We arrived at the hotel specified bang on 6pm for the pre-departure meeting before our trip south out of Quito. When we arrived we discovered that the meeting had been moved to a hotel a few blocks away. We got directions and hurried off to our new destination and struggled to find the room the meeting was supposed to be in. We sat down, made our apologies and were relieved to find out we weren't last there. 3 more people were missing and only one of them showed up. We went through some paperwork and the plan for the first leg of the trip - our 56 day trip is broken into three legs: Quito to Lima, Lima to La Paz and La Paz to Santiago. There are 8 people on this leg, 16 on the second leg down to 10 for the final leg. We all introduced ourselves and we headed off after back to our hotel to relax for the evening.
The first day with the group was a free day in Quito so we used the free internet in the room as long as we could before leaving to move into the hotel booked for the group where the meeting was last night. Our plan was to go and visit the middle of the world monument in the afternoon but unfortunately washing clothes and other boring chores were required so we didn't have time. We met up as a group in the evening, had a brief meeting about the following day and then headed out for dinner to an Argentinian Steak House where we had a few drinks, really nice steaks and got to know the people we would be living with for the next few weeks. Most of us decided to head home after the meal as we were up early to go to Otavalo the following day but Ruth and Sharon persuaded Heidi, our tour leader, to go out with them.
The following morning we all met in reception bright and early to get breakfast and then get a bus north to Otavalo. Heidi looked quite tired and when the girls never showed up we discovered that they didn't get in until 6am and wouldn't be coming with us. It being a Sunday all the breakfast places were closed so we picked up some snacks and headed to the bus station.
Local buses in Ecuador that travel between cities are every bit as mental as the ones we had been taking in Quito for the past while. You can buy seats for an extra little cost or else take the chance and hope that there are some spare seats and as with the city buses you can board and leave the bus wherever you please. Thankfully, buses are included as part of the trip so we had assigned seats and took them before the bus embarked on it's 3 or so hour journey. We travelled through the mountains, tried not to look when the driver took on quite dangerous overtaking manouveres on blind corners - the method here seems to be to beep your horn a couple of times as you are overtaking and everything will be alright. As said, we still haven't seen any accidents so it's a system that seems to work.
We arrived in the town of Otavalo late in the morning and walked around a bit looking for the market. Heidi asked a couple of people who had conflicting opinions on where the market was but we eventually found it and split up for a couple of hours, agreeing a meeting spot so we could all go for lunch together. Myself and Emer headed off and were quite disappointed with it as we were expecting the best textile market in Ecuador as that is what we had been told it was and read about it. All we could find were meat stalls and counterfit DVD's. We bumped into Heidi who said that the part we were looking for was a few blocks away so we followed her and were delighted by what we found. The market took over a block and was full of amazingly colourful jumpers, trousers, hammocks, rugs, jewellery and all kinds of wooden artefacts. We had great fun buying some things and haggling with the various vendors - having the small bit of Spanish made it better and more interactive as you could have a bit of banter with them. The age old start to walk away trick was used a couple of times to great effect and we were completely satisfied with all the purchases and prices. After a while we had bought enough and headed back to our pre-arranged meeting spot to go for some food.
We got there a little early and as we were waiting a crowd of indigenous people started to form outside a government building on the same corner as we were waiting. I was very curious as to what was going on and suddenly a large fracas kicked off. Police were running around the place and loaded a couple of young people into a police jeep and sped off at distance as loads of people were throwing all manner of things at them like bread, sugar cane and anything they could get their hands on it seemed. We discovered that the two people who were brought away had been done so for their own safety - they shot an indigenous person during a robbery and when things like this happen they take justice into their own hands and often kill people like that. Heidi was quite uncomfortable with us being there as things like that can really kick off and we might get caught up in the middle of it. We headed off and found a really nice local place to have lunch. We both had chicken and rice and one of the little girls running around became very fond of Emer - they had a great little conversation and played with some toys before we had to head off again. Some of the girls were humming and hawing about buying a fleecey jacket and ended up going back and buying one each (including Emer). After this final purchase we all headed back to the bus terminal and took a bus back to Quito. We had dinner and took it easy for the evening before heading to bed.
The following morning we finally left Quito for the final time and headed south towards Tena which was our gateway to the jungle. We took taxis to the main bus station and got our tickets. Again we had booked seats which was completely necessary as it was a 6 hour journey and quite a busy route - there were constantly people standing the whole way along the route. We had the front block of seats and we chose the ones by the door for the extra legroom which didn't turn out to be as great as I expected. It was quite a narrow gap between my seat and the exit so loads of people were bashing into me as they got on and left but if that's the worst thing that happens on this trip I will be very happy. Also, we could see right out the front window which was interesting as this driver was also a bit of a lunatic - they hate braking or slowing down at all and will regularly take corners in the opposite lane to carry more speed through the corners. Also, buses are pretty much the fastest vehicles on the roads so are constantly overtaking but as most of the route was through the mountains it meant lots of dodgy overtaking manouveres. Once again though we arrived in one piece. The scenery along the route was stunning and we saw loads of amazing valleys, waterfalls and drops all around us.
Upon arrival in Tena we got two pickup taxis to take the 9 of us and large rucksacks to the office of the travel operator for the jungle trip. There were only 8 seats in the two of them so I offered to take a seat in the boot of the pickup which was quite a fun journey. We had a room to put all of our bags in and we went for lunch before we had a couple of hours before our meeting. We chose to go to a zoo island which was accessed over a really bouncy suspension bridge. It was a really good "zoo" as there were loads of animals wandering around freely and there were some really exotic animals in cages. We wandered around here a bit until we had to go back for our meeting. In the meeting we went through the itinerary for the following 5 night stay in the Shangra-La jungle lodge, were fitted with wellies and loaded our bags into a waterproof bag in a pickup and then headed to our home for the next 5 nights.
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