Hello all again!
The trek from Quito to Bogota proved to be a long but enjoyable one with several highlights.
I didn't find Quito all that inspiring but spent a rainy day there getting affairs in order before my departure. I headed up to the 'Mitad del Mundo' - the small town located on the Equator. There were some pretty interesting museums there, a big monument and a big line... took me back to a primary school class where one of my teachers convinced one of my classmates that the equator was a physical line that ran the entire circumference of the globe, oceans and all.
I had intended to head straight to Otavalo from there which turned out to be a little bit of a trip - luckily a local woman took me under her wing and onto a couple of buses headed the right way. I would've been pretty annoyed if I had lugged my pack around for the first 2/3's of the day only to have to head back to Quito!
Otavalo turned out to be one of my favourite places during the trip. The town itself was really nice; tourism is abundant enough to have all one's needs but does not strangle the town like in other places. There's a great town square there with music played all day, plenty of seating space and free public wifi - not a bad service in a 3rd world country.
Whilst the town of Otavalo did not have a lot of attractions itself, it was right in the middle of a whole heap of walks and outdoor activities. My first afternoon I took a 2 hour walk to see some local falls which were quite small but very picturesque all the same. The following morning I headed out to a nearby town called Quiroga. From there I walked around Lake Cuicocha which is a lake formed in a dormant volcano just outside of town. The walk was at times extremely difficult but very rewarding with some spectacular views both in the foreground and into the distance. Toward the end of the walk I 'misplaced' the track and ended up walking through a local village, amongst which was a family who had just started butchering a cow. They were more than happy to have a chat and a photo - I hadn't seen their technique in tying the cow for dressing before.
I finally got into Quiroga and headed for Cotacachi which is a town well known for its leatherwork. If you're in the market for leather handbags, boots or jackets then Cotacachi is the place for you. The one main street of stores probably had close to 40 leather shops with craftmanship varying from poor to absolutely perfect. Unfortunately I had neither the bag space, funds or inclination to indulge in some of the latter so had to enjoy looking only.
Day three in Otavalo I had booked a guided hike up Fuyu Fuyu - another volcanic eminence, this time a little closer to Otavalo and in the Laguna Mojando district. As it turned out it was just the guide and I which was great fun. Claudio was a local with a sense of humour. Watching him start the walk in a jumper, two jackets, jeans and big heavy boots I thought the walk would be pretty simple. Wrong. The track was completely unpaved, being only a dirt pad carved out by previous walkers amongst speargrass. There had been ample rain in recent days ensuring that the trail was therefore also a quagmire at best and a small creek at worst. On top of this, it turns out our little 2km jaunt also climbed just over 700m in altitude which resulted in a pretty daunting angle at times!
After an hour or so of walking I had worked up a complete lather of sweat whilst Claudio casually removed his first jacket and announced he was warming up. An hour or so later we had reached the summit and enjoyed lunch there while the clouds blew past - the view varying in the meantime from nothing to a quite grand view of the lakes. We slipped and slid the entire 2km down, at the end of which I was covered in mud from head to toe. Then was the 18km bike ride into town, all downhill over cobblestone which was good fun and a good way to finish the walk.
That afternoon I headed up to the Parque del Condor (self explanatory name) to have a look at some birds. There were some awesome eagles, hawks, owls and, of course, condors there. I have to say the eagles were probably the most impressive for looks, but the condors were absolutely massive! It is little wonder that the Incans assumed they had some spiritual capacity, they must've stood nearly 1.5m - I didn't get to see one spread its wings though.
So very pleased with my stopover in Otavalo, I finally made tracks for Bogota. I took the initial 15 hours or so on the first day, crossing the border uneventfully and then finishing up in a town called Cali. I arrived in at around 2am and caught a bus out at 10am so I'm afraid I can't tell you much about Cali, other than two bus services it offers. En route there though I befriended an Ecuadorian who very patiently chatted to me in Spanish, explaining as much as I could understand about his dairy cows in coastal Ecuador. The people were so, so friendly there! After the very slow trip to Bogota (winding through the hills of banana and sugar crops) I had some locals help me out at the bus terminal there to find my way into town as well. Throughout the 9 weeks, and particularly in the last few, the hospitality of the locals was unlike anything I can imaging being commonplace in Australia.
The one disconcerting thing about the bus trip to Bogota was the onboard speedometer. For some reason they had a screen displaying our speed constantly running in LED next to the TV. Not only that, but at speeds up to 65, it was in green, then up to 75 was orange and then finally at 80 and above the display turned an extremely ominous red! I'm not sure what the point of all that fear-mongering was but we got there safe and sound all the same.
Bogota also had a limited chance to impress, with only 2 nights spent there, but it did not fail! I met up with Andy and Lizzy on the first day. First on the agenda was organising football tickets for the evening. We were again blessed with wonderful hospitality of the locals and, after much ado, finally got ourselves some tickets. We then had a look around the Gold Museum which was absolutely fantastic - one of the best museums of the trip. It is one of the world's biggest gold museums and has an absolutely incredible array of gold works of the pre-Incancs and Incans on show. Highly recommended!
By the time we had finished at the museum it was time to head to the football. We arrived bright and early, about 1.5hrs before the game, to find seats and get settled. The crowd gradually wound up, without packing out the stadium, and the noise built. By the time kickoff started the stadium was about half full with lots of noise particularly from the northern and southern ends. The soccer was good quality (in my humble opinion) with great skills, good organisation and a fairly open game only mildly hindered by the very wet field and a few slips.
After a few missed chances from the home team Millionarios (home team), Tolima scored against the run of play. We were then left with a very tense second half in which one Millionarios goal was disallowed, a couple more were missed before finally they were able to equalise. The crowd went beserk and the enthusiasm was absolutely infectious. Unfortunately they were unable to secure the win but it was an awesome game all the same!After a few beers at the Bogota Brewing Company (mandatory) we headed in for a quiet night.
The final day of the trip started out with reasonable weather - I headed up the Teleferico, a cable car up a hill on the outskirts of Bogota, to see the Fallen Christ statue and a view of Bogota. Being a Sunday there was a lot going on at the top of the hill (they run regular services there) but the Fallen Christ statue was less than amazing. The view was OK and it was worth the ride but Sugar Loaf, Rio de Janeiro was far more impressive.
I booked a bike tour of the city for the middle of the day. The tour started well aside from snapping a brake cable - the city has lots to see including the world's largest emerald trading centre, several areas of amazing history primarily revolving around Pablo Escobar and some awesome markets. My new juice mix, to be compared with the Especial con Malta of San Pedro market, Cusco, was a cocktail made out of a series of spirits, honey, fruits, and finally, live crabs, all blended up. I have absolutely no idea why, but it also had a banana-like taste to it... completely weird. The cocktail was supposed to do all kind of wonders, including being an aphrodisiac, but all I could think of was the miserable ending for those poor crabs!
Then... the rain came. And came, and came. It bucketed for an hour or so while we took shelter in a local fruit market. We finally decided to bite the bullet and make a dash for our next destination - the lunch restaurant. On arrival there we were all drenched and extremely cold. We finally finished up there and got to the bull fighting arena which also had some interesting history and was a cool piece of architecture. Interestingly, this year's mayor, much to the dismay of punters and politicians alike, has condemned bull fighting and is the first mayor in Bogota's history to refuse attendance to the bull fighting.
We finally got back to the shop, only a few metres from my hostel where they thankfully let me have a hot shower. I spent a lot of time and probably most of their hot water defrosting before packing up and heading to the airport!
Which is where I leave you for now. Next stop England. There is absolutely no way I can summarise the trip in total. I think the highlight, despite such amazing sights and places, remains the experiences in both culture and language. I would say my Spanish has bloomed to approximately 5% fluent and the cultural experiences were awesome - helped in no small part by having contacts like the Lanhams in Cusco and a great string of good luck in meeting wonderful people throughout the continent. This is particularly satisfying for me as although there remains so, so much to see, it was the culture and the language I had really hoped to experience and what we had was a fantastic taster for return trips to come.
I hope you've enjoyed the blog - like I've said on numerous occasions the story may have been better told with photos but even then I think the vast majority of times even that would have fallen short.
So until next time - possibly on some romp through Europe, in the words of the wonderful Tigger, I will say TTFN - ta ta for now!
