Ipiales y las lajas
At times I remember how it was traveling ‚before the Internet‘. Where all the information you had, came from guidebooks or other travelers. There was way more uncertainty. You always arrived at a place and then looked for somewhere to stay. Nowadays you lookup booking and airbnb and make your choice (or workaway, trustedhousesitters or couchsurfing depending on your style…). Then you get it confirmed from the host. Thanks to the internet you are also able to check bus schedules and know in advance which company runs what times, more or less. The state of border crossing, if some place is actually open to visit and so on. Much less surprises. Before you just travelled and at times you wouldn’t know how far you get the same day. So you just kept going till at some point you couldn’t any more and took the next best place to fall dead asleep. Now you check way ahead of time flight possibilities, and book your flight when the prices are low. Now you can, at least in Europe, plan a three month trip including hotels, airbnb, buses, boats, trains and trains a half a year in advance, day by day, and succeed in realizing the plan. There’s not much spontaneity left in that scenario, but if you wanna travel in the high season of June / July you can save up quite some money and having the best places to stay if you do so.
Well today was one of these days with lots of uncertainty. We got up at eight without sleeping a lot. If Bogotá is ‚the fridge‘, like Colombians outside Bogotá call it, Ipiales, the border town, is a ‚the freezer‘. We took a taxi to the boarder. I read stories of people who waited eight hours, because of all the many Venezolanos who try to find their luck away from home. It hurts seeing the whole shit this people are going through in live. Not only hearing it on the radio or seeing it on TV, there are tents of red cross and other NGO who are trying to help. While Venezolanos are crossing south to find a better life, Ecuadorians crossing north to buy stuff, thanks to a strong dollar. For a border town Ipiales offers an incredible amount of stores to buy all kind of things, not your typical border town!
The Colombian side was very straight forward, the Ecuadorian side as well – apart of that we had to leave our suitcases outside the migration office, outside of view. But we chose this version over getting in line twice, while the other one would watch the bags. They were still there when we came back out! We then took a taxi to Tulcan where we took a bus to Ibarra, where we took another taxi to a bus to Cotacachi, from where we took another taxi-bus to Tunibamba. And all the time with the two big suitcases and the two backpacks and the two pillows. If you wanna have some comfort in travelling, well you have to carry some more stuff!
Not your average indigenous: los Quichuas
They are openminded. They are friendly, and they have no problem with mixing of races. They are also very friendly. I never met indigenous in Colombia, who have been anything close to that! Also the more modern ones seem to think of them selfs also more of mestizos. And not so much anymore of any pure indigenous race (which they are obviously not!). All men wear their hair long and braided, and they are in general very small. They specialized en artesanias (handicrafts) and for that reason they travel lots and actually now Bogotá better then many not Bogotanos in Colombia!
The nights are again cold, and actually I’m pretty fed up with cold nights. I mean I had enough of them in Bogotá but ultimately we are on that Andes leg (the mountain chain): it started with Popayan, then Pasto, and the coldest and highest up was Ipiales. But we don’t seem to get a break. Most places in Ecuador are also high up if you are not at the pacific coast or in the amazon. You may think: „No llores chino!“, „yammere nöd“, „don’t be such a pussy“ or the like. But keep in mind: On this continent they don’t know heating! Anyways; you are right, no reason to be a baby…
Around Tuni Bamba there are lots of Eucalipto, they only use it to build houses and burn bricks. What a waste of Eucalipto!
We are traveling hard: 2 nights Tuni Bamba (a little town further up of Cotacachi), now 2 nights Mindo (the plan was somewhere warmer, yes a little warmer…), then 2 nights Baños, and then a week in the Amazon. Finally! Still never made it to the amazon. We are eating tiamina tablets for that reason (vitamina B1) since a week now, which is supposed to keep mosquitoes away. It smells and tastes horrible, and now we also smell like it. Never heard of it, but i’m positive it could actually work…
It would make a lot of sense renting a car in Ecuador, bus routes are not well connected and infrequent. We always lose almost a whole day to get a little further. Some call that traveling. Well nowadays I call that saving money, while loosing time, which we can afford more than the money part. So far Ecuador is really great, people are quite different from Colombians, but generally also very nice and the natural diversity is also enormous! Especially for such a small country (we are talking Latin America scale). A month and some days is definitely not enough to soak it all in.
