Rooftop bedroom, Hostal Irina, Otavalo, early hours of Saturday morning: I´ve no idea if Irina was a saint, but she would´ve needed the patience of one being located next door to this peña (ie. "niteklub, with god local acts"). Trust me, never before has Aqua´s heinous renditioning of "Barbie Girl" been greeted so deliriously by so few at 3 am. And, in the background, you could just hear the sobs of Ramal (formerly one of the "god local acts") as he contemplated the end of his singing career. Not to mention the sound of me bawling into my pillow - initially with delight that I´d actually survived the aural assault that passes for a top night out in Otavalo, and then with despair as I recalled the earlier words of the bread shop owner that "Friday night is OK, but on Saturdays we REALLY like to party." Things had all started quite reasonably. Breda and myself had decided on an early night after yet another hard (!) day´s travelling, safe in the knowledge that we were way too shattered to let a little noise bother us from the nightclub directly below our terrace. Big mistake! We´d dozed through the evening´s preliminaries, with only minor disturbance whenever the resident DJ insisted on ramping up the volume another notch. We´d even survived Ramal´s initial, shorter set of the night around midnight, muttering words to each other to the effect of how nice it was to hear some South American music. But between 12 and 2 am. the éntertainer´must have been racking up a fair tab on the local firewater before returning centre stage. The result was the loudest brass section you´ve (hopefully never) heard, accompanied by a the mighty Ramal´s voice all-a-quaver (some tragic attempt at injecting some soulfulness?), regulatly interspersed by demonic howls, conjuring images of mournful wolves being fed through a mangle ... extremely slowly. As each ´song´passed, the initially enthusiastic applause reduced noticeably as even the most inebriated revellers realised that aliens must´ve kidnapped the "god local act" for which they had shelled out their had-earned and replaced him with a third-rate karaoke wannabe. By Ramal´s third or fourth track (you´ll forgive me for not memorising his repertoire) any clapping seemed to be restricted to Ramal´s own mother ... as even she headed for the exit to have her hearing aid tuned. Though I´d be surprised if the unfortunate woman made it that far, doubtless stampeded by the horde tearing the joint apart in search of the main fuse box. But, come hell or high water, Ramal the Magnificent was going to complete his set: "Gracias, gracias" he would utter at the conclusion of each affliction. "Tengo su attencion?" "Yes, yes, Ramal" I screamed back from our rooftop, "You have my undivided attention, you %&*^@." I didn´t know the Spanish for "encore", but Ramal must have sensed he still had at least the semblance of an audience, albeit a captive one consisting of us two, as he promptly launched into another of his slow numbers. As it all dragged itself to some sort of an agonising conclusion, in the distance could be heard the faint wailing of police sirens and gun shots as, presumably, Otavalo´s finest tried to restrain the compere responsible for the original booking from torching Casa Ramal. That´s not to say that we didn´t have a grand time in the town though! Returning from the Galapagos, we´d spent only an additional couple of nights in the capital Quito before taking a bus some two hours north. This was our first real experience of public transport South American style - for example, how they´ll happily sell you a bus ticket in the concourse, then charge you again to get through a turnstile to reach the area it departs from. Or how your bus will cruise around town for a full hour trying to pick up additional passengers, before returning to exactly the same spot where your taxi dropped you off an hour and a half earlier. All good, wholesome fun. Though you wouldn´t want to be on any sort of a schedule I guess - which, of course, we most certainly aren´t. Then there´s the bus drivers´ love of playing chicken with oncoming vehicles, in which overtaking the wide loads in front is of only passing concern; there´s being besieged by hawkers clambering onto the bus every time it slows below thirty, trying to sell you all manner of foods and drinks; not forgetting the eardrum-piercingly loud music they delight in inflicting on their passengers etc. etc. Never a dull moment to be had, I can tell you. But back to Otavalo. A bit of a dry and dusty town that is nationally, even internationally reknown for its Saturday market - so huge that it spills not just into endless streets surrounding the main plaza, but also into Sunday, Monday, Tuesday ... All well and good if we´d been at the end of our trip, but unfortunately we were restricted to window-shopping, faced with the less-than-enticing reality either of having to carry stuff around for several months, or alternatively entrusting it to the Ecuadorian postal service and its reputation for ´recycling´stamps from letters which, perhaps unsurprisingly, rarely seem to make it to their destinations. It was also here that we enjoyed our first experience of fighting off feral dogs - also known as ´trekking´ in the beautiful Ecuadorian countryside. One sunny morning we set off over a nearby hillside with a Kiwi girl we had befriended, intent on a pleasant stroll around Lago San Pablo with views of the impressive surrounding hills and mountains. We were feeling pleased at ourselves for acquiring a bag full of fruit, bread, goat´s cheese and ripe avocados (for butter) in the atmospheric produce market , but were soon to rue the fact we hadn´t also bartered for large sticks and assorted munitions to fend off the army of savage mongrels, not to mention pigs, that came snapping at our heels every few steps. Loose pebbles had to suffice - the piece of soggy bamboo I´d initially picked up proving somewhat inefficient - until we could get properly tooled up further down the track. The rest of the walk by the lakeside was most scenic, passing the locals as they went about their daily business - the women and kids furiously scrubbing clothes and trying to keep myriad cows and sheep under control, while the menfolk worked up a real sweat ... playing football nearby. Sadly the "paved road right around the lake" promised by the Lonely Planet guide book proved somewhat optimistic, forcing us to do some serious hedge-hopping and swamp-wading as, increasingly desperately, we tried to make it the whole way home. As light started to fall, however, we were forced to admit defeat and hop on a local bus - in 6 hours, we still hadn´t managed to get half-way around the piddlingly-small waterway, but we were happy and certainly dusty enough at our exertions. Have I mentioned the fortune-telling monkey yet? And no, before anyone suggests it, I haven´t been chewing on the coca leaves. In Otavalo Market there really was a monkey, dressed in quite a fetching cowboy hat (and little else) who, whenever someone paid a dollar, would reach into a drawer and select out three folded pieces of paper bearing news of their imminent fate. And that has to be healthier than chewing your way through a bagful of Chinese fortune cookies, right? From Otavalo it was south again to a beautiful spot called Baños, nestled amongst the greenest, steepest hills I´ve had the pleasure of clambering up in quite some while. It was quickly apparent that there still lingered some of the wet weather that had resulted in those deathly earthslides a couple of months back (thanks for all those reports of calamities, folks, and do keep them coming as we´re not sufficiently wired-in to know what havoc Mother Nature is reaping down our path). Still, it was great fun slithering our way over the mountainside directly behind the beautifully relaxing hostal that Breda had located for us. You can imagine how pleased we were with ourselves at completing in 3.5 hours a round trip to the village of Runtun that the guides had claimed would take around six hours. There again, in the heavy morning fog, we might just as easily have taken a wrong step and ended up sliding back into town even faster! I think we ended up staying in Baños for about 5 days, just lounging around reading in hammocks, eating beautiful local and French food, and playing with the resident pet sloth brought in from the Amazon. Well, when I say we played with him, it would probably be more accurate to say that Bolino (Little Ball) was far more intent on playing with Breda - the little minx hung upside down off a branch directly behind her and try to cosy up to her. My god, I´m getting jealous of an animal that can´t even make up it´s mind whether it´s a bear or a monkey! Another highlight of the Baños leg was a trip to the Rio Verde waterfall or, more particularly, the impressive Devil´s Cauldron at its foot. Probably not the highest falls I´ve seen, but the water hits the rocky bowl at its foot with such force that there´s just this seething, hissing, roaring mass of white water, the spray from which soaks you in seconds as you stand on the viewing platform. Many gringos choose to hire mountain bikes to travel the 20 km. there, but I can assure you that taking the small public bus wasn´t exactly a breeze either. ´Small´ being the operative word - leaping up to offer my seat to some old lady laden down with a couple of tons of baggage on her back, I smacked my head off the ceiling and had to stand the rest of the way practically bent double. Even from that position it was easy at first to feel superior to the poor cyclists having to pedal gingerly in the dark through a long mountain tunnel as we hammered past them (our driver clearly enjoying the challenge of avoiding mowing any down without needing to put the bus headlights on). But the shoe was on the other foot a mile or two further on, however, when we met another bus coming in the opposite direction. Question. How do two vehicles, each three metres wide, pass one another on a road approximately four metres wide when neither is prepared to reverse to a slightly wider spot? And let´s not forget the sheer drop into the gorge below. After much gesticulating on the part of both bus crews, ours eventually backs down - and starts reversing at speed back along said narrow track. Of course, my head is still wedged somewhere around my belly button at this point, so I could clearly hear the butterflies in my stomach when even the locals, who you´d assume were used to such shenanigans, began screaming to the driver "No mas! No mas!". I´ve no idea whether our rear wheels were actually hanging over the drop at this pouint, but thankfully our driver calmed down and obviously agreed it would be the height of foolhardiness to reverse any further. As the other bus somehow squeezed past us, exchanging coats of paint in the process, it would be safe to say that the hand signals between the respective drivers meant that they wouldn´t be buying each other rounds of drinks that evening at least. Following Baños came my first opportunity to crawl around some piles of ancient rubble. We had a delightful night´s stay in the finest and most hygienic hostal that the small hamlet of El Tambo could muster up for us when we arrived late at night ... but best not ask Breda about that one for a few weeks yet! In the morning we just about managed not to get fleeced by one of the locals en route to the site of Ingapirca . The sort of colurful local character who tried to offer us a "taxi" for four times as much as we ended up paying when the local bus service arrived ... a mini truck driven by the very same lovable rogue! It was a picturesque drive some 8 km. up the valley - or so Breda tells me. I was way too busy going very pale with concentration at preventing an embarrassingly premature evacuation of the nether regions. You can imagine, I´m sure, how pleased I was to throw some dollars in the vague direction of the entrance booth and sprint straight for the toilet block! A little faster than an Inca trots, if you get my drift. (By the way, thanks for your many kind enquiries about the state of our digestive systems. Things seem to have improved quite noticably since that first report you´ll be pleased to hear). Ingapirca itself was small, yet pleasant introduction to the acres and acres of Inca and other, pre-Colonial sites that we will shortly be seeing, most notably in Peru. First impressions, though, were that they were damned skilled rock carvers. Not just with the immaculately-shaped masonry blocks that require no mud or plaster to keep their ceremonial buildings standing, but also the number of other rock sculptures they seemed to do simply for fun - turtles, thrones, giant faces carved out of hillsides etc. This is all getting a tad on the long side so I´ll break off here and, for anyone still awake, I´ll cover the beautiful colonial city of Cuenca, legwaxing in Vilcabamba and our border crossing into Peru in a separate email. Hasta pronto amigos.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

Answers

Bill Bryson is alive and well and has the shits in Equador.

Lovely posting Nick, I'm green with envy.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

At least that's all your green with ;))

Sounds fun....if you like dodgy music ;))

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

Just to clarify, it's not my travel tales. It's Loony Toon wrote this.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2001