Ecuador: Quito, the Amazon and the coast

The border of Colombia and Ecuador was the most interesting border-crossing so far. The actual border was a bridge, and the collectivo brought us to the Ecuadorean side straight away (with only a small check of two police-officers). After getting out of the car, we figured we had to walk back over the bridge to the Colombian side, to get our exit stamp first. We crossed the bridge again to Ecuador and now we could enter “officially”: Bienvenidos a Ecuador!

The bus ride from the border to Quito was one of the most beautiful ones so far. Through mountain landscape, with a crystal clear blue sky and as the icing on the cake a perfect view on the snow-capped volcano Cayambe.

We arrived at the north terminal of Quito, and for $25 cents (the currency is the America Dollar) we took a city-bus to the old city center. We had already roughly made up our schedule for the next three weeks in Ecuador, and spent a few days in Quito to figure things out, but also explore the city and surrounding highlights.

In Quito we discovered that the country was in a national “state of emergency”. The city was full of armed police – we have never seen so much police on one spot. The main reasons were the eruption of the Cotopaxi near Quito and the demonstrations against the current president.

A little north of Quito lays the Equator and therefore, there is a big monument and several museums situated in this area. However, this monument originates from the French period, and apparently their calculations of the Equator was slightly wrong. Instead, about 200 meters north up the main road, there is a smaller museum called “Museo Intiñan”, located at the real Equator. Not many tourists know this and many people only take pictures of a fake Equator line & monument. We knew this in time and went to this little museum, which happened to be more interesting as expected. Besides some general information about the country and its original inhabitants, there were some interesting experiments to test the gravitational forces on the earth due to rotation (Coriolis).

Back in the hostel, we met Brayden and Mat from Australia. They were going onto a trip to the Amazon Jungle, and were trying to convince us to join them. Although this wasn’t in our planning, it sounded very attractive and after taking everything into consideration, we decided to go for it. We checked many different tour-operators but they all offered about the same and also the costs were similar. We went for a 3-days/2-nights tour in the National Park Cuyabeno.

The four of us took a night bus to Lago Agrio, from where we were supposed to be picked up at 9.00 am. Unfortunately, due to some delay, we had to wait until almost 12.00 noon before we were picked up by our tour guide. After the included lunch, the actual tour feeling started with a 2-hour boat trip to our lodge. On the way we already saw various monkeys, birds and even a sloth – our guide William had eyes of a buzzard (nothing compared to our guide in Costa Rica!!). We were a group of 10 people and we knew it was going to be a good adventure. After arriving at the Guacamayo Eco Lodge and a small introduction, we went with the boat for a swim to the big lake. On the way we were lucky to see some more wild life, including pink dolphins – one of the main attractions in that area of the jungle. After watching the sunset, we toured around the lake, looking for more animals including snakes and bats. Afterwards, we headed back and could enjoy a 3-course-meal for dinner. Besides the other few tourists at the lodge, we had different company during dinner: Big fat hairy tarantulas sitting in the corners of the roof, watching us eat. That was quite cool!

The next morning we got up at 6.00am for bird watching – the amount of birds, especially Toucans we saw then was just amazing. After breakfast, our big jungle trek started. Our guide was very good in spotting various animals in the trees, which we would have never seen ourselves. The tour took about 4 hours. We went back to lunch and a small Siesta, before we started our night-walk. That was a little bit scarier than during the day we have to admit. Besides more Tarantulas, we saw small snakes, a black scorpion, frogs and other animals which prefer to come out only when it’s dark. Especially Pam was happy when we got back to the canoe to go back to the lodge.

On our 3rd and therefore last day we got up very early again to go for a canoe ride to watch some wildlife, which is mainly there in the morning. With the absence of the motor sound and being with only 4 people, the sounds of the awakening jungle were even more impressive. We saw some more monkeys, dolphins, Toucans and small bats – basically not able to spot without clear instructions of our guide (the pictures will tell). Unfortunately, the trip took not even 2 hours before heading back for breakfast, and already at 9.00 am it was time for us to say good-bye to everyone (the others booked a 4D/3N tour) and get back to the bus to Quito. We were quite disappointed that the last day was actually not a day anymore, but mostly just transportation. However, we enjoyed the Amazon a lot, and therefore are looking forward to go again in Bolivia.

Before heading further south into the mountains, we wanted to enjoy a couple of days at the beach again. We decided to go to Canoa – just west of Quito. It was supposed to be a 7-hour drive and we left at 11.30pm with the night bus. We just got kind of comfortable in our seats and Sven had already fallen asleep (even though the bus driver was driving like a crazy person on the curvy road) when the incidence happened: a bus accident. In a little state of shock we all went out of the bus to check what happened. The whole left front side of the truck was completely open/broken and the window of the driver’s side was not there anymore. Apparently, either the truck or our bus driver took the curve not right and crashed almost frontally into the approaching traffic. We realized very quickly how lucky we were! Since there was no way of continuing in that bus, we had to wait for about 1,5 hours to change into another one. Pam was quite scared but eventually was able to fall asleep as well again.

Canoa itself had not much to offer during the week but for us it was perfect. We had a nice hostel, the waves were not big enough for surfing but that gave us more time to just relax, play beach-ball and enjoy cocktails in the beach bars during sunset. Exactly what we were looking forward to again after 5 weeks of not seeing the ocean. We stayed for 3 days and prepared for our next destination.