Chugchilan was a highlight of the trip. We set out on horseback for a day long "cloud forest" trek. A cloud forest is (obviously) a forest in the clouds - we were already a quite a high altitude and went up a very steep, winding track on the horses to the top of the nearby mountain and the descended into the cloud covered forest.
We are not experienced horsefolk - and our horses didn't seem to interested in the trip and needed constant prodding to move along. Their names were Linda, Francesca and Maria. They were of varying ages but not young (but not old in horse terms, Jo assured me)and our guide Bernardo follwed behind with a little rope whip making "get along, roll 'em up" noises. The horses had made this trip a thousand times and didn't like to be steered very much - they also liked to follow a pecking order, in which mine was the last and every time I tried to overtake she snorted and stopped then locked in step at the rear of the others.
We were accompanied by a Parisian mathematics proffessor named Laurent, whom we had also met in passing in Otovalo. As most travellers know on the "lonely planet" backpacker circuit there are many others doing roughly the same trip and you meet up quite often on the way. For those travelling alone this can be a great way to keep safe and cut costs by sharing - for us it was pleasant to see a familiar face from time to time though we made a point of not joining up on any one elses itineray as we liked to make changes at short notice.
Once we had decended into the forest we dismounted and tied the horses up before walking along a partly covered trail through the forest. The guide was very interesting an information - he spoke only Spanish, which by now we were (with the help of a phrase book and dictionary) understanding a bit of. Laurent acted as translater we both impressed and feeling a little inadequate to have a native french man translating Spanish into English for us. Though it became quite a regular thing - later we had some interesting situations of multilingual groups. I'll write more about it later - but on one trip a Belgian couple were translating in French to a French Canadian couple who translated to us in English. Coincidently The Belgians were having side conversations in Dutch with a couple from Utrecht who also joined in the conversatin in English.
Dinner at the cloud forest hostal was again very pleasant as we shared a table with an English couple from South Hampton who had retired and were sailing around the world. This was their fifth year underway already. They had joined up for this trip with a man of Greek origin with a heavy English accent (I assumed he had met them on the way). There was also a very pleasant Spanish couple from Barcelona. The husband was a keen sailor and very jealous of the English couple.
The told us some interesting stories of thier various trips - including sailing through the islands in Patagonia and mooring off shore for a few days when the weather got bad. They commented on how British nautical maps from the 1800's were more accurate then the GPS they had with them.
