Here we go again. My view of the quite majestic Volcano Chimborazo (furthest point from the centre of the earth, and closest to the stars), disappears from my bus window seat view as we dip into a valley and are engulfed yet again in the white mist. The sky too is gone. Only the very strongest of the early morning sunbeams pierce through and refract spectacularly through the opacity, creating a glowing hazy prism that mesmerises me even at this hour. Welcome to my new favourite place on this planet, la Cordillera de los Andes, or – in the often unromantic simplicity of the world’s dominant language – the Andes.
Any concern I may have had that Ecuador would struggle to follow its northern neighbour’s impressive tour de force was dispelled the second I opened the window from my host’s accommodation on my first morning in Quito. Mountains, glorious mountains. Mountains everywhere. Aside from a very misguided and ultimately pointless one day foray into the Ecuadorian Amazon, I have spent the past seventeen days exclusively at a personal altitude nirvana of between 2,000m and 4,000m. Bus journeys of five, seven, and even twelve hours that would have had me punching myself into a coma in Colombia instead have me purring with the contentment of a feline with catnip implants, and collecting drool in the narrow vent between window and armrest. I have not been this happy catching public transport of interminable duration since Ethiopia five years ago.
One magical day
But Ecuador has something that even Ethiopia did not have, that sprinkle of magic dust that makes this the most spectacular road travel I have ever experienced: clouds. Big, white, fluffy, fat clouds. The close proximity of the three Andean ridges that combine to form the backbone of the South American continent, to both the tropical Amazon to the east and the dry coast to the west, means that these clouds do not sit passively at high altitude with a haughty air of dull superiority. No, these clouds lie deep in the valleys between peaks, they sit on top of entire villages and appear unannounced as you meander around one bend and into another. These are the kind of clouds that you drive through, that you walk into, that you feel on your face and wait for expectantly when you see them nearby.
You walk around a bend in the hill path, and phwoosh, you are in the clouds…
One of 13,888,313 photos taken from the bus window…
And when I am not being driven up, down, and around this candy floss fairy tale, desperately wondering how to digitally immortalise this incredible scenery and failing miserably, then I am hiking through it. I am hiking like I have never hiked before, taking the lifetime guarantee of my shoe manufacturer’s Vibram soles at its very word. If I felt as though I could spend another two months exploring Colombia, then one look at the topographical map of Ecuador makes me want to transfer the riches of my UK state pension plan to the Latacunga branch of Banco Pichincha and set up a modest guinea pig BBQ smokehouse high up in the hills of Cotopaxi. The three days spent hiking the incredible Quilotoa Loop with my Texan compadre Erick were as psychologically satisfying as they were physically torturous. Clouds, cows, green fields, and mountains are as simple an antidote to any concern or ailment of any shape or size.
Light, dark, shadow, cloud, sun, wow…
And so well played, Ecuador. I came here with an entirely different mindset, after the free-wheeling and free-spending philosophy of Colombia. A daily budget was introduced, and mostly respected. I have taken to cooking in hostels, choosing unknown fruit and vegetables from local markets and then incinerating them on gas cookers powered by Boeing engines. By my general definition of everyday life, I might have felt frustrated, rapidly. Worse still, I might have felt – shudder – boredom, and directly blamed Ecuador for it. But instead, I am waking up either at 5am to catch a bus to the next city, eager to have a full day in a new destination, or at 7am to prepare for the next superlative hike through magnificent mountains. This truly is a stunning country, now if I could only get that song out of my head…
As perfect a combination of colours as is possible…
