This morning Rachel, Sally and I splurged and took a taxi from Latacunga to ‘Emerald Lake’, an old volcanic crater with a beautiful, still, jewel like lake in the centre.     We perched on the rim and looked down.     What surprised us was how much of the slopes of the crater were being cultivated.     There were many paths running down and along the slopes, but no houses.     Perhaps no one is quite that brave – or the slopes are just too steep.       An icy wind whipped across the rocks just below us, rippling the surface of the lake, and sending shivers down my spine.  It looked so cold down there.  We were at least in the sun, which provided some small amount of warmth, but not enough to entice us to stay, and certainly none of us had the least desire to descend into that cold, upside-down cone.  I wondered if anyone ever swam in the lovely looking Emerald Lake.    Our taxi-driver demanded...

Sally, Rachel and I are still happily traveling together, now in Santa Ana de los Cuatro Rios de Cuenca, commonly known, for obvious reasons, as simply Cuenca.  The ‘Cuatro Rios’ in Cuenca’s more formal name refer to the four rivers that flow into the basin in the mountain-scape in which Cuenca is nestled.  These are the Tomebamba (the largest), Yanuncay, Tarqui and Machangara.  The rivers and the numerous parks along them make Cuenca a lovely place to visit – it’s refreshingly cool, green and very clean.  There are lots of old colonial buildings and countless cathedrals.  It appears to be a prosperous town with many suburbs filled with stately homes and haciendas, most with red-tiled rooves, and pretty garden courtyards full of shrubs and flowers.  There are plenty of busy, colourful markets where mostly Indian vendadores sell fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, clothing and straw hats.  All in all a great place to visit,...

The Ingapirca ruins, the largest Incan ruins in Ecuador, are not far from Cuenca - easy to do in a day trip.  Sally, Rachel, and I were all keen to see them.  It seemed that the quickest and easiest way of getting there was to hitch, so we stood by the side of the road, with our arms out (they don’t use thumbs here like at home, just an arm lazily extended, vaguely in the direction you want to go).  We were picked up pretty quickly by a couple of guys in a pick up truck – although they were keen to have one of us ride up front with them, none of us felt like being ‘the one’, so we all jumped into the back as fast as we could, precluding any further negotiations.  The day was cloudy and cold, so Rachel and I huddled under my bright yellow plastic rain poncho while Sally snapped a photo.      Road on the way to the ruins, where we stopped to pick up another traveler, Michel.         Sally and Rachel with Miche...

Saraguro, more recent photo from Wikipedia; it was a little shabbier when I was there.... I’ve just said farewell to Rachel and Sally, who decided to fly from Cuenca to Peru to save time.  They want to see Macchu Picchu before they have to go back home, in just over a week.  It was a bit of a sad good-bye for all of us – we’d had a lot of fun together.  I’m still more keen to travel overland – by bus, truck or ‘other conveyance’.  I want to see the landscape, and experience more of the rural and remote areas, and peoples, of these countries.  As luck would Michel was heading overland to Peru as well, so we agreed to travel together.  He’s been traveling for quite a while in Latin and South America, is pretty fluent in Spanish, and because of his darker skin and eyes, can almost pass as a local.  He prefers to hitch rides with locals – wanting to have more opportunities to interact with them, and to take advantage of whatev...

This morning Michel and I caught a ride from Saraguro to Loja with a group of three young Latinos, riding in the back of their pick up truck along with a rickety wooden table and four chairs.     We hung onto the table legs to keep it from rattling around on the bumpy dirt road.     I kept wishing the table was just a little bigger and higher so that it would act as a shelter from the chill and damp as we drove through the high, mist enveloped mountains.     There was enough water in that mist to make everything soggy.     When it really started to rain in earnest I took cover under my trusty yellow poncho, trying to keep me and my pack as dry as possible.     Michel’s hat and thick woollen poncho gave him pretty good protection; in any event he didn’t care much for my plastic poncho and wasn’t interested in my offers to share.     About half-way to Loja we finally descended into a valley, that was somewhat warmer and drier. ...

 

Michel and I set out for Peru yesterday.     It was a grueling all day journey.     We had to go back to Loja to get a bus from there to Macara, an all day ride.     We got to Macara fairly late, and although there’s precious little there we did manage to find a cheap, but clean, place to stay for the night.                                                       Macara:  this is not the pension where we stayed! And we crossed the border yesterday, uneventfully.  Peruvian border officials don’t seem as concerned about gringo travelers as they are in Ecuador or Columbia – they didn’t ask about our plans or whether we had onward tickets.   And so, we are in Peru!     Early this morning we headed for Chiclayo, the largest town in northern Peru, and a bit of a travel...