Birds, Swings and Parades

 

Les, Heather, Newt, Bonnie above Banos

Time I said something about Ecuador the country.  Straddling the Equator, it’s about 110,000 square miles (England 50,000 square miles) with a population of a little over 16 million, only 6% of whom are white.  The largest ethnic group are Mestizos which are mixed race European and Amerindian.  To the east the land falls away towards the upper Amazon basin while to the west lies the Pacific Ocean where 600 miles away are The Galapagos Islands which are Ecuadorean.  The country is bisected north/south by the Andes which we’re spending most of this trip on.  We’re high, rarely dropping below 7,500 feet which means that it is cool and of course when the sun shines it is loaded with UV radiation.  

Mindo is a small place and lying as it does off the main road has an infrequent bus service.   We had about a four to five hour ride via Quito to our next stop at Banos and instead of waiting half the morning for the bus, we took a taxi to the main road and flagged down an earlier bus.  Our serendipity god struck again because the bus station we expected to end up at was to the north of Quito and we needed to catch a bus from the southern bus station.  These two are about 20 miles apart so it was going to be a nuisance and a taxi.  Then as our flagged down bus slowed I noticed that on the front it said Quitumbe – the southern bus station !   We checked once onboard and for $2.50 (£2) we went all the way to the south of Quito where we picked up another bus for Banos.

Heather on the 'little one'

Banos, like so many other towns we’ve seen sits in the bottom of a deep, deep valley, relatively wide and verdant but always within reach of a particularly grumpy volcano.   Our hotel was run by a couple of expat Americans, Jim from Chicago and Marsha from Alabama.  If you didn’t know the meaning of grizzled, a quick glance at Jim would give you a pretty good idea.  A few years back when the local volcano did blow up, many of the townsfolk left but Jim, Marsha and hotel guests had a Volcano party, watching tv and internet reports as ‘entertainment’.   This was a very different town to our last one.  This was lively, with a choice of restaurants, more touristy and with lots of adventure trips to take for those of a less than nervous disposition.    We took a circuitous taxi ride up the mountainside which loomed over the town to the west.  It was steep enough to look as if you could throw a ball from the top and it would reach the town.  A long way up we stopped where a swing had been set up on the edge and for no reason at all you could swing out over the edge of a mere couple of hundred feet drop.  Even I gave it a try.   Then we went on to the Big One.

Heather and Bonnie on 'The Big One''

This was another swing, the frame of which was visible from the town and had a three person metal garden bench structure on three cables which swung way out over the edge.  Heather and Bonnie did it, Newt didn’t and obviously someone had to stay behind to take the photographs, if only for insurance claim purposes.  The most ridiculous thing about it was that they had to wear hard hats as if that would break their 1000 foot fall into trees sufficiently to make them worth wearing.   I take the view that in the UK and USA there will be adhered to safety rules and checks and that these might be more lax in places like Ecuador.  Possibly prejudiced and unfair but also possibly justified.  This sort of thing isn’t for me.  I know it is an old joke but I prefer Terra Firma, and the more firmer the less terror.   Actually with theme park/adventure rides generally I find the thought of a five foot tall talking mouse frightening enough.  

The following day we booked a bus tour which was a little different than we imagined but turned out well.  It was an open topped bus which drove to a lot of adventure rides along the valley.  There were so many zip wires, mini cable rides and so on I expect the day isn’t far off when they’ll have to introduce some form of air-traffic control.   We saw some great scenery, it lasted four hours (!) and cost us $6 (£4.50) each (rides extra).  Bonnie and Newt even went on a zip wire across a side chasm about 500 yards across in a hanging superman position.  Obviously once again someone had to stay behind to take the photographs, if only for insurance claim purposes.  As you might guess from the itinerary, we were easily several decades older than anyone else on the trip.

There are tourists around but we’re seeing far fewer than I was expecting.  They’re at the sort of low incidence that causes complete strangers who recognise each other as a little out of place to nod at each other in the street.   So our bus out of town when we left, still heading southwards but which had to climb out of the valley for about half an hour did have what looked like a sprinkling of tourists but was clearly mostly locals.   The indigenous population which as far as I know are not yet called Native South Americans are easily distinguished.  They are invariably small to tiny in height, the women all wear traditional clothes while the men who do, limit themselves to a poncho and hat.  They have black hair, mahogany coloured weatherbeaten faces, and have the air of a resigned and hard life.  To me they have very similar features to those Native Americans which we always knew as Red Indians seen in old photos.  Many of the women run a sort of micro-business, trying to sell a few items while sat on the pavement, perhaps a few shoes, fresh vegetables or cooked food.   A very common sight is a wheelbarrow of cherries and mangoes being pushed around the streets in a wheelbarrow as a sort of moving market stall.   To me, these people seem to live in a sort of parallel universe.  They don’t seem to acknowledge that we’re there unless we catch an eye and smile, to which there is invariably a return smile but generally they are in a world of their own.  There is a lot of patient waiting to be seen. 

The Riobamba Parade

It was a long way to the next place we really wanted to go and so we decided to stop at an undistinguished place called Riobamba where serendipity struck us again.  Having got a grumpy looking taxi driver, we kept being stopped by the road being blocked between the bus station and our hotel.  So eventually we were ushered out a couple of hundred yards from the hotel.  As we crossed the road we could see off to our left and pretty close, the start of a parade which we decided to stop and watch.  It was an amazing spectacle with groups of dancers in various colourful costumes coming past.  One group were dressed as a sort of hairy green man/bigfoot cross and their job was to try to dance with people along the route.  Yes, Heather and Bonnie !  There were groups of people dressed as foxes, others in local dress, some clearly showing a Spanish influence and a number of masked dancers.  The whole parade was a stunning sight and after (I kid you not) over an hour we decided to go down to the hotel which was further along the route, drop our

This little sweetie was giving sweets
to the crowd from her basket

bags and get out to see the rest.  By the time we got back, it was only about half an hour more.   

not everyone enjoyed it
quite as much as we did

The 'African' Dancers - note the bare feet !

Doin' The Lambeth Walk. Oi !

an unknown woman dancing with the 'hairy man' - Sacha Runa

As far as we could tell the route was possibly a couple of miles long.   On the following day there was another parade albeit smaller which went right past our hotel and which we watched from the roof terrace.  The hotel receptionist who spoke good English explained that different families make up groups in the parade and they happen every weekend in December and January.  What we had hoped to do was get a train ride from the terminus station here but absolutely no trains were running on the Saturday or Sunday we were there but we happily swapped the train ride for the fantastic parade.