Ecuador - a land of extremes

 Once again Ive left it too long so Í have a billion things to say but wont for the sake of all our sanities.

Here is a quick round up of the trip so far ...

countries: 3

things the name ´dermot´ have been mistaken for : German, thermos and Delmod

number of children who have puked near me on a bus: 3

numbers of hours on a bus: dont get me started.

casualties: one kindle, one pair of sandals, several things we have forgotten in hostals but havent noticed they´re gone yet.

 Anyhoo...

I was pretty surpised at how different Colombia and Ecuador are.

The first thing that hit us was how much more índigenous Ecuador is. Indigenous people constitute 25% of the population here and another 60% are mestizos (mixed race). Although they generally dont identify themselves with the indigenous groups. Many of the indigenous people still wear traditional dress, even those that live in the cities. They have a really striking look, especially the children, many of whom have amazing rosy cheeks that make them look like dolls.

Another thing that is different is the scenery. You cant move in ecuador for volcanoes - many of which are still active and the resulting landscape is the most dramatic i have ever seen. green and brown craggy mountainous countryside that sometimes looks  like scotland (complete with thistles), gives way to huge canyons and volcanoes so high they have permanent snow on top even though we are literally bang on the ecuator. All of this is dotted with small bungalow farms and ugly breezeblock towns and villages.

Finally, the graffitti has changed - in colombia it was all leftist pro bolivarian stuff - but the only political things we´ve seen here are anarchist.

To get here we endured a 20 hour journey from Popoyan to the small market time of Otovalo on ´the worst road in colombia'. Blergh.

After a short but sweet stop in Otovalo we went to Quito. We had no real intention of staying long in Quito as we have both decided that the smaller towns and villages are much more interesting and friendly than the big  cities, but dermot needed to finish his application.

And we didnt bother staying any longer because in the two days that we were there we met 5 people who had been robbed that weekend! One had chilli sauce thrown in her face in a church to rob her bag, another couple had dog turd thrown in thier face and the last one was threatened with a knife for his camera in broad daylight!

Now ive heard that the architecture is nice and everything but it would have to be pretty fucking spectacular for me to risk getting dog shit thrown in my face for it! (sorry grandma)

Although obviously this was just particularly bad luck as we have loads of friends who have been to Quito and been absolutely fine -  i didnt really fancy walking about on my own so we just hung out on the roof terrace in the hostal which was actually really nice anyway as we got to meet loads of different people.

Thankfully the other places we have been - Mindo and Quilotoa were much friendlier! Both are tiny villages next to nature reserves. The villages themselves are both building sites - we get the impression that ecuador is preparing for some serious tourism. But the sites were amazing. Mindo is in a cloud forest where we went zip lining with two very bored ecuadorians. We also went on a ´frog concert´ night walk to see some of the wildlife. Ive never seen so many fire flies in my life! And we saw a microorganism that make logs glow in the dark. very wierd.

Ecuador has the highest concentration of different species of wildlife in the world. Its a tiny country that combines mountains, coast and rainforest. Unfortunately it also has the highest rates of deforestation in the world. Having seen the lack of infrastucture and the low qaulity of housing in the cities, I can imagine that its a huge temptation not to start opening up the rest of the country to the multinationals to tap the billions of dollars of natural resources sitting directly under all this nature. The current president suggested that the rest of the world should pay Ecuador not to do it - as ultimately it is in our benefit that all that oil stays under the ground. That suggestion makes a lot more sense to me now that I'm here, although the fact that Ecuadors government is almost comically corrupt adds a depressing complication to the state of affairs.

In Quilotoa we stayed on the rim of a volcano - 4000 metres up. The volcano itself has a lake inside. it really was the most stunning environment to be in. We didnt quite manage to do the 7 hour trek round it though. We stayed in the indigenous run village in Hostal Pachamamma. Nearly everyone in the village wore traditional dress and spoke Quichua between themselves. Many of the older woman didnt speak much spanish at all.

Apparently the current president spent a couple of years there in his youth, so there is alot of development going on there, incuding schools and hospitals. Nevertheless, it was clear from our short stay that the levels of literacy and numeracy amongst the adults is quite low.
I beleive that only primary school education is currently compulsory in Ecuador, and those who do continue to secondary tend to go to private schools ($20 a term) as the quality of teaching in the state schools is not high. The current president is trying to resolve this by making further qualifications for teachers compulsory - unfortunately he seems to be doing this in a bit of a hamfisted way. As this reform has left hundreds of teachers out of work, just before the start of term and only a few months before an election!

The family we were staying with went to a niece's birthday that night - so we were left to sit around the old wood burner with the other guests; two french, one czech, one kazakstanian(?) and an ecuadorian from Cuenca. We switched between english and spanish all night and swapped stories and advice. The guy from Cuenca was really interesting and explained a lot about the systems in Ecuador and the laws that have been put into place to preserve and encourage indigenous culture. These kinds of nights are turning out to be one of my favourites things about this trip - just meeting all kinds of people and swapping stories.