We've spent the last couple of weeks touring in the south of Ecuador, starting with a few days in the town of Cuenca.  This involved a bus journey first to Guayaquil, then another 3 hours to Cuenca.  The first part of the journey was over the flat lands of the Costa, but then we started the climb up into the Andes along a road which became quite rough at times, though with stunning views, then up through the clouds to the highland.

Cuenca, considered by many to be the most beautiful town in Ecuador, has narrow cobbled streets, a multitude of churches, a river valley reminiscent of the Yorkshire Dales and was located on the Inca highway from Cuzco to Quito.   The Inca city of Pumapungo at Cuenca had been built in imitation of Cuzco at the time when the Inca king had divided his kingdom between his two sons, Atahualpa and Huascar.  This division was one of the reasons why Pizarro had found it so easy to subjugate the Inca Empire; it was already debilitated by civil war.  We spent hours wandering around the museums, learning more of the culture and history of Ecuador and marveling at the ceramics with their geometric patterns and subtle colours.

One of the major industries of the town is the manufacture of Panama hats - a misnomer, as the hats were never made in Panama, but were sent there for the workers building the Panama Canal.  Cuenca also has a thriving embroidery tradition.  During the time of the Inca domination of Ecuador - admittedly only about 100 years - the production of high quality textiles was a state monopoly, carried out under the supervision of state functionaries.

One of the most interesting events was taking a guided tour of the Parque Nacional Cajas, through which we had travelled on the way from Guayaquil and which had reminded both of us of Scotland, with its myriad lochans, thin misty drizzle and dampness underfoot.  Our guide was extremely knowledgeable about the flora, fauna and geomorphology of the region, so I happily spent my time identifying terminal moraines, drumlins and the like.  Part of the walk took us through some quinua, or papertree, woodland.  This tree grows very slowly, only about one inch every five years, so some of those we saw were, our guide reckoned, about 2,000 years old.  It is rather like a juniper, but taller and with a reddish bark - very attractive.  Eddie also pointed out medicinal plants; one had lovely trumpet-shaped, drooping flowers which were a remedy for insomnia if dried leaves were put into a pillow, or for toothache if placed on the outside of the cheek.  You could also make a tea with the flowers, which were hallucinogenic.  Too much, however, could send you loopy permanently.

After our walk we were taken for lunch in a very attractive, chalet-like restaurant which, like many other places we found in the Andes, was a bit on the cool side, before going on to a nature reserve famed for its bird life.  Unfortunately the weather remained misty and damp, so the birds stayed at home.  However, we saw some lovely little orchids and other flowers, plus a derelict brewery which had been built by some Germans in 1915.

From Cuenca we took another bus first to El Tembo and then to the isolated community of Ingapirca, site of the most important architectural legacy of the Incas in Ecuador.  On the bus there we met an Ecuadorian student from Quito, Julia, who accompanied us for the rest of the day.  The site is quite large, overlooking the surrounding valleys, and the vestiges of walls can be seen, together with what has been designated as the Temple of the Sun, aligned east to west on an oval, upraised platform.  The stonework was mortarless, each rock fitted snugly against its neighbour.  On a walk around the site, we saw the Cara del Inca, a natural rock face which has the appearance of a man's face.  The booklet about the site, in Spanish, will - we hope - help us to improve the range of our vocabulary, which is a bit limited at the moment.

At Cuenca we became more aware of the different ethnic groups in Ecuador, some of whom can be recognised by the headgear worn by the women.  In La Libertad and Guayaquil, the women wore black homburg-type hats.  In Cuenca we saw white panama hats being worn.  In Ingapirca there were both brown and green homburgs together with white felt "boater" hats, with maroon or green velvet edgings and with white pompoms on the front.  These, I read, were worn by Cañari women.  These women also wore many-stranded bead necklaces.  Their short skirts are either gathered or pleated, with wonderfully intricate embroidery around the hems.  A jacket and cape are wrapped around the top half, whilst thick woollen stockings cover the lower legs.  They seem to love bright, deep colours - crimson, emerald green, magenta, purple, pillar box red, orange: not a pastel to be seen.  Most of the women wear their hair long, braided or tied back.

We pushed on to Riobamba along a road which was literally falling apart - landslips had covered it in places as the steep mountainsides followed gravity.  It was both hair-raising and exhilarating at the same time, the occasional pot hole causing the bus's suspension to bottom out. One in particular got shouts of Oh mi Dios!, and Merde! etc as the bus bottomed out then took off and bounced along down the road, followed by fits of nervous laughter.  They have a good sense of humour in Ecuador.  Still, we reached Riobamba safely and found ourselves a hostel near the centre.  All along the road there was evidence of agriculture, all of the work being done by hand.  It appeared that whole families turned out to work, even the little children trotting back and forth with bits and pieces.

We tried to go up Chimborazo - the furthest you can get away from the centre of the Earth, thanks to the equatorial bulge - but the weather was abominable; windy, sleet turning to rain and snow by turns, and not a thing to be seen through the mist.  Think Scotland in March and you'll know what I mean.  It was interesting, though, to see evidence of habitation even at this altitude of 4,600 metres.  The thin air made walking uphill very hard work, and even rolling over in bed can cause you to get out of breath at this altitude, if you are not used to it.  Llamas and alpacas were moved to pastures during the day and back into the corral at night, some vegetables were grown, and the women spun wool on drop spindles which was later woven into fabric.

Riobamba was an odd sort of place with no definable centre.  The market, however, was fascinating as people from the surrounding villages came down to sell their produce.  We bought a load of very sweet oranges called naranjillas - rather like a large, sweet clemantine.  However we stayed in a lovely hostal, the Hostal Oasis, where we were able to make our own coffee and socialise with all the other travellers - French, Dutch, English, American.  The view of Chimborazo on a clear day, though, was stunning, its top covered with snow.

We travelled to Baños initially just for the day; it's a two-hour bus ride from Riobamba down the eastern slopes of the Andes.  The valleys here are very deep, with the road clinging to the side and no such animal as a crash barrier.  Baños - Baths - is named for its thermal  springs, the result of the town being situated at the foot of the Tungurahua volcano.  This one is still active and evidence of the last eruption could be seen in the aftermath of the lahars - avalanches of mud - which had closed the roads around Baños and caused the town to be evacuated.  Although we could see a little smoke drifting from its summit, the volcano has been quiescent for about a year.

Baños is quite definitely a tourist town, but it is also a place of pilgrimage to pay homage at the shrine of Nuestra Señora de Agua Santa - Our Lady of the Holy Water.  The walls of the church are decorated with murals depicting the miracles which have been attributed to Nuestra Señora de Agua Santa, from the original man who had prayed to her when his horse stumbled on a log crossing a ravine to a whole family whose car plunged into the river and were unhurt. People who die in accidents around Baños are not mentioned, ie when Our Lady of the Holy Water has days off.

After the cold of the high altitudes, we decided a little warmth was called for, so we booked a three-day trip into the rainforest - the selvas - with a company called Rainforest Tour.  In addition, Andy decided to try white-water rafting. We stayed overnight in the hostal run by the company and were able to leave all our unnecessary stuff in their offices.  It turned out to be a real treat!  First we were equipped with plastic ponchos - in case it rained - and welly boots; sober black for me, bright yellow for Andy.  (Andy's been having trouble finding shoes in Ecuador to fit him.  In La Libertad, 43 is considered very large; Andy takes a 45!)  We had met two English lads, David and Al, the evening before and on the way to Puyo we met a third, Ian, who would also be part of the group.  David and Al were from London, whilst Ian was from Liverpool and lived in Southport.

We stopped to offload the raft, the lads struggled into wet suits, lifejackets and helmets, Dario and I pumped up the raft then, after a practice paddling on land, the intrepid quartet set off with their cox'n.  I followed in the minibus, having an interesting conversation with Dario - wholly in Spanish - about family life and values, and agriculture in England.  I was amazed that I could carry on a conversation for such a long time! We stopped a couple of times on high cliffs above the river to watch the lads on their way. Andy was disappointed with the raft ride, because other rafts had capsized going down the river and they hadn't, although it was close at times.  It looked very exciting!  At one point I could look upriver to the Andes one way and downriver towards Amazonia the other; fascinating.

After picking up the lads - wet, but very happy with their adventure - we pushed on, first to Puyo then off the road and through the selvas to Hola Vida where we were to spend the next three days.  Here we found several thatched buildings, and we whiled away an hour or so swinging in hammocks or investigating the small river which flowed past the settlement.  Then our guide, Angel, came along and we kitted ourselves out in cozzies, shorts, T-shirts and wellies for our first foray through the rainforest.  Angel, it turned out, had a great sense of humour.

He had lived in or around the forest all of his life and was extremely knowledgeable about the medicinal properties of the local plants, although like our guide in Cajas, he admitted that most of them didn't taste too good!  At one point he scraped the bark off a sapling, mixed it well with water and squeezed a little of the juice into each of our palms.  "You have to snort it," he instructed, demonstrating the technique.  We did - and proceeded to splutter for a few seconds as the aromatic fluid hit our nasal passages.  The effect was rather like a good dose of Vick and Angel said that this was a remedy for colds and sinus trouble.  Angel also wove a lovely palm-leaf bag for me in which I carried round my water bottles for the next couple of days before it became sadly withered.  He also made a bracelet from the fibres of a tree - again for me.  Mutters from the lads.

After stumbling through the jungly vegetation, getting muddy, we came into a clearing where a stream fell about 30 metres into a deep, clear pool.  Off came the clothes and after the initial shock of the cool water, we played for half an hour or so, trying to swim through the spray.  It reminded Andy of the sea survival course we'd done at South Tyneside College and was rather like being under those hoses, the biggest problem being how to breathe!

What do you do if you're lost in the forest?  Angel posed the question and then demonstrated one answer; thump the buttress roots of a tree with a rock!  The roots are hollow and the echo can be heard up to eight kilometres away.  For the rest of the afternoon we smelled, tasted and rubbed a variety of plants, including stroking the leaves of mimosa plants to watch them curl and wilt - a cunning defence mechanism.  We scrambled up and down through dense foliage, falling over roots, seeing enormous trees and tiny plants, looking at seeds, nuts, beetles and spiders.  It was a tremendous experience, brought to life by Angel's knowledge of his environment.

Back at the camp we lay about, snoozed a little and just listened to the sounds of the forest until it was time for supper.  Then we donned our backpacks once more for the trip up to our lodgings, trudging our way up what amounted to a staircase to thatched-roofed cabins, beds with cool sheets and mosquito nets and the noises of the night.  Angel advised us to shut the doors of the cabins to keep the mosquitoes out; some hope as there were gaps in the walls and roofs big enough to get a large animal through.

I awoke quite early, with Andy saying come and have a look at this.  We went down to the viewpoint and looked out over a sea of cloud to the mountain tops beyond; inversion mist.  By breakfast it had disappeared and shortly afterwards we set out on another adventure.  This time, though, we had to swim through a narrow gorge to reach the waterfall and pool.  A tree had been cut with steps and Angel was the first to dive from it.  The lads followed, but I've never enjoyed diving, so gave it a miss.  All too soon, Angel led us back to the settlement for lunch, and then took us to one of the indigenous communities which makes its living in the forest.

If a community consists of more than 70 people, the local government provides schools and other facilities to enable the community to stay in place.  Although many of the buildings here were thatched, some had corrugated iron roofs.  In one of the huts a woman showed us how the indigenous pottery was made.  Suitable clay is collected from stream beds, moulded using the thumb-pot method and smoothed with resin and stones.  After being left to dry, it is decorated with paints made from plants - terracotta, cream and black.  The designs are mostly geometric and I saw few spirals or curved shapes.  Paintbrushes are made from children's hair.  After drying again, the pots are baked in an earth oven.  Another source of income is jewellery made from nuts and seeds; I couldn't resist them and bought both necklace and bracelet, together with a slide made from coconut shell for my hair.  We also got our faces painted with criss-cross red lines on our cheekbones, whilst David and Al had henna tattoos on their arms.

In the camp that evening we were joined by four Americans - three girls and a lad - and a French couple, Michel and Isabelle.  The noise level at supper rose by several decibels but quite what the content of the Americans' conversation was I don't know as there were rather too many "likes" and "awesomes" to make much sense of the content; what a bitchy remark!  Later Andy and I, Michel, Isabelle and David went to the lookout where Angel lit a fire.  We sat quietly, watching the sun go down, happy in a companionable silence, listening to tree frogs, crickets and the occasional call of a bird or animal.

Our treat for the next day was a ride in a dugout canoe down the Rio Pastaza.  We all got in, heaviest at the back, me at the front, and set off quite calmly, which became rather more interesting when the river went down a little cascade and we got stuck on the bottom.  Thereafter it was float a bit, get stuck for a bit for about 45 minutes, but only once did I get seriously damp.  It was exciting; the illusion of adventure whilst being completely safe; even if we'd been tipped out, the water was seldom much more than a couple of feet deep.  All too soon, our river trip was over, the dugout pulled into the riverbank and we jumped into the pickup to be taken to a viewpoint from where we could see the selvas stretching away to the distant horizon.  I was surprised to learn that the altitude here was only 800 metres, yet we were on a tributary of the Amazon.  So the river had a few thousand miles to lose 800 metres to get to sea level.

Once back at the camp, we packed up our things, got into the pickup and were driven to Rio Negro for lunch, then on to Baños and back to our hostal.  It had been an incredible three days, filled with interest and excitement, with new sounds, new smells, new people, new experiences.  Would we do it again?  Where's the nearest bank!!!

In the evening, we had supper with Ian in Baños.  Ian was a biology teacher and I had a good natter talking "shop".  Andy just yawned.  Ian said I made his day by telling him that EDS had lost the contract for the national curriculum tests - thank you, Ruthie!

Parque Nacional Cajas

Ingapirca

Ingapirca

Cara del Inca

Riobamba Marketplace

Ecuadorian Sense of Humour!

Volcan Chimborazo

Chimborazo Hill Farm

Tungurahua Lahar

Baños (cliffs approx 200 feet high)

Rafting on the Rio Pastaza

Rio Pastaza

The Selvas

Angel and Andy

Waterfall

Cascade Swim

Morning Mist in the valley