We dragged ourselves away from Le Rendez-Vous and jumped on one of the very regular buses bound for Loja. In fact they leave every 15mins and cost $1.30 a ticket for the 1hr 20mins ride. Once there we jumped in a taxi to take us to Hotel Metropolitana in the centre of town; a bit 1970’s meets hospital but perfectly adequate at $24 for an en-suite room. I was going to say double but all the rooms (we had a good nosey through open doors!) have multiple numbers of beds in them. We had 2 doubles and a single and one room looked like a small children’s ward with 6 beds lined up along the walls facing each other. Anyway we had cable TV in the room so Steve could watch his Champions League game!
Loja is a functional town but nice enough to wander around and we found all the locals to be a most friendly bunch. We tried some of the local empanadas and humitas and although we all know these words the recipes change as you travel through different areas and countries. As per every other town we’ve been in this one was also blessed with attractive squares plus Lourdes street has the best preserved colonial architecture. Loja as a town is locally renowned for its university and parks and isn’t a place on the gringo trail. As we were exploring we noticed an unusual number of people wearing their football colours mid-week plus there were merchandise sellers knocking about. We’d been hoping to catch a game at some point in our travels but hadn’t really fancied going to one in a big city where the grounds tend to be in dodgy areas. With our curiosity piqued it was time to find out more.
Before that we had chores to do. First we spent a small fortune sending a few postcards, then we did our breakfast and picnic marketing and rounded events off with a trip to the hairdressers. It’s easy for Steve he just has to point to the clippers and say numero uno but it was a little more challenging for me! With plenty of sign language we got there, I’m happy with the results and it only cost a couple of dollars. While Steve was waiting for me he picked up a local rag and gleaned that the yellow shirts we’d seen all day were the away fans of Barcelona from Guayaquil. They’ve totally ripped off Spain’s Barcelona’s badge and a quick internet search led us to discover they’re the Man U of Ecuador with fans all over the country. Being the biggest and most successful club would explain why the ‘away’ fans were driving delivery trucks, working in shops and painting buildings! It looked like Barcelona needed the 3 points if they were going to win the league yet again.
We walked down to the ground and were actually offered tickets on every street corner but we waited until we found a ticket booth. The ground only holds about 15 000 but tickets were still being sold and they ranged from $30 to $8 and only $2 for bairns. We bagged a couple of $8 that would give us a spot on the terracing behind the home end. On wandering back to Independencia Plaza we found the Barcelona fans had amassed with much flag waving, chanting and singing. With both sets of fans living and working alongside each other there was a calm, fun atmosphere. As we found out for ourselves a couple of hours later going to the match is very much a family event. Despite kick-off not being until 8pm entire families were there including toddlers and babes in arms with both sets of fans being mixed.
That said the ‘singing’ fans had their sections with the away fans taking up the entire end behind their goal and the local fans only filling the area under the electronic advertising board at the opposite end. Mind you, you’ve got to hand it to the Loja fans they love a good sing song and didn’t stop for 90mins regardless of the performance on the pitch. I have to say the football wasn’t of the highest standard but then again we’ve seen worse. With the Malaysian national team winning the prize for the worst performance on a pitch that we’ve ever seen. There were lots of long balls forward and hit and hope shots from the home team. However, there were moments of skill and Barcelona went 1-nil up through a scrappy goal line scramble. Then they had a player sent off and the team, especially the goalie, displayed some spectacularly blatant time wasting. The goalie was eventually shown a yellow card but in all honesty the ref should have shown it to him twice. It was actually embarrassing watching him clowning around.
Loja went for it in the second half and had the bulk of the possession and chances but they just couldn’t get the ball in the back of the net. Their failure to convert their numerous chances meant they finished the game empty-handed and left them near the relegation zone. The fun didn’t end there; at the final whistle there was all sorts of kerfuffle on the pitch. First of all some bloke in a tracksuit was red carded and the ref had to police escorted down the inflatable tunnel as water bottles were raining down on him. All of this along with the flares, fireworks and orchestrated singing was just what we’d expected from a match in South America. Luckily we’d stumbled upon a game without anger and animosity, in a town where we could walk to the ground and all at a cost of a mere fiver. Great stuff.
The next morning we were up’n’atem ready to spend the day in Parque Nacional Podocarpus about 10kms out of town. To make sure we had plenty of time we decided to jump in a taxi to take us there but on hindsight we should have just hopped on a Vilcabamba bound bus. Anyway we didn’t and were charged $12 to take us to the ranger’s station within the park boundaries. However, when we reached the gate 8 ½ kms from the ranger’s hut we found it firmly locked so had to abandon the taxi. The cheeky monkey still charged us the full amount but really we think the fare should have been $10 maximum. We’d read that it cost $10 each to enter the park but there wasn’t a soul in sight to give our money to. Then Steve noticed that the sign board said free admission – result!
We walked the 8 ½ kms along the track to the park proper where once again there was no one in sight. Luckily there was enough information on the boards for us to be able to set off on the Los Miradores loop track independently. The path was very clear therefore easy to follow and there was basic information every kilometre. Although the track was only 5kms long it took us 3 hours to complete as it was pretty steep and a bit of a scramble at times. Initially the path went steeply up to the first lookout point and from there it followed a narrow ridge that worked its way up to the highest lookout. We were virtually rock climbing at times and with being in the cloud it was very slippery in places. The ridge we followed was so narrow that at times it was no more than a couple of meters across. The clouds parted enough for us to be able to look down over Loja on one side of the ridge and glance back in the direction of Vilcabamba over the opposite side.
We had the entire park to ourselves and only saw a couple of vehicles as we were walking back down the track to the main road. Granted the weather wasn’t brilliant but then again we were in cloud forest so it didn’t come as a surprise and we’d put on our wet weather gear. Back at the main road we didn’t have to wait long for a bus and the ride back to town only cost $1. With the park now being free we’d had a great day out in a lovely forested park, walked over 20kms without needing a guide and had only spent about a tenner. Obviously it would have been even better if we’d had blue skies as a backdrop to the mountains but I think we have to assume that we’re going to see more and more cloud from now on. The main disappointment for me was the lack of wildlife; yes there were lots of pretty and interesting plants and of course we didn’t expect to see the bears or tapirs that supposedly live in the area but where were all the birds? Ecuador is billed as one of the world’s hotspots for our feathered friends but we only heard the odd one. That said it’s a lovely park and well worth the stopover in Loja which is a calm, safe town
