Phew! I'm sick of taking buses!

01' 00” Ica-Pisco
00' 20” Pisco-Chincha
01' 00” Chincha-Canete
04' 00” Canete-Lima
14' 00” Lima-Chiclayo
09' 00” Chiclayo-Tumbes
11” 00' Huaquillas-Ambato
04” 30' Ambato-Tena

Equals 44 hours 50 minutes of bus travel in the last 5 days (route here). With just a quick jog across the bridge from Aguas Verdes to Huayquillas and here we are in Ecuador.


During our trip from Ica to Tena, we visited NGOs in Pisco, Chincha, Canete, and Chiclayo. The NGOs all agreed that our documentary needs more context as well as some statistics to help people contextualize what our message is all about. We let those thoughts settle as we slept, tumbled, and rolled onto each new destination.

When we got to Ecuador, many things changed. Prices got a lot higher (the cost of living in Quito is about half that of New York City but of course the jungle is much cheaper), street vendors started selling a whole lot of fried plantains (here is a recipe for corbiche, a typical platter here), and the buses started to make new stops at drug control stations (the wikipedia article about the Ecuador-Columbian relations isn't too detailed). At these drug control stations, the luggage doors on the bus get opened up, people sniff around and check random bags, and sometimes they come onboard to check the bathrooms. Along the way, though, this man-on-duty found something unexpected...


Can you guess what that is? If you said, “squirrel in a cage,” then you'd be right! A very cool and collected mother let her two lovely children bring two squirrels in little cages on our 11 hour bus ride from the border to their home in the mountain-town Ambato. We couldn't hear what was going on from where we were sitting, but he shook his head like he was about to throw the poor things out. Somehow, the mother was very charismatic or the children looked so stricken with sadness (or some combination of both) that the soldier let them have it. As the bus rolled North through its first few stops in little towns, we saw our first glimpse at the fields and fields of the banana trees of Ecuador, the blueblue sky, and the amazing clouds...


I guess greenery is pretty awesome when you've been living in a desert. Eleven hours and a few curves in the mountains later... we arrived in Ambato at midnight, and everything was dark.


The view in Ambato was amazing when we woke up the next morning though..

We took a break (and a shower!) in the ninth largest town of Ecuador Ambato which is home to 350,000 people. In the morning, we discovered that Ambato-ians like eggs, toast, warm milk, and guava juice in the morning with a big dose of the 9:30am World Cup Game (0-0). We packed at 10am and watched the World Cup (0-0). Bought our tickets at 10:30am and watched the World Cup go into overtime (still 0-0). Got on the bus and watched the World Cup (still 0-0). But as we left Ambato, the signal began to break up as they went into penalty kicks. Everyone was watching and waiting... breath held hoping that the bus would get a red light or something!


But we got to watch it all as Paraguay won 5-3 against Japan to move onto the quarter-finals. People in the bus were pretty excited. Neither Peru and Ecuador have teams in the world cup so I think it's all about South American pride. Anyways, we ascended some mountains, descended some mountains, and drove straight into the heart of the Oriente (video about oil- there are many perspectives on this if you are interested in hearing both sides, you should keep searchin... but this video of sights and sounds is less charged with opinions). Here are some pictures along the route, but it's hard to capture the breath-taking view in a moving bus without panaromic memory:

Tunnel through a mountain on the bus

We didn't know what to expect when we got to Tena, but we were both excited to finally see the sign after all the traveling.

According to an Ecuadorian who joined us for lunch when we arrived Tena, the region attracts a fair amount of tourists to go rafting on the rapids, sightseeing for animals in the jungle, etc. (Read more about Tena's main attractions here). This year, however, has been quite slow due to a recent flooding. We took a taxi to Kallari's office (one out of a million chance that a taxista would know? Or is Kallari much more popular than expected?).

We stopped in the office, but Uli wasn't there. We hadn't called ahead of time, but we thought we'd give it a shot. We found our place, laid down our bags, and basically called it a day. Dona Vilma (the owner of the hostel) cooked us an amazing dish called chambolte, and we drank tea as she told us the story of how Kallari began.... but more on that later.

The bugs are singing outside as I write, and the humidity is thinning. The hammocks outside are rocking in the rain storm, and the frogs are hopping in and out of a puddle outside. It is quiet enough to hear most everything despite the occasional passing of a car on the busy road nearby.


PS This is what we've dubbed the hairy tree:

Any guesses as to what the foliage creeping all over it is?