Trip to The Coast

We got an 8 day pass from our dentist while crowns and bridges were being prepared at the lab so we decided to head for the coastal area. It is quite a downhill ride from 8000 - 9000 ft to water level. The trip to Quito was uneventful but to get the bus to the coast we had to take a taxi from one side of Quito to the other as the terminal north and south are kept miles apart to keep hundreds of buses from jamming up the streets - very smart but inconvenient for the traveller. We have no concept in Canada of the number of buses on the road as we compare the terminals to Greyhound. Both terminals are five acres minimum and there must be 100 buses at a time coming and going in each.

We got the bus to Pendagalis on the coast and as it was a scheduled 7 hour trip we decided to put our computer up on the luggage rack above our seat rather than holding it on our laps. Big mistake as the rack started slightly behind us and it was out of our sight range. We covered the case up with our jackets but someone on the bus must have seen the case and on the trip slipped the computer out of it. This was annoying enough but they also took my battery charger and download connector for my camera. It looks like I have a minimum of pictures to take from now on as my camera only takes a rechargeable battery and there is no chance of replacing it here. Also I can´t put any more photos on the blog until we get home.

The bus trip was miserable through all kinds of heavy construction. At one point we came across a crew building some concrete retaining walls like on the Sea to Sky and they were using back yard cement mixers and wheelbarrows! A lot of the new highways are being built of concrete in quite a wide 2 lane with with a shoulder so I certainly hope these are not being poured the same way!

We got to our destination and found a hotel looking out over a long sandy beach. In the morning we tried to have breakfast but the restaurant wasn´t open but one of the owners came in and greeted us in very good English and got us a cup of coffee. It turned out that she had taken her business admin in Toronto. We explained our problem to her about the computer and she very kindly offered to come to the police station to fill out a report, something we couldn´t have accomplished without her as the police understood zero English and looked like he had about the same number of brains. This completed we caught the bus to Canoa down the coast where we wanted to stay as Pendagalis was horrible.

We arrived in the dark as the trip was very slow with all the constuction and stops along the way. The Inn we had chosed was half open and wasn´t very good (great website though - you can´t always go by them). We got the taxi to take us to another one called the Hosteria Canoa which was wonderful. A few rooms in a building and the rest were cabins spread down to an endless sandy beach with the surf rolling in. We decided to walk along the beach to town which was a very long walk for me and it took a grande cerveza to recover!

We now ran into a problem that we hadn´t known about or anticipated. This was a big long weekend holiday and all the places were either full or they were looking for 4 day bookings. We decided to get to Bahia and hoped we could get the bus back to Quito. The bus goes to San Vincente and the you have to take a ferry to Bahia. Well we anticipated a Hollyburn or equivalent but the ferries turned out to be 20 passenger small and low boats. I had quite an adventure getting on and off the ferry but accomlished it with the help of some strong armed crew members. They now have a long causeway under constuction. The vehicle ferry I am sure is an old US army landing craft that had a freeboard of about 18 inches.

Bahia is a beautiful small town on a point with sheltred ocean on one side and wonderful surf rolling in on the other. We fluked into a nice hotel with a funny little room and wandered down to the restauant for coffee. To our surprise this side of the hotel looked over the open ocean with a great seawall for miles and a few super hotels right on the ocean side. We decided the bar at one down the street must have a perfect surf view so we went there and enjoyed a cerveze with the surf splashing up 20ft from us. The hotel was absolutely first class with all facilities for guests - I inquired at the desk about room prices and a nice double room was only 85 - 350 in Tofino.

                                                    The seawall and beach in Bahia

                                           The best little cerveza joint on the seawall

That evening we treated ourselves to a blowout of the budget dinner and a bottle of wine and watched the sun set on the surf. As the Mastercard ads say, ´priceless´.

We had made a bus booking as soon as we arrived so we regretably left Bahia and faced the long bus rides back to Ibarra. A great trip but very tiring as again there was tons of costruction along the way and a total of 13 hours on the bus - numb bums all around!

Visit to Mindo

We had the weekend free so we decided to head for Mindow, one of the bird areas of Ecuador.

There are no highways across to Mindo from Ibarra so we had to go all the way to Quito and then catch another bus. We read that there was only one bus from Quito to Mindo in the afternoon and that it might be crowded so we thought that we should get to the terminal early- big mistake! The terminal is huge with many busses coming and going but the facilities are very simple, one tiny refreshment stand, a toilet and 10 very hard steel slatted benches – very hard steel! About the time our backs and bottoms were giving out I looked in the small office where we bought our ticket and behold, some soft chairs with backs!

The bus ride down to Quito was uneventful, a four hour trip, $2.50 each. Two more hours to Mindo, $2.50 each. This country certainly moves by bus although there are lots of cars. The highway from Ibarra is very congested and they are widening it to four lanes for about 25K which is very necessary. Shops and homes along the way were built very close to the highway and consequently some have lost half of their building and the cutback is now right at their front door and there is a 5ft drop! Many businesses don’t seem to have any access to the highway for their customers so I hope they get some compensation. Cambie Street, ring a bell?

Some of the construction along the highway - note the house behind cut in half and the modern back yard cement mixers for highway construction!

We wound our way out of Quito and started to climb. Ahead we could see clouds on the hilltops and the higher we climbed the thicker the clouds and mist got. We started to wind our way through a curving valley with high hills all around. For the net 30K we twisted and turned through the hills and we must have done 20 complete u’s and you could look up or down and see the road several times. The valley below was always several hundred feet down.
The rainy mist clouded in more and more and the jungle growth got thicker and thicker and more tropical. By the time we got to Mindo the road was soaking wet and mud puddles everywhere. Apart from a light rain in Ibarra, this was the first we have seen.

A charming local American lady met the bus and welcomed us. She asked if we wanted a taxi which we did and called one for us. Well, we have been used to the shinny yellow fleets of all the cities we have been in so it was a bit of a shock when a beat up old car rolled up and she said, ‘here’s your taxi’. We got in and managed to make the short run to our hotel although arrival was always in doubt. After a few days here we came to learn that taxis here come in all shapes and sizes from four door pick-ups to sedans – none of them marked ‘taxi’.

The nice morning that was predicted for the next day arrived so with the camera charged up, off we went to the famous butterfly dome. It was up a road that was very rough and had potholes so large we thought the truck might disappear! The facility is really wonderful and is very professionally run by American educated Ecuadorians. They have thousands of amazing butterflies that they have bred in the dome and they have them in all stages of hatching.

The butterflys are either fed in these colourful sacks filled with honey or with sliced open papayos dipped in honey.

While we were there, several large groups of school kids came through and the owners are trying to educate the young people on Ecology and conservation – very good and very necessary.
In one area of the facility there are tables and you can relax and get drinks and snacks. We ordered a ‘grande cerverza’, (a quart) and watched about 30 – 40 hummers of all sizes and colours fight over two feeders. I took some movies of them feeding but unfortunately there is a mesh screen between the tables and feeder so they are not very clear.

Mindo is very rough and unfinished with many roads unpaved so consequently they are a sea of mud. You start to walk down a sidewalk and after a hundred yards it ends and you are back in the mud. You talk about a town that depends on tourism, I doubt the population is over 800 and there are at least 25 hostels, one big hotel and 100 small cafes. Most of are quite junky but there is one French restaurant on the main street and either the owner or head waiter (a tall grey haired man of 50) stands at the door dressed in a navy uniform and looking very aloof and never greeting anyone! Quite a contrast to the rest of the places. The meals were about $8.00 which is quite expensive for here. We didn’t ever see anyone in there but there he stood in all his ellegence – he must be French!

We discovered a restaurant/hostal owned by an American family who roast and brew local coffee. Naturally, being coffee addicts and sick of drinking instant, we made a beeline there and got several fixes! They also make incredible brownies and chocolates and both of the owners show the obvious result of patronizing the house products too regularly! I don’t think they are going to make their fortune there.

Mary found a comfortable spot to relax in the gazebo of our hotel waiting for the rain to go away.

The second day the rain continued to come down like in Tofino and we got tired of wading through muddy streets (all our pants covered in it) so we cut our visit a day short and bussed back to Ibarra. The bus ride back was an adventure as both drivers thought they were driving Mini Coopers, weaving around traffic and passing on blind hills and corners. The lady next to me crossed herself several times and I almost thanked her as I felt our safe arrival was always in question and we needed someone else looking out for us! Fortunately we got seats as after several stops along the way, the aisles were packed with people hanging on. Nice modern buses but unfortunately, the loud, ever present music or a very violent movie in dubbed in Spanish!