"I'm going back to Cali, Cali, Cali"

I was lazy. Very lazy. In the two days I dind't even go out of the house.

Adrian's dad gave us a ride to around 50 or 60 km from Armenia.

X-3 Pasto Firestation

After taking the bus to the end of the line Hitchwiki says to take another bus to the first peáge, but there's a petrol station a few meters away. Shortly after we were going to Calderón, a nearby city. From there we walked "2 km" to the peáge. Walking there, we stopped in a restaurant to fill up our bottles and empty our bladders. I asked how far was the peáge and the guy told to go with him, he was going to show you. That didn't sound promising. I think the damn peáge was 20 kilometers away!  Hitched there and almost inmmediately found a ride to Otavalo (famous for its market and handycrafts). Then a slow but nice rider (not on the highway) ride to Ibarra. Ibarra is big si I convince the guy to leave us at the end of town. I was opening a can of peaches that Sofi gave us when Paula found a ride, we were eating in a police checkpoint in the middle of nowhere. It was getting late. I wanted to reach Pasto the same day but it seemed  that we weren't  going to make, we were still far (in South American terms) from the border. I started thumbing but nothing happened. No one stopped. Paula started thumbing and found a ride with a trucker and his girlfriend. I thought  in a split second that it was better not to take the ride and wait for (fast) car, but then again, it was in a split second and we were riding the truck. We talked about it inside and decided to change rides. We were in a petrol station somewhere when I found a ride to the border city of Tulcán. I was running to tell Paula when she told me that she also found a ride. We chose the back seat of a recent Kia Sorento instead of the back of the pickup.

The guy was driving fast but it was late. It was already dark by the time we made to Tulcán. After some time I thought no one was going to stop, who would pick up to people stading on the side of the road, at night? Suddenly, a pick up stopped and drove us the last 9 kilometers separating us from the border. We made it to Colombia the same day but Pasto was still some 80 kilometers away. We thumbed at the border check point, nothing. One of the border officers told me that no one was going to take us to Pasto, everybody was going to Ipiales. A couple of cars stopped and I said "Pasto" but they were going to Ipiales. We kept trying but it seemed that his words were true. We took the next that was willing to take us. Once in Ipiales, after thumbing for a while we reached the conclusion that we will have to spend the night there. It was cold. We went to the local firestation and they let us sleep in a dirty old wooden house. There was no way to sleep on the floor, it was filthy and there was waste. Luckily I have a hammock.

Leaving Ipiales was harder than I thought. It took us a few hours. Then I saw a petrol station not far. We started to walk towards it when a car stopped  (with Cali license plates) beside us and asked me if I knew where Pasto was. "Yes, I know where Pasto is. We are going there, can you take us?" After maybe 3-4 hours we were finally moving. But the happiness of getting closer to the firestation didn't last long because the car broke down and some thing was burning under the hood. The driver call road assitance and after about three more hours we were being towed away to the town of Pedregal. We were halfway to Pasto. Despite what the mechanic said, Pedregal was NOT good a place. Paula was thumbing on the right side of the road while I was on the left (under the shade) when a car stopped and Paula called me. The two guys inside didn't like the fact that she was with me. They asked us for money. I said tht we were getting off immediately and they left us in a actually not bad place to keep hitching: before a bridge that was under reparations, there was only one side available so cars had to stop. my personal experience with this kind of place is good. I've found a couple of good rides in places like these. This one was not going to be the exception because we found a ride shortly after. I made sure to tell that we didn't have money to pay for the ride. About an hour later we were standing outside Pasto's  football stadium. From there is was only a couple of kilometers walk uphill to the firestation.

We got to the X-3 Pasto Firestation and what a welcome! I felt right at home! Jhon (he spells it that way), one of the firemen is the one we talk to the most. He gave an original battery for my Nokia phone. They said (again) that we can stay for as long as we wanted. Jhon even offered me to get the vaccine certificate that by the way, the people at the border (don't know which one) made sure to lose the receipt I had.

Since Pasto is not very big and we don't have the money for buses we spend a lot of time inside the firestation. We only took a few short walks around. We only went to the center once. Going to the shop we hitched a ride in the station's ambulance. They were going when I asked them if it was Ok to ride with them. Another first for Colombia. We hitched again the ambulance the day after coming back from the center.

Going South, to Ecuador, the firestation is in the perfect place: in the South of town. But going North, to Popayán/Cali...

another straight ride to Quito

Like I said before, Baños is very small. So we only had to walk a couple hundred meters and we were already in the exit of town. We stood beside a petrol station when I saw another couple hitching a few meters down the road, before our spot. What the hell!? Haven't they heard of hitchhiking ethiquette? Obviously not. A small truck was parked next to us and when the driver returned I asked him for a ride. He was going to Quito but had to male two stops, one in Ambato to buy something and the other one in Latacunga to drop his cargo (glass windows).


We were back in Quito and we found ourselves yet again without a place to sleep for the night. My friend Sofi was busy for the next couple of days being impossible for her to host us. I still had the number of a CSer (from the first time in Quito) stored in my handy. We stayed practically a week with Daniel.


This time, we walked a lot and explored a lot of Quito we didn't see the first time we were there. I finally saw the Basílica del Voto Nacional. It's impressive! Although Quito is a lovely place, staying more than a week is more than enough. But this time I kinda had to. I needed to get the yellow fever vaccine in Ecuador because for sure it's cheaper than to get it in Colombia. I wanted to leave Sunday but the Centro de Salud is apparently closed on weeked (not really sure about that). Sofi said she would take me Monday but we didn't go. Tuesday after walking to the opposite side (of the Centro) there was no way that we could make it on time for the vaccine. Wednesday it time to leave, vaccine or no vaccine. Before leaving we went to get the damn shot which was free. I only needed to pay for the international certificate. Pay, with what money? I got the shot and the nurse gave me a receipt. I kept it hoping to get the certificate in Colombia. We left to the hitchhiking spot.

Baños

Not only Pablo took us to "Parque El Cajas", gave us a place to sleep, took us to his son's party and gave me a pair of trousers that he no longer used, he drove us to the town of Azogues saving us some 30 km of the way .

Pablo's shift started at 8 so we left his flat at 7 and by 7:45 we'd already found our first ride and we were going to Cañar. After that, we went to Zhud which is where to road slipts: to the left to Guayaqui and straight to Quito. Here, we rode in the back of a pickup to Ambato. Riding in the back of pickups is nicer when it's warm and not at 4000m. At least it wasn't Romania-style cold (subzero temperatures). 

A small ride to the exit of Ambato and my second time hitchhiking a taxi going to Pelileo. We hadn't been waiting for long when a couple stopped and agreed to take us to Baños de Agua Santa (or just Baños). They were going to Puyo in the Ecuadorian Amanzon and back to Pelileo. I asked if we could ride with them and take us back... 


The almost nothing I know about the Amazon is from TV and cinema. They show Amazonian towns (mostly in the Brazilian Amazon) to be small, dirty and dangerous. Puyo was like that. We didn't walk around a lot for two reasons: we only had 30 minutes before the couple would pick us up again and, didn't look quite safe to be walking around with all your shit with you.


We got to Baños and we started for a place to sleep. We went to the church but Sunday mass was just starting. I saw a girl sitting by the entrance. Next option was to ask in the firestation but they turned us down, for a change. We walked back to the church and waited for mass to finish. The girl stood up and walked inside when mass was over. I thought she was a traveller also waiting to ask the priest for a place to stay we we went inside behind her Paula asked her something and it turned out that Olga is Polish. Blablabla in Polish and they exchanged handy numbers. She was waiting for her ride back to Quito, leaving us a clear way to ask the priest. We stayed 4 nights in total in one of the catechesis rooms.


Baños reminded me of Panajachel: lots of souvernir shops, travel agencies and tourists (including yours truly). You couldn't walk without being offered a tour or a hotel room. Baños is set on the base of the Tungurahua volcano (more than 5000 meters) but you cannot see it because it's behind a mountain that is between town and the volcano.


Baños is not very big and it's very thin. Only a few streets wide and that's it. On the East side there is a rive in the bottom of a canyon and even though is inside the city, if you go there you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere, far away from town. Ok, there's a bridge linking the two sides but the place we used to sit it was about 50 meters below and the sound of the river was very loud so no car could be heard. Oh! and also the occasional bungee jumper.


Contrary to what I thought, despite the fact that Baños being extremely touristy, it wasn't that expensive. Not that it was cheap, but not as expensive as I thought it would be. In fact, Ecuador is not as cheap as people told me before going. Cheaper than Colombia is it. Or is it that I'm just extremely poor and/or cheap?


The only disadvantage I see when you stay in a church is that you don't have a kitchen or a shower. It was chilly so the shower problem solved itself, but the kitchen...

Dreams of Xela (Cuenca)

Getting to Santa Ana de los Cuatro Ríos de Cuenca (from now on just Cuenca) was easier than I thought. We still didn't know if we had a place to sleep or not. We had. We stayed with a CSer for two nights.

The fact that made me like Cuenca a lot is that is very similar to Xela. Four rivers go through town: Tomebamba, Yanuncay, Tarqui and Machangara. I'm not sure if I noticed all of them, most likely I didn't. One of them divides the old part of the city from the new. Along the river bank of this (dividing) river is a neighborhood named El Barranco. It has cafés, bars, restaurants, hotels, a walking path. Cuenca is one of the oldest cities in Amercia with 455 years of being founded. The "new Cathedral" is from 1881 and is across the street from the main square. The old cathedral is now a museum.

Our host had to go out of town but we wanted to stay longer, so we did. A few meters West from where we were staying there was a firestation so we went to ask them if we could stay; they sent us to a bigger station telling us that they will call the  people there and they will help us. They didn't. They didn't call and the others didn't let us stay. We walked to the station for more than 30 minutes so after we were told that we couldn't sleep there we took a rest.

Then came Pablo who "smuggled" us into the volunteer room and even invited us to his son's friend's birthday party the next day. We mentioned that we wanted to visit El Cajas National Park he said he could take us. We walked around a lagoon that didn't seem big but was very big. So big it took 2 hours to walk around it. Even if we were at sea level I would have gotten tired. We were at 4000m above sea level! It was very exhausting but it was great.

He invited us to spend the night in his flat the night before and we were expecting to sleep on the living room floor but we slept in his son's room.

All in all the time in Cuenca was super great. Ecuador has been treating us amazingly. But it's time to start heading North. Back to the Northern Hemisphere. Back to Colombia.

I left Cuenca with one less piercing and with a "new" pair of trousers. Gracias Pablo!