"Fish Don´t Get Sick"

We´ve been on the run through Ecuador for almost a week and half now and are currently in Baños, which literally means bath or bathroom. Needless to say there are many hot pools here which we are going to head to as soon as I finish this blog (jealous?). I´ll write more about our adventures here in Baños at a later date, let me first start at the start which was last Saturday when we left Quito for the sunny locale of Canoa.

We began by catching a 9 hour bus to the town of Bahia de Caraças located on the thin peninsular on the pacific coast. Labelled as an "ecocity" we expected big things but unfortunately we didn´t get much chance to explore. We got in late on Saturday night and as we have discovered, apart from a few rickshaws doing the laps nothing happens anywhere in Ecuador on Sunday mornings. We made our way via ferry, moto-rickshaw and ute (I was jammed on the back with 12 others as we swerved round potholes and passed busses at high speed) to sunny little Canoa. A very chilled out and easy place to visit, many tourists seem to get "trapped" in Canoa and spend the rest of their travel time lying in hammocks, surfing and eating delicious fresh seafood. Almost every building in town was made of bamboo, the dirt streets were full of sand and fishing boats lined the near end of the beach. There seemed to be a strong contingent of "gringos" who had married locals and settled down, which made it quite an easy tourist destination. Unfortunately it also made me forget at times that I was in Ecuador.

Tessa and I had a surf lesson which was a lot of fun if not terribly successful. We both got up on our giant floaty surfboards on a few occasions but after an hour or so we were beat and headed for some hammock time. The highlight of our stay in Canoa was hiking through coastal forest (complete with the racket of nearby howler monkeys) to a beach north of Canoa with some folk from our hostel. The beach was beautiful and deserted save for a group of fishermen camped up halfway down the beach. They spend a week at a time camping out at the beach and fishing from their boat in the mornings. They shared some freshly caught crab with us as we sat with them under a tree sheltering from the sweltering sun. We spent the rest of the day exploring the rock pools at the end of the beach and swimming in the sea. A very relaxed day.

I should mention at this stage that two days after we began our travels in earnest, we were subject to our first theft. I had (foolishly) left my beloved Vans shoes outside our room in Canoa along with everyone elses swim gear and shoes. When we returned from the pub that night someone had carefully removed my smelly socks and had swiped my shoes, but everything else was strangely untouched. More of an inconvenience than anything else, I think I´ll be glad if that is the worst thing that happens to us on this trip.

Unlike many we managed to break free from the wierd vibe that traps so many travellers and we took three buses and a ferry to Puerto Lopez. Despite what we had heard from other travellers, when we arrived in Puerto Lopez, we found a vibrant, if a little dirty, beach town complete with intense beach football, hordes of bobbing blue fishing boats and streets packed with motorbike rickshaws. Its common for visitors here to take the rickshaws out to one of two sights out of town, so whenever we walked anywhere near the centre of town we would be harangued by multitudes of rickshaws offering to take us there.

On Thursday morning we met some folks from our hostel who were heading out on a tour to Isla Salango. We had planned to do a similar but more expensive tour to Isla de la Plata (the poor man´s Galapagos) but had decided we were too cheap even for that. The tour to Isla Salango was heaps of fun, we went out on a small fishing boat with a couple of local fishermen and caught a pile of fish, the smaller ones were made into cerviche (a tasty lemony raw fish soup) on the boat and the bigger ones we took home for dinner.

After a spell of snorkling around the island we spotted a huge fish flapping and floating among the rocks and we hauled it aboard. We asked the captain if the fish would be safe to eat as it might be sick, the captain replied "Fish don´t get sick". Apparently... Anyway, it seemed as though the fish had been bashed against the rocks and was now ultimately destined for our bellies.

Saturday saw us leave the coast and return to the highlands in Cuenca, a city which we quickly fell in love with but with which we ultimately had some poor travellers luck. Cuenca is a maze of cobbled streets, colonial buildings, and busy markets which give the city a lively atmosphere. It is also the cleanest city we have seen in Ecuador. Unfortunately when we got up early on Sunday morning to explore some nearby Inca ruins, we discovered they had been closed by a protest for the last week and because it was Sunday, everything else in the city was closed... all day. Hence we wandered a somewhat deserted city peering through fences at museums for most of the day.

On Monday we resolved to get out and about and head to the nearby Cajas National Park with a Swiss couple we had met at the school. The park is a highland moor with beautiful lakes and dramatic cliffs. Unfortunately after about 20 mins of walking we started to get well and truly rained out and had to abandon our planned hike after only two hours. This was topped off the next day by our bus trip to Baños taking two and a half hours longer than we expected. Yikes. So despite loving Cuenca, I left feeling a little like our stay there had been less than successful.

I´ll write a bit about our time here in Baños soon. Stay tuned.