Travelog part 2: Quito to Tena
Aug. 14th, 2011 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaTuesday, July 26 (Quito to Tena): in which we disco across the Andes, are social butterflies, monkey around, and venture into a karaoke bar
(If you don't see the photos in sets of two across the page, you might want to make your browser window wider.)
Alas, we had to get up too early for the Cafecito's wonderful breakfast, as Michelle had arranged a "private taxi" (a minivan that was actually shared with two others, but which unlike a bus would pick us up and drop us off directly) to take us to Tena at 8 am, a 4.5 hour journey across the Andes.
The first hour was spent driving around Quito to pick up the others, during which a screen on the van's dashboard, which I had first taken to be a GPS, played, over and over again, a juicer infomercial. Literally, all hour long. Infomercial. Juicer. Argh. We were at first relieved when the last passenger came aboard and he punched a few buttons, and the system began playing what, judging from the screen display, was a homemade CD. That is, until we heard it: the CDs were labeled "Disco Classics" and every song had the identical pulsating beat. Most of the songs were entirely unfamiliar, although they were nearly all in English, but the worst were the cover versions of songs we knew. Let me just say that Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" does not translate well to disco. Nor does Ennio Morricone's theme to "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Finally, after Disco Classics 1, 2, and 3, he switched to a chopsocky movie dubbed in Spanish. I'm not sure whether this was an improvement or not.
Certainly by then we had given up worrying that watching a movie might affect his driving. Our first inkling of his style came as we left Quito and turned up hill on a curving road. A laden truck cut in front of us, moving much more slowly. No problem: our driver simply pulled out into the middle of the road, the truck moved to halfway on the shoulder, the oncoming car (aiee!) moved over halfway onto his shoulder, and we took our half right out of the middle. We soon realized that this was standard Ecuadorian driving etiquette. Nobody pays attention to passing zones or curves or dotted vs. solid lines, or whether a car is coming or even whether it's possible a car might be coming where you can't see it; if the road is, loosely speaking, wide enough for three cars, you just assume that any oncoming vehicles will prudently move aside, and GO.
Of course, not only was the road often not wide enough for three cars, it was occasionally barely wide enough for a single car. Once we crossed to the east side of the mountains, we were in the wet zone, so in many places landslides, rockfall, and road-bed collapse had taken large bites out of the road. We also passed the scene of a nasty collision, a sideways cargo truck and the overturned SUV it had smashed into, as well as enough roadside crosses to convince us that standard Ecuadorian driving strategy did not always succeed. We kept our eyes on the spectacular scenery, and crossed our fingers, and we arrived in Tena unscathed, at Michelle and Gary's house.
I had met Michelle once or twice when she'd lived in Durango, and had vaguely remembered being told that she'd gone to Ecuador on some international volunteer program for nurses, but Kristen and Rolfe had stayed in closer touch. She'd met Gary while working there; they moved back to the US (although not to Colorado) where they were married, and Gary became a US citizen. A few years ago they moved back to Tena, to settle permanently.
We had lunch together, then dropped our bags off at the hostel they'd selected for us, La Posada, an inexpensive but nice place right on the river that I would definitely recommend. Here is the view from our balcony:
Gary's sister Pamela came by to take care of their younger children, twin toddlers; we piled into the car along with Gary, Michelle, and their oldest daughter Sofia, and headed to la jungla. Well, okay, not really the jungle, but it seemed like it. Tena is at the junction of two rivers, and is considered the whitewater rafting capital of Ecuador. It's also much lower and wetter than Quito, which means lush vegetation but also a hot, steamy environment.
Our first stop was the mariposario (butterfly farm) near Misahuallí. This is a small, privately-funded reserve, with displays on the various stages of the butterfly life cycle and a screened outdoor area.
Then we drove the rest of the way to Misahuallí, which is a small town at the confluence of two large rivers. A troop of monkeys hangs out at the beach here; according to Gary, the townspeople had been annoyed by them, and tried to drive them away, until the tourists started coming to see them. Now they are a big attraction, and consequently protected, even though they are no less annoying. (Michelle warned us to watch our eyeglasses and to put all valuables behind zippers or buttons, and sure enough, one monkey jumped out of a tree and onto my head, then reached into the pocket of my shorts!)
In addition to the monkey business, boats offer rides to a nearby Quichua museum, vendors sell food and drink, and I couldn't resist paying a young boy $1 to be draped with a very large snake.
It was a beautiful evening as Gary drove us back to our hotel. After resting up a bit, we met Gary and Michelle for dinner at a restaurant in Tena; while we were there, it started raining, and although the rain obliged us by stopping now and then, I think we got more rain during our three and a half days in Tena than we have had all summer in Durango!
Michelle was eager to make a night of it, since they had a babysitter and, I gather, they don't get out much, so after dinner she persuaded us to come with her and Gary to a karaoke bar. None of us had ever actually been to a karaoke bar, and at first we just listened. Michelle chose songs in English, while Gary and the few others in the place sang in Spanish. Britt and I danced a little - we do love to dance! But Gary and Michelle were after us to sing, and after sufficient beers we gave in. To be honest, it looked like fun - doesn't everyone sing in the shower? - and as there were not many people in the bar at the early-by-Ecuadorian-standards of 9pm, and everybody without exception was a terrible singer (Gary was the least bad, but really, everyone in the bar pretty much sucked, and I include our entire party) it didn't seem like too awful a thing to do.
Kristen sang along with Michelle on something by the Bangles, or Cyndi Lauper, I forget. Rolfe took the lead on Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall", and we all screamed, "Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone" with him. I made Britt sing Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll", and I - I popped my karaoke cherry on Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart". For those of you who are unfamiliar with karaoke, they show the video of each song, along with the words, so you don't have to have it memorized. Which is a good thing - when I'm in the shower or alone in my car, I sing the words to the literal video version, which you should really watch if you haven't seen it, because it is FREAKIN' HYSTERICAL. Because the video is the trippiest thing ever.
Anyway,![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
justrunjim.blogspot.com asked for video, but THANKFULLY I do not have such. Nor audio, for which, again, you should be thankful, because I do not exclude myself from the assessment that everyone in the bar was a terrible singer. But please do watch the literal video version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart", which cracks me up every time I watch it. (The bit during the musical bridge is stupid, but the rest is inspired brilliance.)
Just the photos at Flickr (20 stills and one video)
(If you don't see the photos in sets of two across the page, you might want to make your browser window wider.)
Alas, we had to get up too early for the Cafecito's wonderful breakfast, as Michelle had arranged a "private taxi" (a minivan that was actually shared with two others, but which unlike a bus would pick us up and drop us off directly) to take us to Tena at 8 am, a 4.5 hour journey across the Andes.
The first hour was spent driving around Quito to pick up the others, during which a screen on the van's dashboard, which I had first taken to be a GPS, played, over and over again, a juicer infomercial. Literally, all hour long. Infomercial. Juicer. Argh. We were at first relieved when the last passenger came aboard and he punched a few buttons, and the system began playing what, judging from the screen display, was a homemade CD. That is, until we heard it: the CDs were labeled "Disco Classics" and every song had the identical pulsating beat. Most of the songs were entirely unfamiliar, although they were nearly all in English, but the worst were the cover versions of songs we knew. Let me just say that Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" does not translate well to disco. Nor does Ennio Morricone's theme to "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Finally, after Disco Classics 1, 2, and 3, he switched to a chopsocky movie dubbed in Spanish. I'm not sure whether this was an improvement or not.
Certainly by then we had given up worrying that watching a movie might affect his driving. Our first inkling of his style came as we left Quito and turned up hill on a curving road. A laden truck cut in front of us, moving much more slowly. No problem: our driver simply pulled out into the middle of the road, the truck moved to halfway on the shoulder, the oncoming car (aiee!) moved over halfway onto his shoulder, and we took our half right out of the middle. We soon realized that this was standard Ecuadorian driving etiquette. Nobody pays attention to passing zones or curves or dotted vs. solid lines, or whether a car is coming or even whether it's possible a car might be coming where you can't see it; if the road is, loosely speaking, wide enough for three cars, you just assume that any oncoming vehicles will prudently move aside, and GO.
Of course, not only was the road often not wide enough for three cars, it was occasionally barely wide enough for a single car. Once we crossed to the east side of the mountains, we were in the wet zone, so in many places landslides, rockfall, and road-bed collapse had taken large bites out of the road. We also passed the scene of a nasty collision, a sideways cargo truck and the overturned SUV it had smashed into, as well as enough roadside crosses to convince us that standard Ecuadorian driving strategy did not always succeed. We kept our eyes on the spectacular scenery, and crossed our fingers, and we arrived in Tena unscathed, at Michelle and Gary's house.
I had met Michelle once or twice when she'd lived in Durango, and had vaguely remembered being told that she'd gone to Ecuador on some international volunteer program for nurses, but Kristen and Rolfe had stayed in closer touch. She'd met Gary while working there; they moved back to the US (although not to Colorado) where they were married, and Gary became a US citizen. A few years ago they moved back to Tena, to settle permanently.
We had lunch together, then dropped our bags off at the hostel they'd selected for us, La Posada, an inexpensive but nice place right on the river that I would definitely recommend. Here is the view from our balcony:
Gary's sister Pamela came by to take care of their younger children, twin toddlers; we piled into the car along with Gary, Michelle, and their oldest daughter Sofia, and headed to la jungla. Well, okay, not really the jungle, but it seemed like it. Tena is at the junction of two rivers, and is considered the whitewater rafting capital of Ecuador. It's also much lower and wetter than Quito, which means lush vegetation but also a hot, steamy environment.
Our first stop was the mariposario (butterfly farm) near Misahuallí. This is a small, privately-funded reserve, with displays on the various stages of the butterfly life cycle and a screened outdoor area.
Then we drove the rest of the way to Misahuallí, which is a small town at the confluence of two large rivers. A troop of monkeys hangs out at the beach here; according to Gary, the townspeople had been annoyed by them, and tried to drive them away, until the tourists started coming to see them. Now they are a big attraction, and consequently protected, even though they are no less annoying. (Michelle warned us to watch our eyeglasses and to put all valuables behind zippers or buttons, and sure enough, one monkey jumped out of a tree and onto my head, then reached into the pocket of my shorts!)
In addition to the monkey business, boats offer rides to a nearby Quichua museum, vendors sell food and drink, and I couldn't resist paying a young boy $1 to be draped with a very large snake.
It was a beautiful evening as Gary drove us back to our hotel. After resting up a bit, we met Gary and Michelle for dinner at a restaurant in Tena; while we were there, it started raining, and although the rain obliged us by stopping now and then, I think we got more rain during our three and a half days in Tena than we have had all summer in Durango!
Michelle was eager to make a night of it, since they had a babysitter and, I gather, they don't get out much, so after dinner she persuaded us to come with her and Gary to a karaoke bar. None of us had ever actually been to a karaoke bar, and at first we just listened. Michelle chose songs in English, while Gary and the few others in the place sang in Spanish. Britt and I danced a little - we do love to dance! But Gary and Michelle were after us to sing, and after sufficient beers we gave in. To be honest, it looked like fun - doesn't everyone sing in the shower? - and as there were not many people in the bar at the early-by-Ecuadorian-standards of 9pm, and everybody without exception was a terrible singer (Gary was the least bad, but really, everyone in the bar pretty much sucked, and I include our entire party) it didn't seem like too awful a thing to do.
Kristen sang along with Michelle on something by the Bangles, or Cyndi Lauper, I forget. Rolfe took the lead on Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall", and we all screamed, "Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone" with him. I made Britt sing Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll", and I - I popped my karaoke cherry on Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart". For those of you who are unfamiliar with karaoke, they show the video of each song, along with the words, so you don't have to have it memorized. Which is a good thing - when I'm in the shower or alone in my car, I sing the words to the literal video version, which you should really watch if you haven't seen it, because it is FREAKIN' HYSTERICAL. Because the video is the trippiest thing ever.
Anyway,
justrunjim.blogspot.com asked for video, but THANKFULLY I do not have such. Nor audio, for which, again, you should be thankful, because I do not exclude myself from the assessment that everyone in the bar was a terrible singer. But please do watch the literal video version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart", which cracks me up every time I watch it. (The bit during the musical bridge is stupid, but the rest is inspired brilliance.)Just the photos at Flickr (20 stills and one video)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-14 11:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-14 11:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 01:20 am (UTC)One question: do Ecuadorians use the word "la jungla"? or do they say "la selva"?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 02:21 am (UTC)Glad it all rings true. I wish I had a photo of the road out from Papallacta (in another couple of updates :-) I swear, it was more pothole than road!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 02:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 02:49 am (UTC)Although "la jungla" was first propagated by Rolfe, who worked for several years in the oil and gas industry in various SA countries (Ecuador, Peru, others) so maybe it is actually in use somewhere. I'll ask him!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 01:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 02:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 03:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 05:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 09:21 pm (UTC)Such an amazing adventure. I am a little jealous! That's a creepy looking caterpillar. If that IS a caterpillar.?
Scary driving! Heh.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-15 09:30 pm (UTC)And, that is a creepy caterpillar! But these are pretty ones!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-16 12:51 pm (UTC)Snake!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-17 01:33 am (UTC)