Ecuador, the country 🇪🇨

After 38 hours on the bus, here I am in Ipiales, a border town with Ecuador. It’s the 28th, so I allow myself a little break to explore the town and its famous cathedral in the nearby village. A hostel, a nap, and then I’m off to discover the Las Lajas cathedral.

It’s enormous, it’s impressive! There are a lot of people too, lots. Fatigue is catching up with me so I’m not going to linger here any longer. Back to the inn where I meet a Chinese woman living in Quebec and a Peruvian. Both of them want to cross the border tomorrow, and since it’s also in my plans, we organize to go together.

On the Colombian side, everything is going well, but when it comes time to enter Ecuador, Hongyu, that’s her name, is denied entry because she doesn’t have a visa. She really messed up there. Anyway, the group loses a member and arrives in Tulcán, the Ecuadorian side, where we definitively dissolve the group, and I take the Pan-American Highway, a road that crosses the entire continent, to try my luck hitchhiking! It’s going pretty well; I’m making progress little by little, and since I have an appointment the next day in Quito, I’m good on time. Arriving in Ibarra, I find myself at a dead end: Ecuador is facing massive demonstrations due to the price of diesel, which is blocking the roads (a sense of déjà vu… 🦺). Therefore, the journey to Quito, theoretically 2 hours and 30 minutes, turns into an 11-hour trip! It’s pouring rain, I’m exhausted, I give up hitchhiking for public transportation and hop on a crowded bus, sharing the back seat with two others, bouncing over all the potholes in the road. I arrive in Quito, the capital, in the early morning, completely worn out but alive (for the record, that’s the most important part). I’m going to settle in at the youth hostel I booked with Lara, an Argentine friend I met in Cartagena six months earlier. Unfortunately, there are also roadblocks in the south of the country, so she won’t be able to arrive until tomorrow morning. No worries, I’ll take a stroll around the city. The historic center is very beautiful, bustling with people and street vendors. Once again, fatigue catches up with me, and I’ll go to bed early tonight.

The reunion with Lara takes place early in the morning, it’s nice to see a familiar face! We’re going to stay for a little week at this inn in Quito, making bracelets, making music, writing, chatting… We also cook a lot: Lara is teaching me how to make empanadas, and I’m making aguas panelas and other dishes. On Saturday, I cook pancakes at the inn and then decide to go to the center to sell them. I stroll down the street shouting « Pancakes, pancakes à la française, pay what you can! ». There are lots of street vendors here, and it’s not part of their culture to eat pancakes, so I have a bit of trouble selling. I walk around like that for about 3 hours for a rather meager result: 6 dollars earned. I need to come up with another business plan at this rate. During this break in Quito, we take the opportunity to go to La Mitad del Mundo (the middle of the world), a small town about an hour from Quito where the equator line passes. There’s a whole little park (of course, it’s paid) with museums, shops, and restaurants, and in the center of the park, there’s a tower that we can climb to admire the view. We are not at the coordinates 0 0; the real point 0 0 is a bit further away, on a sacred mountain, but it’s much more expensive to get there. We spend the day there relaxing and then continue our journey in the southern hemisphere!

I have an appointment on October 8th in Cuenca, further south, to meet Eva and organize our vacation. Eva is a Frenchwoman who studied in Colombia and was passing through Rincon del Mar when I was volunteering there. I have time ahead of me, so I decide to hitchhike to Cuenca! I awkwardly leave Quito by bus, then get to work. I stop at a gas station and ask all the cars if they can drop me off further along. I don’t wait long before being picked up by three colleagues, then a dentist and his mother, and then a Danish man who lives in Ecuador. He’s not going to Cuenca but to the eastern part of the country. It’s not the fastest route, but it gets me closer, and since I’ve heard there are blockages before Cuenca, I think at least I’m sure to get through. We drive for a few hours, partially through the Eastern region, the Amazonian part. The landscapes change, moving from canyons to vast stretches of jungle. He drops me off south of Macas, in a small village where I start looking for a place to spend the night. I knock on doors with no success. I grab a bite to eat and finally find a small shelter on a soccer field, in the center; it seems fine for the night. An early wake-up around 4:30 AM by chickens and roosters. I am awake, so I might as well get up! I pack up, and at the first light of dawn, I stick out my thumb: today’s goal is to reach the French high school in Cuenca by 2 PM, when Eva’s classes end.

I get picked up by a motorcycle, which takes me a long way (about 1 hour of travel). Hitchhiking on a motorcycle for this distance with luggage was something I had never done. Especially since we reach speeds of up to 100 km/h on the rough roads of the Amazon. I feel confident; my driver takes this route every day. However, without a helmet, at this speed, I have to squint to see anything. It was actually funny. He drops me off and stops a friend of his to take me further. So, on to the second motorcycle, then 15 minutes by bus, and then one car, followed by another car that will take me to the outskirts of Cuenca. We pass through the páramo (high mountain environment), at over 3000m altitude. It’s very beautiful, we chat, and I have a few scares seeing the state of the road, but according to my information, it’s the main route to cross the peaks. One last car will drop me off in the city center, and I will arrive at the high school on time. So I see Eva again! She thought I was arriving the following week, but oh well :). She takes me to her place, a huge house shared with about thirty tenants from all backgrounds. Argentinians, Colombians, French, Austrians… Travelers who have settled here, artists, students, teachers… In short, there are quite a few wonderful people here! There’s a very good atmosphere at the house; people play guitar, paint, and cook—it’s great!

Eva is leaving me because she is going on a weekend trip with her friends, so I’m staying home for this long 4-day weekend. I’m going to take advantage of this time to work on the blog (I hope everyone noticed that the Gallery tab has been revamped and that the blog is now available in Spanish). It takes me quite a bit of time to reorganize the photos, to sort through them, to write… And at the same time, I’m cooking a lot, learning some nice little recipes. On Thursday evening, I’m going out with Jules, Eva’s neighbor and a high school teacher, to a small rock festival not far from home. There’s some good rock, hard rock, and we spend the evening dancing with other friends we meet at the event. Eva comes back on Sunday from her weekend with a little surprise, a cyst under a wisdom tooth! So we decide to delay the start of our vacation by a few days to go see a dentist. We take the opportunity to plan our little trip, buy a few trinkets for the journey, and once the wisdom teeth are removed, we’re ready for the adventure!

Expected departure on Saturday the 8th for the Amazonian part!