A magnificent panorama of volcanoes

A rare sight of El Tungurahua - normally it's shrouded
in mist. Auray has found a flower. © Tom Rayner

The day was bright and clear – a great day for admiring the panorama of dramatic mountain scenery. Tom drove Aureliano and I to Parque de la Familia which offers great views, and also has a variety of animals in a sort of children’s farm.

The park is very well cared for with good paths and well-tended flower borders plus lots of interesting trees and plants. It’s on the edge of the steep valley which holds Ambato and, to get there from La Joya (where the hospital is) you have to go through La Miraflores and Ficoa, the posh parts of Ambato, and up a very steep road.

From Parque de la Familia, provided it’s clear like today, there are great views of Tungurahua and Chimborazo, which feel almost close enough to touch; also Cotopaxi, El Altar and Sangay. It was a volcano-spotters’ paradise and the higher peaks were all covered with fresh snow shining in the clear air.

I'm getting a little blase about El Chimborazo, but what
a sight it is on a clear day. © Tom Rayner

I’m getting a bit blasé about El Chimborazo. It’s an awesome sight, but isn’t it strange how awe fades into familiarity so quickly? I guess people who live here just look at it as I’d view a familiar landmark in the Cambridgeshire Fens (although a 20,000 ft volcano would take some getting used to).

El Tungurahua is less familiar. Although it’s relatively close to Ambato, it seems to be hidden in cloud more often than not, so when it does appear like a giant out of the mist, the effect is shocking. This morning it was there as clear as day, snow capped and with its top crater tilted ominously towards us.

We could also see some other clear peaks, which were confirmed by a park warden who passed by and was happy to stop for a chat. There was El Altar or Capac Urcu (possibly from the Kichwa “kapak” meaning great and “urku” mountain. It is an extinct volcano on the western side of Sangay National Park, with a highest point of 5,319 m (17,451 ft). Wikipedia says the Spanish colonists named it so because it resembled two nuns and four friars listening to a bishop around a church altar.

I always like to know how easy it is to get to the summit and Wikipedia says El Altar is the most technically demanding climb in Ecuador. Apparently, December to February are the best months to attempt an ascent. There’s also a more accessible hike to the lake within the caldera of the mountain. From Riobamba, travel to Candelaria and then check-in at the ranger station to enter the national park.

Wikipedia says a walk of 4–7 hours on an extremely muddy trail (knee-high rubber boots are recommended) leaves one at the refuge belonging to Hacienda Releche, which has many beds, and a kitchen. The hike to the lake is another two hours from the refuge across a valley and up a steep hill. If that’s “accessible” heaven knows what the peak ascent is like!

Capac Urcu (I’m still on Wikipedia) consists of a large stratovolcano of Pliocene-Pleistocene age (so between 2 and 5 million years old) with a caldera breached to the west. Inca legends report that the top of Altar collapsed after seven years of activity in about 1460, but the caldera is considered to be much older than this (you can’t trust those Incas – they’ll tell you anything). Nine major peaks over 5,000 metres (16,400 ft) form a horseshoe-shaped ridge about two miles across, surrounding a crater lake at about 4,200 m (13,800 ft), known as Laguna Collanes or Laguna Amarilla.

In the far distance, we could also see Sangay (5300m, 17,400ft). This is another classic stratovolcano (like Cotopaxi). I wish I had my binoculars because this volcano, although clearly visible, was too far away to pick out any detail, apart from its general shape.

Sangay - photo from Smithsonian Institution

It is the most active volcano in Ecuador, despite erupting only three times in recorded history, because the eruption that started in 1934 is still ongoing. Wikipedia says Sangay marks the southern boundary of the Northern Volcanic Zone, and its position straddling two major pieces of crust accounts for its high level of activity. Sangay's 500,000-year-old history is one of instability; two previous versions of the mountain were destroyed in massive flank collapses, evidence of which still litters its surroundings today.

Due to its remoteness, Sangay hosts a significant biological community with fauna such as the mountain tapir, giant otter, Andean cock-of-the-rock and king vulture. Since 1983, its ecological community has been protected as part of the Sangay National Park. Although climbing the mountain is hampered by its remoteness, poor weather conditions, river flooding, and the danger of falling ejecta, the volcano is regularly climbed, a feat first achieved by Robert T. Moore in 1929.

I was interested to read about the cock-of-the-rock. When I was a little boy, I had a book about the natural word, which I loved reading. There was a picture of an erupting African volcano with all the local animals running away, also pictures of the Amazon river and a picture of a cock-of-the-rock. When they asked in primary school what we wanted to do when we were older, I said I was going to go up the Amazon. Well, I did cross the Rio Napa in a canoe a few years back and that’s a tributary of the Amazon! I haven’t seen a cock-of-the-rock though (perhaps there’s still time).

It was a wonderful couple of hours and a lucky break in the weather. Thanks also to Aureliano for being so patient (all he wanted to do was to see the turkey in the farm park).

My pocket is picked

 Tom’s quest for Ecuadorian citizenship continues today with another trip to Riobamba. I wasn’t going – it was my job to look after Aureliano – and I was sorry to be missing the rendition of the national anthem. It’s strange that every country’s national anthem (with the exception of Japan’s) sounds more cheerful than ours. God save the Queen is such a dirge … few people believe in God any longer and fewer care about the Queen. It would be nice to have a jolly tune (like Italy’s) or something we could all get behind. Good luck with that: following Brexit, I have never known the country to be so divided.

Anyway, it was my job to look after The Quacker and he was much better as the day wore on. After lunch, Carlos asked me if I wanted to go to one of Ambato’s markets with him (he needed a few provisions), so we piled into the pick-up and set off. There are a few markets in Ambato (three I think) and I’ve been to a couple with Tom already, but not this one.

The markets sell different things (or specialise in different things) and they are like old-fashioned market halls in Britain, the ones we’ve mostly knocked down. Northwich used to have an amazing old half-timbered market with an upstairs gallery. I can remember vividly the smells of the place when I was a small boy going there with my mother. One corner smelled strongly of cheese and another of fish (I hated that bit). The hall was all wonky and bent, probably due to mining subsidence, but it had real character. The council knocked it down and built the most awful 1970s shopping arcade and open market. It was never the same.

Ambato’s market halls are newer than the old Northwich one, and bigger, but the layout is the same. Perhaps the originals had been destroyed in the great earthquake, but they’d had the good sense to keep the same design. Carlos bought some meat from downstairs and then we went upstairs to buy a food treat that Aureliano particularly likes. Obviously, my height, pale skin and clothes make me stand out as a foreigner and, although it was not as marked as Tom and I in Simiatug, I’m still easy to spot. This day, I was spotted by criminals. I’d had many lectures about being careful of pickpockets (and heeded them) but I was still robbed. I was carrying Aureliano, with my phone (a fairly old iPhone 6) in my zipped-up side-pocket. As we reached the top of the stairs, following Carlos, some people walked in front and across me, causing me to stop and step back. I was trying not to be pushed on the stairs, but I was conscious of a slight shove behind me. In two steps I realised my phone had gone. They’d successfully distracted me, unzipped my pocket and lifted my phone. It was a pretty well-organised and slick operation and I have to admire their skill.

It was a bit annoying, but I felt bad for Carlos who had taken me for a treat but thought he’d not looked after me properly. I’d been robbed on his watch. It was clearly just one of those things – expect to be robbed in a poor country when you’re wandering around with a sticker in your hat saying: “rich foreign tourist”. I felt a bit naked without my phone, it was a link home and also my camera, so I’m glad it hadn’t happened earlier in the holiday.

About an hour later, Tom and Lucy phoned. They’d had a WhatsApp message from someone claiming to have found my phone. What was my Apple ID? If we told them they’d unlock the Find My Phone feature and return it to me. We were so relieved but, of course, I couldn’t remember my ID or password. Just as well because it was a scam. They’d got into my phone and found my WhatsApp contacts, but couldn’t access other things. Had I remembered my log-in credentials, they’d have got into my account and could have used Apple Pay, unlocked the phone and locked me out.

We realised it was a scam after looking on the internet. Google “stolen iPhone scams” and it’s full of victims who gave their details to people who had “found” their phone and wanted to return it. For once, my senior memory lapse had been a help.

I had to go onto my laptop to block the phone (my laptop remembers my Apple ID, fortunately), also phone the UK to get my SIM card blocked and order a new one for when I got home. That evening, I filled in a police report online and got a PDF of an incident report and crime number immediately. Some things work so much better than they do in the UK! Of course, my insurance was useless – I’d dropped “valuables out of the home” from my house insurance to save money and my travel insurance had a £200 excess. When I got back to the UK, I used my old iPhone 5 and then bought a second-hand 6 on the internet for £100. A year later, I’m still using it.

On the plane home, I sat next to a young woman, a student doctor who had been doing her elective in Peru and she’d had her phone robbed on the first day, so perhaps I got away lightly. The good news of the day – apart from escaping a potentially more damaging scam – was that Tom passed his citizenship test with flying colours.

After around six months, he can apply for citizenship and get an Ecuadorian passport. Little did we realise in August 2019, that the next time he was going to be in Ecuador would be in the middle of Covid-19 pandemic!

The Ecuadorian National Anthem

The Quacker was not very well today, he had some kind of virus infection. Perhaps the sound of Tom practising the Ecuadorian National Anthem was too much for him? Tom has been working hard on his questions and on his anthem. He wondered if he would have to sing it … I was sure that he would. In case you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, here it is: https://youtu.be/POE_fHCCzxU

Trying to get Ecuadorian citizenship

So, today was the day we would get Tom’s citizenship sorted (or so we thought). We went to Riobamba (Bamba means field, so Riobamba – field by the river) which is about an hour’s drive from Ambato.

We had some difficulty finding the office on Google maps mainly because there were two streets of the same (or very nearly the same) name. The office was in a location where you wouldn’t expect to find an immigration office. We went in, went upstairs and there was just one chap who hadn’t started work yet. Aureliano and I went downstairs. I had clocked a play area but it was quite a walk away, so we went to a shop instead and I bribed Aureliano with snacks and the chance to sit in the driver’s seat of the car.

As it happened, they weren’t too long. The bad news was that despite being told in Ambato that it could all be sorted out today in Riobamba, it seemed there were still several documents needed. The good news was that the official took to Lucy and sorted most of the paperwork. She also gave Tom the questions Tom will need to answer to pass his citizenship test. Like the UK test, few nationals would be able to pass, but that’s not what it’s about; it’s just another hurdle to jump.

I think Tom will be fine with the questions, but he also needs to know the Ecuadorian national anthem, which has a lot of verses and a rather tricky tune, although the chorus is quite good. Like the quiz questions, not many Ecuadorians know anything except the first verse and chorus of the national anthem. If Tom passes, he should get citizenship in 2-6 months.

After the meeting, we drove into the centre of Riobamba in high spirits. It’s a nice town, with an old, colonial centre, plaza and cathedral. We ate lunch in a restaurant called Bonny, which specialises in fish. I’m surprised how much Ecuadorians love fish. The country does have a Pacific coast and fishing industry, but only in recent years will it have been possible to easily transport fish from the coast to the highlands. I had trout (not a sea fish), Lucy this enormous fish two feet long.

On the way back to Ambato we saw Chimborazo from Riobamba – it looks massive … really massive; you get a very different perspective on the mountain from that city.

Ecuadorian birthday celebration

I think Julia and Aureliano are lucky to have family and homes in Quito, Ambato and Peterborough, but the downside is that they seem to face a constant wall of bureaucracy that has to be overcome.

Lucy has been trying to sort out Tom’s application for Ecuadorian citizenship. While she was in Quito the week before last, she had gone to the immigration office to find they had no record of the application they’d started. There was an office in Ambato, so the plan was to go together and try to progress the application.

I looked after Aureliano while they went to try to sort things out. It seems Ecuadorian immigration is as inefficient as the UK, although perhaps it’s not a deliberately “unfriendly” policy like ours.

They came back with what might be good news. If they went to Riobamba the next day, they would be able to do it all there. Riobamba is around an hour’s drive away from Ambato, so that was the plan.

Today was the birthday of Sandrita, the hospital cook. They had bought her a huge cake. The Ecuadorian birthday celebration requires the singing of happy birthday and the blowing out of candles. The birthday boy (or girl) also has to have a bite of the cake (before it’s cut) and as you bend down, some mean person pushes your face into the cake.

Sandrita knew what was coming and ended up with a small chocolate moustache. I would have looked like a member of Old Glory.

Later in the afternoon, Tom and I asked Sandrita whether she was having a party that evening. She wasn’t, her birthday had been yesterday. I think she has quite a hard life. She works long hours at the hospital, she has a long bus ride/s to get to work and to get home again and she has a child of about 10 who is looked after (by family?) while she’s at work.

Chatting with Alfonso

Chimborazo from the house this morning

Back at 2700m, I could tell immediately that there was less oxygen and I felt quite uncomfortable walking upstairs. We unloaded the cars, Tom put several loads of washing in the machine and Julia went back to Quito with Nidia and Emilia.

Lucy was feeling pretty rough after yesterday’s long journey. Sitting in a car for nine hours, being bounced around bends and over chapas is not what you want at her stage of pregnancy.

I’ve been quite worried about her this time. She seemed to cope with pregnancy so well with Julia and Aureliano, and I expected her to be the same this time. Margaret also found the third pregnancy much more uncomfortable, so maybe it’s something to be expected. I’m worried about her on the long leg of the flight from Mexico City to London. I had booked myself premium economy with the thought that Lucy could have my seat on the flight and I’d help with the children, but premium economy isn’t that great, and so I suggested we upgraded her to first class, so she could have a lie-down bed. We’ll see what can be done.

Carlos’ brother Alfonso, who everyone called Guaco, is now up and about. I’d met him at Tom and Lucy’s wedding and when I met him in the hospital lounge, we had a little chat. He was keen to speak English and that suited me very well. It meant I could have a conversation without running down dead-ends when my grammar/vocabulary ran out.

He was quite chirpy, and told me that he had learned English when he was a teenager and had spent some time in Buffalo on an exchange visit. He said it had seemed very strange and he’d learned to make his own bed. I asked him who’d done it before – his mother or their maid (I assumed they had one). He told me that his father had owned a large house in Quito and had employed a chauffeur, a couple of gardeners, a cook and a couple of housemaids. They were clearly a bit higher in the social strata than merely middle-class. At some stage, the money had been lost (I don’t know how), but Guaco seems to have had a good life.

He worked as a company agent and had connections with Europe and the US. One of his contracts was to procure spare parts for the Ecuadorian air force when they were using UK aircraft, including the Spitfire and the Shackleton.

He’d been to England, he loved British pubs (I think he enjoyed his drink) and particularly remembered a pub in London where you could buy 100 different types of whisky. During his stay, he sampled them all, but (not surprisingly) could not name his favourite.

He also very much enjoyed a visit to Soho and the Windmill Club. There was nothing like that in Quito at the time, although no doubt there were a few Nihgt Clubs.

In the afternoon, Tom and I went to the Parque del Flores in Ambato, a fairly new park where the planting up had only just finished. There were dogs everywhere (Tom wondered if there had been a dog show earlier) and Aureliano had a good time on the climbing frame, slide, rope-bridge combo. Some people asked what his name was and they couldn’t get their heads around Aureliano. It caused some laughter, much to Tom’s annoyance. We finished off with an ice cream at a nearby café.

The day had been clear first thing, offering a good view of Chimborazo and in the evening, we were treated to a view of Cotopaxi with the setting sun lighting up its western flank.

Cotopaxi with the setting sun on its western flank

Happy birthday, pulpo and a long drive

It is Margaret’s birthday today. By the time we were up at 6.30am, it was already afternoon in Thorney. We made videos singing happy birthday to share on WhatsApp. Aureliano enjoys singing and harmonises the “to you” in “happy birthday to you” in a very cute way. We sang in English and then in Spanish as a novelty.

It was also our last day on the coast and we were facing an eight-hour drive back to Ambato. The plan was the same as driving out here – we’d have lunch a little early and then hit the road.

So, we made one last visit Last visit to Margarita’s for early lunch. It was camerones again for me much to Tom’s disgust. He wants me to try all the different types of fish, but I am a conservative eater and I like prawns in breadcrumbs. I did have them in garlic one day to ring the changes. The children are also creatures of habit. They run into the restaurant shouting “pulpo, pulpo” which has become their meal of choice and then they dash to swing on one of the hammocks strung between posts in the restaurant. It seems odd to have hammocks in a restaurant, but there are three of them, so people must find them useful. Click here to see video.

I have eaten lunch at Margarita’s every day, except one (when we went whale watching) and none of us have been ill. Lucy did get a peek into the kitchen one day and it didn’t fill her with comfort, but there are probably much worse. The owner sits in the front of the restaurant reading a newspaper; there’s no menu, just a list of fish on the board in front. He’ll tell you if one isn’t available or if there’s a recommendation. Whether you get what you ask for is a different matter – apparently the tuna didn’t taste like tuna, but whatever it was it tasted very nice.

Scoffing pulpo

Full of pulpo and camerones, we set off on the long drive back. We went a slightly different way to Portoviejo and it seemed a much faster and smoother road. We drove through virgin forest on the hills (it’s surprisingly hilly by the coast), and this is very interesting to see. There are low trees dotted with taller ceibo trees which really stand out. They are taller, have thick trunks of an unusual shape and aerial roots. There are no leaves on them at this time of year (the dry season) and so the ceibos stand out like sentinels. They could be Ents walking through the forest. In spring, the trees blossom and then are covered with a fluffy down which is gathered and used to stuff pillows and garments - we know it as kapok, although that’s not a word I’ve seen for some time.

In Portoviejo (one of the older Spanish settlements in Ecuador, going back to the 16^th Century) we saw in daylight damage that the earthquake did. There are lots of small earthquakes in Ecuador that don’t make the news or even get remarked upon, but once in a generation where you live, there’s a big one. I guess buildings are more earthquake-proof than they used to be, but some of the cracked and boarded-up buildings looked pretty modern and substantial. Reinforced concrete alone is not the answer, you need sophisticated construction techniques to survive a 7+ quake.

Our route took us on to San Sebastián, Pichincha, Velasco Ibarra, Quevedo, Valencia, La Maná and then the long climb over the Andes before dropping down past Latacunga and on the Pan American to Ambato.

It was hot and humid outside and when we crossed a couple of big rivers (Rio Daule and Rio Portoviejo) where people were bathing in the shallows.

Motorcycles were everywhere (more often with two people on board and often with more). They look precarious and cars and buses show no duty of care to bikes. If a car wants to overtake, it will run a bike into the gutter and buses just squeeze through, then stop suddenly if someone wants to get on or off.

We saw two bike crashes, one outside what I thought was a bikers’ café because there was a row of bikes parked up outside. Everyone thought that was hilarious because it wasn’t a bikers’ café, it was a brothel. Prostitution is legal in Ecuador, although abortion isn’t (a strange paradox for how women can control their bodies). There is a road in Ambato with a line of brothels. They call them Night Clubs to give them an air of respectability, but often the letters get mixed up and you see Nihgt Club instead. On the Pan American (when it was 9pm and dark) there were girls in short skirts and heavily made up. In a poor country, packed with refugees from civil war in Columbia and the economic crisis hitting Venezuela, I’d be surprised if prostitution was a profession that people selected as a lifestyle choice. Even in a rich country like the Netherlands, I find prostitution uncomfortable, but in a poor country like Ecuador, with even poorer refugees, and where women’s equality is still miles behind what we’d find acceptable in England, it takes on a far more desperate and depressing complexion.

We stopped in La Maná for ice cream as we had on the outward journey and it was getting dark quickly as we began the climb over the Andes. The cloud closed in, the rain came but we eventually crossed the high pass and the air cleared as we descended past Latacunga. I was glad to be on the Pan American and we were back in Ambato around 9.30pm. It was a long day’s driving for everyone.

Restaurante Margarita

Last visit to Los Frailes

Our holiday on the coast is drawing to an end and we have to head back to Ambato tomorrow. I must say, I have been enjoying sea-levels doses of oxygen, but I must be more used to life at 2700m by now.

It was another overcast, but warm, day and the sea was crashing in. We decided to have another trip to Playa Los Frailes and we made a good, early start. If you don’t get there early, you’re likely to be queuing on the road to get in as there’s limited car parking. Some people park up just down the road and there’s a good business to be had by the little three-wheeler motorcycle taxis ferrying people to the beach.

Parking is restricted, but the main problem is the bureaucracy at the entrance to the beach. This bit of the coast is a protected area and everyone has to be recorded. For us, this means checking passports. I have to give my passport number and nationality. Being Ecuador, there are three blokes taking details at gate. The first stops the car, the second reads passport details to the third, who keys the information into a laptop (presumably an Excel spreadsheet. The first one then waves you through.

There was a line of cars blocking the main road queuing to get in when we left, but it’s a massive beach with room for hundreds more people.

At the toilets, there are two people on duty. One takes your money and gives you a handwritten ticket to say you’ve paid, you then walk down the path for 10 yards, hand the ticket to another person who says you can go into the toilets. They only charge 25 cents a time, so it must be just about paying their wages.

The sun was out at Los Friales and the waves were quite high, crashing into the beach in dramatic fashion. Tom spent an hour in the sea being tossed about and the rest of us had a quick dip. When he came out, his ankle was sore. It’s a shame we didn’t have a boogie board, it would have been very easy to surf the waves today.

It’s strange how the weather behaves on this coast. Los Friales was lovely and sunny (quite hot), but just a few miles north, it was cloudy again.

Family shot sans Julia (below) who doesn't always
like having her picture taken.

We ate at Margarita’s restaurant in Puerto Cayo and then, in the afternoon, I went for a walk on the beach with Nidia, Julia and Aureliano. Nidia just goes paddling in the sea with all her clothes on and encourages the children to do the same. They were soaked. It’s a very un-British thing to do, probably because you’d freeze if you did that in Norfolk. It’s probably a good thing that there’s some Ecuadorian influence on them, otherwise they’d grow up like Margaret and I with our “you’ll catch your death of cold doing that” attitude.

I had been keen to go to one of the bars in the Mirador San Jose, but the one nearest to us (called One Degree South, a friendly one run by English-speaking Canadians; the others are French-Canadian and are a bit gruff in the best French café tradition) is only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Tom, Emilia and I went across (Lucy joined us later) and we found a small bar serving food and drink with four elderly Canadian couples dining out.

We got into conversation and they were very interested in us (and me in them). “Do you all live here,” I asked? “How do you like it?”

“You mean in paradise,” was the reply, quoting the sales brochure for San Jose. “What’s not to like?” There seemed to be a little sarcasm creeping in, but they all said they were happy. I think they’d be a lot happier if there were more people around and the place had been the vibrant community they’d been promised.

The three tribes of Ecuador

People on the coast are quite different from those living in the highlands. I’ve been getting used to pronouncing double L as J, but on the coast, they use the Spanish Y-sound. Also, they don’t sound the S at the end of a word, so (for example) they would say vamo and not vamos.

I think there are three kinds of Ecuadorian - those who live in Quito; those who wear wellies, hats and ponchos; and those who wear shorts and flip flops.

On the coast, people are in shorts and flip-flops. They are also fatter and taller than the people in the highlands. One theory is that there has been more mixing with other races, especially those of African origin, another says they eat more protein (fish).

Emilia, being uncharacteristically mean, says that because people on the coast eat fried bananas they get big bottoms. They do eat a lot of bananas and there are some enormous bellies and bottoms, which you just don't see in somewhere like Simiatug. A favourite trick of the male population (especially on hot days) is to roll their T-shirt up above their bellies. It’s not attractive.

There seems to be a little more money about, but ordinary folk are still very poor. Motorcycles are a means of transport, not a toy for menopausal men, and they often carry up to four people. Few people wear helmets and there’s a regular seating arrangement on the bike for families. Tom would be riding, Aureliano would be sitting on the tank, Lucy at the back and Julia between mum and dad. I’ve seen tiny babies being carried by mum on the pillion.

Whale watching from Puerto Lopez

I was pretty excited about today – we were going whale watching. I wished that Margaret could have been here to share the experience. We saw minke whales off the Inner Hebrides some years back and it was astonishing. We were lucky to see them, they’re not rare, but they are not always spotted. Off Ecuador in August, you’d be hard pressed not to bump into a humpback whale – there’s a lot more of them, they’re much bigger and a lot of them are showing off in the hope of impressing a mate.

Lucy and Aureliano were not on the trip and Nidia also elected to stay behind (I suspect to help out). Tom, Julia, Emilia and I headed for Puerto Lopez, which is around 30 miles south along the coast. It’s the nearest reasonably sized town and we knew there were trips from there. Some other places were advertising them, but we were not entirely sure they were safe or kosher.

Puerto Lopez isn’t a huge place. The roads are terrible, and I was glad we were in the Montero not the Chevrolet. We headed towards the seafront quite slowly and were soon accosted by a chap who wondered if we wanted to see whales. We weren’t ready to buy just yet (the plan was to head to the front and check out the options). He wasn’t taking no for an answer and when we drove off, he jumped on his bike and rode after us.

I was getting used to the Ecuador sales technique. It’s not so much of a hard sell as a “please buy from me”. Everything is sold at the side of the road and there’s a lot of competition.

This guy was determined. When we slowed down, there he was and when we stopped at the T-junction on the seafront, he was at the driver’s window. He had a laminated information sheet and anything we wanted was possible. What time did the boat leave? 11am was the answer. Well we wanted something a little earlier …

Hang on, he’d get that sorted. A large chap on a small motorcycle arrived, there was a short conversation. No problem, they could leave at 10.30. We were running out of excuses not to go with them, so we said OK, we’d take a look. He leapt off his bike, guided us backwards into a parking slot and took us to his leader. This was a small, seafront office with the walls covered in slightly faded whale posters with promo text in Spanish and English. Whales are the main attraction, but it seems all the boats offer a chance to do some snorkelling and to see the blue-footed boobies as well (it doesn’t matter if you want to see them or not – blue-footed boobies are compulsory). We booked in ($25 each, Julia free) and were asked to wait on the beach. They’d let us know when to head for the jetty and we were quite pleased to hear that we didn’t have to wade out to get in the boat (as predicted by Emilia).

We waited until about 10.45am (so the boat did sail at 11am) and then walked down to the jetty. There were about 20 people booked on and we’d been promised a top deck view. They were as good as their word. Julia was lifted up and we had to climb around the side and up a ladder onto the top deck. The boat was quite small, a bit like the fishing boat in Jaws and powered by a couple of chunky outboard engines.

Julia enjoyed whale watching, but couldn't stay awake
for the whole show.

It was a fairly overcast day, but warm enough, and we were soon speeding out of the harbour into open sea. There were a few other boats about, and we soon spotted some whales. The boats are supposed to stay 50m away from whales and 100m away if a whale has a calf, but the animals were popping up all over. We would see (or hear) a whale blow as it reached the surface, see an expanse of back, a small fin and then it was down again. Often, there were three or more travelling together. After two or three breaths, they would dive; the tail would come up out of the water as the animal went down and that would be it – they’d disappear for some time and resurface well away from us.

The boats seem to work together. There was some mobile phone messages and a couple of boats that were near to us, headed at speed towards Salango Island, just off the shore at the southern end of Puerto Lopez bay. There were a few whales about, but they seemed to be travelling through, not mad keen to put on a show. The other boats had gone further out and I was beginning to think we’d backed the wrong horse when our chap headed out after them. There were some whales on the surface putting on a bit of a show. A couple of large whales would dive, surface with a blow, then roll on their side and slap their massive pectoral fins on the surface of the sea. They might lie there and give the surface three huge slaps before rolling back, diving and then doing the whole thing again.

I guessed this was some kind of display for the lasses, but the internet suggests it’s a means of communication with other whales. Just letting the other folk know they’re about.

A couple of whales can past and there was a baby whale with them, quite clearly visible. It surfaced more regularly and was sticking close by its mother. The babies have quite a high death rate due to attacks by orcas. Apparently, most humpbacks have scars from orca attacks.

Julia had enjoyed seeing the whales, but it got a bit rough in the boat on the open sea and I think she was feeling a little queasy. She did the sensible thing and fell asleep.

We’d been out for a couple of hours, so the tour was nearing its end and we headed back into Puerto Lopez, past Salango to the cliffs at the southern end of the bay. The snorkelling gear was handed out to anyone who wanted it and there were quite a few takers, despite the rather dull day. We stayed up top and got a piece of banana cake from the skipper. Julia had woken up and been given a snack by Emilia, which turned out to taste terrible. We dropped some overboard and it was immediately gobbled up by a shoal of catfish. The rest of the packet followed (it was just like feeding the fish at Crowland) and I felt a bit guilty – all the fish the snorkellers were trying to spot were round our side of the boat being fed.

Just as we finished, a huge humpback whale breached a couple of times on our side of the boat. It was unexpected and quite shocking/spectacular. Tom managed to video it, which was good because I could hardly believe my eyes. These things are massive, they weigh as much as six adult elephants and grow to 16 metres (the big ones are the females) so the power to propel that much body clean out of the water is amazing. It was quite a finale to the whale show!

But the show wasn’t over, there were still the blue-footed boobies to see. These albatrosses nest on very narrow ledges on the cliffs. Their feet are very bright blue. Not for the first time, I wished I’d brought my binoculars with me.

Dry tropical forest, sand thieves and the seven-hour snake

Those jumping crabs

Despite our Mirador San Jose being described as a tropical paradise, the beach has seemed a little less golden sand and more volcanic grey. There’s also a steady trade in sand stealing by groups who are presumably constructing some of the other developments further south or north. A truck rolls up, everybody waves at you, then it stops, at least six men jump out and start shovelling sand into the back. There’s a chap on top spreading it out as it’s thrown up. They work like demons and then pile back in and disappear.

The section of beach right in front or the Mirador is left alone, but at each side there are excavations where sand has been extracted. There are soft cliffs along the shore, so removing beach sand is likely to cause some quick erosion in a winter storm.

Today, the weather was sunnier and so we drove south to a well-known beach called Playa Los Frailes (quite why monks would want to have a beach is a mystery). It is a lovely beach with golden sand and safe swimming (a little like Lulworth Cove) and we had fun swimming in the breaking waves.

The area is a nature reserve and surrounded by Dry Tropical Forest. This looks very much like dead trees, but when it rains, the whole place breaks into leaf and flower. It’s quite an interesting habitat – small stunted trees interspersed with bushes and cactus. The cactus is interesting. It grows high, straight and is quite thin. A section had been broken and, running through the middle of the succulent spike is a hardcore centre a bit like a bamboo cane shoved through the middle.

We walked up to the headland and then down into the next bay, where the sand is darker and the sea more dangerous. The big attraction here were the jumping crabs, which Tom delighted in photographing. He wanted me to herd a few across some very slippery rocks to make them jump.

Slipping on a wet rock and breaking a leg isn’t the only danger. In the forest there’s something called a seven-hour snake and you can probably guess why it’s called that. Get bitten and you have seven hours to live. Tom seemed quite relaxed, he thought that was plenty of time to get to hospital. I was wishing I’d put my wellies on.

We ate lunch at Margaritas on the way back to Mirador San Jose and I had prawns (camarones not gambas) in breadcrumbs. They were very good and I had the same meal (more or less) every day thereafter: prawns, rice, fried banana and a small side salad, which we don’t eat in case it’s been washed in contaminated water.

Pelicans and Frigate Birds

So, the dawn broke on a strange scene – a slightly grey Pacific Ocean, a steady crash of breakers on the grey sand, an underdeveloped development that looks as if it has run out of cash and frigate birds (wow! I love frigate birds). They are huge things, gliding effortlessly through the sky in small formations. There are also pelicans and it’s amazing what good fliers they are for a bird that looks so cumbersome on the ground.

Mirador San Jose is a very strange place. It’s clearly a chunk of Pacific coast that some development company bought with the intention of turning it into a retirement home complex, only it hasn’t quite worked. They sold it as “Retire in Paradise” to Canadians and it might sound quite attractive – a secure, self-contained development of large villas, good weather and a private Pacific beach. You can see why some thought it might be  good idea, but perhaps only 20 per cent of the plots have been developed, there are huge chunks of vacant land, many of the villas are for sale and the infrastructure is unbuilt or crumbling.

Our villa was quite nice. It’s owned by a French Canadian woman who rents it out on Airbnb and it has reasonably good facilities. Decoration is stark (all white) and it lacked some TLC and a lived-in touch. There’s a nice rooftop terrace which has no chairs for example. Everything is bleached by the sun and corroded by the salt spray. Our villa was on the edge of the development and there was nothing immediately surrounding it.

One might image your despair having bought a place off plan to find that this tropical paradise means you’re isolated, there’s no doctor, decent shops or thriving social life. There are very few people around in reality.

Our holiday home at Mirador San Jose

There's a lot of land left for development

Lots of the villas that have been built are now for sale

Children don’t worry about fountains without water, they just head for the beach, which is what we did. The sea is warm, there are stones to throw, shells to collect and (best of all) humpback whales to see just off the coast. You can spot them very easily, they empty their lungs with a puff of spray when they surface and you can also spot their huge tails when they dive. We spotted one or two further out that were breaching.

The humpbacks come to this part of Ecuador in their hundreds each year in August in order to give birth and breed. They then travel down to the Antarctic feeding on krill. We’re going to hire a boat and go whale watching later in the week, so I hope they stick around. Today, I was wishing I’d brought my binoculars.

For lunch, we decided to eat out in Puerto Cayo, which is the nearest town, about 10 miles down the coast. Along the coast road, there are lots of developments starting up, probably the same idea as Mirador San Jose. I hope they’re better planned and better funded. I say town for Puerto Cayo, but it is actually a tiny fishing village where the boats are pulled up onto the sandy beach. As soon as you pull off the coast road into town, the road quality deteriorates and you’re dodging potholes and jumping chapas. The rough tarmac becomes a dirt track and you can turn up a rough main street to a square where there a few shops and a volleyball court (Ecuador’s favourite urban game, it seems).

We selected a restaurant for lunch that Tom and Lucy has used before (and it hadn't given them food poisoning). It was called Restaurante Margarita and was plastic tables under and thatched canopy on the side of the building. The host was a friendly chap and the menu was basically ‘fish’. I had a dorado, which was rather nice. No bones and quite a meaty taste – a little like tuna.

Sunset over the Pacific from the roof terrace of our villa

The sun was quite warm, so we decided to go to the pool during the afternoon. There were three other people there when we arrived. The children’s pool was dry, but there was an adult pool with a shallow-ish shallow end – too deep for Julia to put her feet down but she was game. The water was bloody freezing considering we were one degree below the equator.

In the evening, we watched the sun set over the Pacific from the roof or our villa and then played Telefunken. I won (against the odds), perhaps it was beginner’s luck.

My first view of the Pacific

So today I had my first view of the Pacific Ocean. It was pitch black and I just got to see the tops of the waves breaking on our beach so it wasn’t much of a view, but I can also hear them crashing ashore as I write this.

The journey was long and arduous; it makes you realise how easy and quick it is to drive around the UK. It was a journey of 437km (around 310 miles) and you’d budget around six hours to do that in England. We set off just after noon and got there around 10.30pm.

I was driving Nidia’s Chevrolet with Nidia and Julia, plus a boot full of cases, and following Tom in the Montero. At 2700m, you really notice a power drop on a small petrol engine, so I was down to third gear on some of the hills, while Tom went sailing up with his 3-litre V6 monster.

After an early cock-up when we lost them completely, he was a little more alert in waiting for me and also on giving signals. We started by heading up the Pan American, turning off at Latacunga to cross the high Andes. There were spectacular views as we headed up the mountains – Cotopaxi was clear of cloud and you could see the broad mass of the Illinizas, which we’d seen the tops of above the Ambato ridge a couple of days earlier. They were still snow covered.

The roads were not too bad, fairly quiet and we managed to get past the few slow-moving trucks fairly easily. Road surfaces were pretty good and you can depend upon a bend here being a nice constant radius (not tricky tightening half-way round). I’m also getting used to the chapa echados, so there’s less panic braking.

Julia did decide she needed a wee on the long climb and after ages looking for a garage (all garages have toilets, but no toilet paper, so all cars carry toilet paper) we had to do a pee-pee en campo. Julia wasn’t too keen on the idea, but bladder beat brain and so she agreed. Of course, we passed a garage about 10 minutes later.

On the high paramo, you’re well above the clouds, but as we started the descent the cloud became thicker and we were driving in fog for a while. The descent of steep and relentless, with straight sections to build speed and hairpins requiring hard braking. I’d got the Chevrolet in third gear, using the engine to spare the brakes as much as possible, but I was conscious that I was giving it a hard time. About half-way down Tom pulled over because poor Lucy was feeling sick. There were clouds of smoke coming from his car. It was his brakes smoking and we also discovered his coolant water level was well down. I suggested a low gear rather than over-working the brakes and we took things a little easier after that.

Our first planned stop was at La Mana for ice-creams in a hotel recommended by Carlos. They were quite good, but by now it was close to getting dark and we still had miles to go.

Darkness does come quickly here and the roads were not as I expected. I thought there would be a steep drop from the Andes (tick) and then a long, straight, fen-type road to the coast. It was not so.

The country is still remarkably hilly, there were several large towns to go through and, in darkness, the chapas got harder and harder to see. Also, the communities start installing their own and their height and width depends on how much tarmac or concrete was available. Often, communities slow cars down in order to sell them things (generally fruit or drinks) and these are the worst. Even crawling over some of them, the Chevrolet scraped something metal against the road surface.

Then Julia announced that she needed a poo. We started the search for a garage, unsuccessfully, and it became urgent. I pulled off the road onto a gravel verge, scraping the underside of the car again, but Julia wouldn’t do a poo en campo, so we set off again. Eventually we found a roadside bar and they kindly let her use the toilet (I scraped the underside of the car again leaving the road).

Porto Viejo was a nightmare. Google took us a very strange way and we passed buildings still wrecked by the 2016 earthquake (this was a 7.8 magnitude and killed 700 people). Roads were also clearly affected. In one section half the carriageway had disappeared, but there were no warning signs or any repairs.

We eventually pulled into the complex and collected the keys for the house. The development looks quite grand from the outside, but even in the dark, it was clear that it was still a work in progress. The place is called Mirador San Jose and it’s a development mainly sold to Canadian ex-pats promising them retirement in a tropical paradise. Paradise or not, it was good to see an end to the journey and the villa was large (three beds) with high ceilings and all white inside (dazzlingly white). What will it look like in daylight?

Markets and cemeteries

My new trousers ...

It’s still cold here in Ambato, down to around 12 degrees in the house first thing in the morning. Everyone is moaning about the weather – I think they might be turning into Englishmen.

Lucy arrived back from Quito today, I walked to the burger restaurant with Tim for lunch and she was there when we got back, complete with Nidia, Emilia and the children.

Carlos is caring for his brother (who I haven’t yet seen) and he looks very weary.

We’re off to the Pacific coast tomorrow and it will be a long drive. Lucy’s mum wanted some shoes, so I went to the shoe market in Ambato with them. There’s  a specialist market for shoes and it’s pretty big. There are some brands that I didn’t recognise and some that I did, although I’m told they’re all fake. Some of the fake brands are direct copies, others change a letter in the brand as a gesture towards legality.

While Nidia was trying shoes on, there was a TV screen above the stall with a football match showing. I had a look to see who was playing and it was with Lucy, Nidia and Emilia. Mushuc Runa, whose stadium we passed on the way to Santo Domingo two weeks ago, were playing. The standard was like English Division Two and there was no-one watching.

I had a tour of Ambato markets with Tom yesterday. We went through a couple in the city centre. They are well organised in market halls, just like we used to have in English towns when I was a lad. Produce is piled up in layers and the stallholder stands in front. There are little shrines in every market, some of them rather twee and some rather gruesome.

All sell food and the speciality food in Ambato is Llapingacho, a type of stuffed potato patty. Ambato has its own recipe and there’s a line of shops selling them in the market.

Earlier, I’d picked up my trousers from the tailor. They were a good fit. I’m not going to wear them in Ecuador, I’ll wait until I get home.

One of the covered markets in Ambato

Llapingacho sellers in the market - competition is intense

Tom and I also visited the cemetery in Ambato. This is a huge walled area (with coffin slots filling the walls. Some of the richer families and some business organisations have their own tombs – quite large constructions – with slots for coffins. It’s peaceful and has a nice atmosphere, although some of the graves are decorated with fairy lights and solar-driven animatronics (I saw at least one dancing flower) which would be considered bad taste in the UK. An Ecuadorian-style cemetery in Thorney would certainly save space!

Coffin slots in Ambato cemetery (above) and (below) one of the private tombs