After arriving in Cuenco we all became ill, Les was first followed by Margaret and finally me. We think we must have all caught the same bug from the plane. Anyway I ended up in hospital, I lost some days along the way there. The care in the hospital was very good, I had some very strong antibiotics, taking 10 days supply home with me when I left which were also very strong and wiped me out. There was some kind of festival (before lent) where mainly youngsters threw water bombs, and the contents of anything that contained water, at each other and anyone who happens to be driving or walking past, very strange but everyone seemed to have a great time. The family at the hostel came home with a live pig which they fed for 2 or 3 days and then the pig is dead!!! Strapped to a kind of work bench the men took turns at burning all the skin with a blow torch (wonderful crackling) when this is done to perfection the pig is cooked over a fire. This is the very best roast pig I have ever had.
However, we decided to leave Cuenco and move slowly north on our journey, we think we may feel better. We go to Ingapirca which is the Inca main sight in Ecuador; it was very impressive with what we had learnt from the Inca sites in Peru and was very enjoyable, but I'm still sick! From here we are heading for the town of Bano’s (Bath) which is at the foot of the Volcano Tungurahua. After parking up for the night at the side of a river, which was very dusty, we head off up a pretty good road to Bano’s.
Then the road got very dusty, then very sandy, then NO road, just sand and dust. There was no sign of where the road should be, we just followed the tracks made by other vehicles. We crossed 5 rivers all with the bridges washed away. It was like a gigantic dust slide, thank goodness it was not a mud slide! Although there had been a lot of water that had come down the mountain. We stopped by a very lovely gorge for our morning cup of tea Les and Margaret got stuck in the sand and I had to pull them out, thank goodness for 4x4! The cloud was very low, which stopped us seeing the whole mountain and when we came out of the valley and up the next mountain we could just see this huge slide. Eventually we did arrive in |Bano’s after going over a further slide; we went to a very good French restaurant and had a lovely lunch. The waiter there told us the volcano had blown in 1999 and then again last October 2006. In 1999 the whole town was evacuated for several weeks, in 2006 the snow cap of the volcano melted when it erupted sending all the melted snow rushing down the mountain side. Also in 2006 it rained stones!! This was quite an experience, we parked the night in the street very near to the Civil Defense Hut had a good sleep.
Driving slowly around some of the most beautiful scenery over the next week through tiny villages, high in the Andes, some are so very poor. Their lives must be so, so hard. We saw a group of villagers, men and women, digging a water trench with hoe’s at 4000m with the wind howling and blowing very hard. But a spectacular view of a volcano elluded us, because the cloud was so low. We caught a glimpse of Volcano Chimberazo, not the top, but a good view of the glaciers.
We had a bit of trouble with the trucks. A bolt had sheared off Les’s powered steering and his step would not work, I had some light out and battery trouble, then found it was a bolt sheared off, and then I found that a shock absorber had a bolt sheared off!! We were able to get all these fixed and have an enjoyable lunch before we headed off to drive the Quilotoe Circuit which the guide book describes as some of the most beautiful scenery and villages in Ecuador, we shall see.
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