tout de même mal aux jambes…

Salvation through Ipad Applications

Our stay in Colombia is slowly coming to an end. After having spent three amazing days in the Zona Cafetera, we are now in Popayan, a colonial town in southern Colombia, that was flattened by an earthquake in the early eighties. One could not guess it looking at the town now, everything has been repaired.

We finally managed to fill our gas cylinder so we can use our stove and heat the camper at night if need be. As we have some weeks in the Andes ahead of us, this is a luxury worth having. It took less than a minute to fill it, far less than to empty it… We also thought our rear batteries were dead and were about to change them; but after been plugged for three days to an external power source, they seem to miraculously function again (or was it a bump on the road that put some cable back in place?). Let’s see how long it lasts. These batteries are powering the fridge, water pump, water heater and the lights inside the camper. Nowadays we use only the lights anyway so we can theoretically do without as we have torch lamps. All the campgrounds and hostels we are staying in have a common kitchen that guests can use; we buy food on a day to day basis to cook in the common kitchen or we go to restaurants! So no real need of a fridge.

This morning I found a fantastic application for Ipad/Iphone on the Internet, showing campgrounds in North and Latin America. It is called iOverlander; it works the same way as Wikipedia; everybody can contribute: listing campgrounds with details of available amenities, like hot showers, Internet, etc; or locating propane/water filling stations, or mechanics. So it is a mine of useful information for people who, like us are driving throughout the Americas. It is a great relief as it is sometimes difficult to locate campgrounds in Latin America. Until now, we were mostly relying on blogs of fellow travellers, but this can prove a bit erratic. I am just wondering why and how we did not find it earlier. But better late than never. I have already added some input on where to find propane in Southern Colombia.

Sometimes, I am wondering if we could have done this journey twenty years ago, before Internet and these ridiculously addictive but so useful Apple devices and applications. Yes, probably, but we would probably be lost somewhere in Mexico by now! And there would be no blog! 

Time will soon come to bid Colombia “hasta luego” and get acquainted with another new country, Ecuador. I wish all countries had such great internet connections, such pleasant policemen and soldiers, such welcoming and helpful people and were as friendly to travellers as Colombia is.