Riobamba:
It started on Saturday morning getting to Terminal Terrestre to catch the bus
to Riobamba. I went with Stephanie, from Willamette, our friend Victoria,
and her friends Laura and Emily. Stephanie and I met on the trole so we
were together, which was good, and we were going to meet the other three
at the terminal. We got a call from Victoria though that she was going to
be late, so we were not going to be able to leave as early as we had
planned. Stephanie and I took the trole to La Marin, which is in south
Quito, and somewhere around there you can catch an Ecovia to the terminal,
but we weren't sure exactly where that was, and we had extra time, so we
decided to just walk to the terminal. In retrospect, this was not the
smartest idea as the south, and especially near Terminal Terrestre, is not
a safe area for gringos especially to be walking in, but we made it there
unscathed. Then we waited for Victoria and her friends and we finally
left at 9:45. Then it is a 3.5 hour bus ride to Riobamba, which is
directly south of Quito. We got to Riobamba and went for lunch, then went
to find the place where we could buy our train tickets for the next day.
We wanted to take the train to see Nariz del Diablo. You can sit on the
top of the train for this, so it's pretty cool. We bought our tickets,
and then paid another dollar to reserve a spot on the roof and to rent
cushions to sit on. Then we went to find a hostel to stay at. We ended
up finding a nice place called Hotel Whymper that was $10 a night, but we
bartered it down to $8. The next thing we were planning to do was go to a
town just about five miles away from Riobamba called Guano. I mostly
wanted to go because it was called Guano. There is somewhere in Riobamba
that you can catch the bus to Guano, but we weren't sure where that was,
so we went and asked the guy working at the hotel where it was, and his
mother was there, so she offered to drive us. She was a very nice woman.
So we took the bus to Guano and looked around a little bit and then headed
back to Riobamba. Riobamba has a big fruit market on Saturdays so when we
got back, we went to the fruit market to buy food for the next day. Then
we tried to find our way back to our hotel, which we did, eventually.
Then we went to dinner, and came back to call it an early night because we
had to be at the train at 6 the next morning. All in all, Saturday was a
good day.
Saturday night is when it turned bad. I woke up for the first time at
about 11:30 and my stomach kind of hurt, and there was a kareoke bar
somewhere near us that was very loud, and I was not pleased with either.
But I fell back asleep after awhile. But I kept waking up off and on, and
at about 2 I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep. The kareoke was still
going and my stomach was still feeling bad. I finally got up to go to the
bathroom, and decided maybe I didn't feel as bad as I thought and tried to
go back to sleep again, and finally did at about 3. At four, I woke up
again and decided maybe I really did feel that bad and ran to the
bathroom. At about 4:30, I started throwing up. I was very annoyed as I
was supposed to be getting on a train in an hour and a half. I stayed in
the bathroom until 5:15 or so and then laid in my bed until 5:30 when it
was time to get up. I decided to still go on the train anyway - at that
point, why not. So I took immodium, and off we went. We got to the train
at six to get our seats on the roof. By seats, I mean there's a roof, and
you sit on it on your cushion. There aren't actual seats. It's pretty
funny. The train actually pulls out at 7, and by this time I was feeling
a little less horrible, so that was good. The first stop on the train was
at a little town called Guamote three hours later. I felt very bad again
by this time, and had to go pay 20 cents to use the bathroom so I could be
sick and throw up some more. We got about 20 minutes in Guamote before we
got back on the train. So I took more immodium and just laid down as much
as I could on the train, and tried to keep still. I finally decided to
take some Pepto Bismol, drink just a little bit of water, and then I
bought Sprite from one of the vendors who walks around on top of the train
selling snacks. These things helped some. I still mostly was just trying
to lay down and relax though. This is how I got my face sunburned.
Sleeping on the train. Face includes eyelids. I sunburned my eyelids.
When I woke up a couple hours later though, I felt more better again. The
reason I woke up though was because the train derailed. It took some
time, but they fixed it, and we started going again. And then the train
derailed again. And then it took more time to fix it. During this time,
Victoria, Laura and Emily got off the train to stretch a little bit and
were interviewed by the people there from ABC Nightly News, or whatever
their night program is called. We thought this was funny. They fixed the
train, we went a little ways, it derailed again, we waited, and then we
finally left for good. And stayed on the track. Shortly after that, we
pulled into a town called Asauli where more people got on the train, and
then began the final part of our journey to Nariz del Diablo. This part
is very very pretty and I was glad I was feeling well enough to sit up and
enjoy it. The first few hours of the trip had been very very cold, but
now it was hot. We went down into a canyon to see Nariz del Diablo, which
was very beautiful. We stopped for some amount of time at the end of the
trail so people could get out and see and I went back to sleep, and then
ended up sleeping most of the way back to Asauli. We got off the train at
Asauli, and then we had to catch a bus to Riobamba to we could catch a bus
to Quito. We were about 20 minutes, by bus, from Riobamba when the bus
stopped with a traffic problem. We figured there had been an accident
ahead and that it must have been pretty bad as neither side of traffic
could get through. After sitting there for about 20 minutes the bus
driver told us to all get off the bus and walk, so we did. It turns out
that accident that had happend was with another bus, and it had flipped
over. This is a difference between America and Ecuador - we walked
through the crash site. Through the broken glass and paint that had
smeared on the road when the bus skid on it's side, close enough to touch
the bus. Everyone did. So we walked for awhile until we were able to
catch another bus into Riobamba that took us to the terminal there, and we
bought tickets for the 6:30 bus which was the next one to leave. We had
been hoping to leave Riobamba at about 3:30 to get back to Quito at about
7, but that is not how the day worked. Finally, we got on a bus and went
home. I got to my house at about 10:15, talked to my family a little and
then collapsed in bed.Cotopaxi:I went to Cotopaxi a few weekends ago. I ended up not being able to go all
the way up to the base camp because it was too expensive, because you have
to hire a driver to take you there, and the people I was with did not have
enough money though. It was still very fun though. I went with
Stephanie, Stacey, Aimee and Kayla. When we got there, we got off the bus
at the park entrance, and then there is a little information station right
there. They do tours, and they try to make it look like they're actually
associated with the park, but they're not. They told us that cold talk us
to the refuge for $20 a person to which we said heck no. So then they
offered ten, which I could have done, but other people couldn't. Then
they told us that there was no way for us to really get anywhere if we
didn't go with them, and we said, well, we'll try our best anyway, and we
started walking. We had walked for about a mile or so when we met another
guy who takes people there and we convinced him to take us to a lagoon and
back for $25 (total) roundtrip (la ida y la vuelta). He was a really good
choice of people to go with and very nice. We were with him for about
three hours, which is pretty legit for $25, and although he didn't have to
do anything but drive us, he told us helpful things, and acted like a tour
guide, and even took us to a museum. He also took our picture for us, and
offered us some of his potato chips. Very nice man. His name was Alonso.
The drive was really pretty, and the lagoon was pretty. It was all
pretty. There were quite a few clouds so we didn't always have a great
view of Cotopaxi, but we did have a nice one at times. We also saw other
pretty mountains so that was cool too. Then we came home and went on the
most exciting trole ride any of us had been on yet. Somebody stole a
cellphone, and the lady realized her cellphone was stolen, so she started
yelling, and she though she knew who had done it so she was yelling at
them to give back her cell phone, it was a new phone, etc. And then
everybody started yelling. And then everybody in the whole trole was
yelling, so the trole driver stopped, and the transit police got on. Then
the transit police took the lady and the guy she said took her phone off
and it was crazy. And people were pounding on the doors and stuff, and
when we stopped it wasn't at an actual trole stop, so it was weird. Very
exciting.
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