Back to Santo Domingo

Making friends with a llama. I'm lucky he didn't
spit in my eye.

We set off for Santo Domingo quite early with me driving because Tom’s ankle is still sore and he’s keeping it in a brace for as long as possible. Apart from the chapas echados and some suicidal overtaking moves (witnessed, not done), the driving is OK. Chapas do catch me out. They are used on Ecuadorian trunk roads as well as in town, so if you’re approaching a town, there will be a chapa to slow you down (nothing wrong with that) and also one when you leave to town, as a sort of farewell gesture. They have to put them right across the road, otherwise people would drive onto the wrong side of the road to avoid them. They are also placed ahead of hazards such as tight bends and (a big favourite) before and after bridges. Before to slow you down and after to prevent cars coming over to your side of the road to avoid the chapa.

I’m slowly getting tuned into them.

We made good time and had another nice view of Chimborazo, this time with cloud swirling over its summit. The plan was to be there by 11am and Jorge would follow on in the pick-up. We managed to disconnect the cooker and have various pieces of furniture ready and got him loaded quite quickly. Jorge can load the pickup to an impressive height and then rope everything tight under a tarpaulin sheet.

The room was much diminished – no cooker, cupboard, benches or table. We had the stove for heating and some chairs and that was it.

After Jorge was dispatched home to Ambato (he’d be back next day for the final load), we took a drive to Salinas for some lunch in a café and a little walk around the town. We popped into the cemetery (like you do) and found it very Latin American, with the graves stacked above ground in slots. It would be quite hard to dig down six feet to bury a coffin in this terrain. I like Salinas, it is very pretty and has a nice feel to it. There are a very small number of tourists about (perhaps four) but the place is doing what it can to attract more.

Most of the efforts are the work of an Italian Catholic priest, who has started a chocolate factory, hotel, restaurants and other bits of industry. The tourist boom just isn’t happening, which is a shame. I liked the place and took some images, but I was very conscious that I shouldn’t be too intrusive. These people are just getting on with their lives, they are not putting on a show for the tourists like you see in some African villages. People go on safari and choose the optional trip to a Maasai village. They do a dance with some scary spear-waving, drink some bloody milk and sell you home-made crafts, then put on their football shirts and get back on their mobiles.

Here, people are getting on with their lives and tourists are a rarity. It would be like me walking the dog in Thorney and a bus-load of tourists taking pictures of me. I might be quite grumpy about it and I felt the people here might feel the same. I did take a photo of one of the chivas buses used hereabouts. I thought it was interesting. They are open-sided and used by the locals a) because there isn’t anything else; and b) because they can take their animals on board. I did a quick snap, but then noticed that some people were hiding their faces and the driver was mocking me by taking a photo of me on his mobile. I should have made some gesture to check he was OK to be photographed – lesson learned.

Tourism could bring much needed cash into the area, but it would also change things substantially. I don’t think these people would want to be part of a Maasai-style tourist experience, but then I suppose the first Maasai felt much the same. If I were in charge of the Ecuadorian high Andes tourist development board (maybe that exists, I don’t know), I’d be offering trecks in the paramo. Routes would need to be surveyed and marked, but the scenery is magnificent. It shouldn’t be a difficult sell with a bit of infrastructure in place.

Catholic Church in Salinas

Cemetery - here you get buried six feet up, not six feet under.

Above and below - views of Salinas

Back at Santo Domingo, Tom was keen to take me for a walk. I didn’t think it was a great idea with his ankle, but he said it would be OK. We walked out of the village, past free-range piglets and took a route down a steep valley, before a steady climb around the side of a hill and then contouring through woods and fields. There was a steep drop to our right looking down into a steep valley, cultivated as far as you could see. The steepest slopes are farmed here, either by crops or grazing.

We then cut up a steep track onto the open paramo and climbed until we got Santo Domingo in view below us. I guess we were around 4000m. A bit higher than we were, Tom could see Don Alfredo, who tends the sheep belonging to the local co-operative, starting to drive them down for the night. Don Alfredo lives with his wife and two daughters on the edge of Santo Domingo in a breeze block hut maybe 12x10 with a fire in the middle of the floor. The sheep live in a far more substantial structure next door. Don Alfredo also has a pig with piglets and various other animals, including a couple of vicious dogs. On account of dogs, Tom and I were carrying a couple of hefty stones each. I wouldn’t normally countenance throwing rocks at dogs, but I went with the local knowledge – apparently, if the dogs know you have stones, they snarl from a safe distance. As it happened, Tom was more concerned about the large pig [see video] than the dogs and when we got there Don Alfredo was outside, so his dogs were all sweetness and love. Tom told Alfredo he could take surplus logs and some other bits and pieces that he’d leave in the storeroom, so he was well pleased and seemed genuinely sorry to see Tom go.

Molesting llamas on the paramo. 

Santo Domingo below us, taken from the paramo.

Darkness falls fast (and with it the temperature), so we cranked the stove up and got the temperature inside up to around 16 degrees. We ate chips for dinner and watched the film Patton with George C Scott. It was a good film and fortified by rum with hot water bottles on our laps, we defied the cold. The bedroom was freezing, so the bottles were refilled and we slept in our clothes with the wind howling outside.

My first view of Chimborazo - wow!

I've been hoping to see Chimborazo, the largest volcano in Ecuador, for the past few days but it has been quite cloudy. Tom thought we'd probably see it on the drive to Simiatug and he was right. The higher we got, the clearer it became and finally the whole, massive mountain was on show.

At 6,268 metres (20,371ft), it is absolutely awe-inspiring. It hasn’t been active since 550CE but the results of its activity are all around. The surrounding high plateau is strewn with rocks and as you drive on roads where they have had to cut through or into the rock, you can clearly see strata of varying depths from eruption after eruption. It’s like the cross-section of a massive layer cake.

Chimborazo makes you stop in your tracks and, in a country where there are geological wonders everywhere, it has to be pretty amazing to stand out.

We started the drive from Ambato where we are at about 2,700m and crossed a high pass on a dirt road at around 4,200m before dropping down to Santa Domingo at 3,530m (11,500ft). You can see some video from the high part of the pass here. We met some gringos (Americans) on horses near the top.

The drive is a sensory overload from start to finish. From Ambato, you’re soon into countryside, quite lush with steep valleys and with lots of people selling produce at the side of the road. It’s an age-old opportunist sales technique and exactly how Stilton Cheese got started on the side of the A1. We stopped on one stretch where there were around eight sellers (all offering vegetables). We bought potatoes, beans, tomatoes and some fruit.

We also passed a community market set up on the bottom of a valley where there’s a tight bend and some parking. I guess people have to slow down for the bend and can park up if they see something interesting. This sells everything, including meat. Fresh mutton would be cut off a sheep (recently butchered) and hanging from a convenient road sign – did that say “bend ahead” or “dead sheep”?

There are lots of trucks on the road and they don’t seem to worry too much about where they overtake. Driving can sometimes feel a little dangerous: click here. 

In one valley, there’s the home of Mushuc Runa FC, the football team of the indigenous people. Mushuc Runa means “new man” in Quechua and they get big crowds. The stadium is reached down a steep dirt road (I don’t think you’d get the Arsenal team bus down there) and on match day everyone parks on the main road, which is also steep and narrow, but at least is tarmac. Apparently, the man who owns Mushuc Runa heads the local produce co-operative and has two wives (sisters) who live in houses next door to each other just down the road. They are very nice houses by the local standard and I thought the one higher up the road was a bit nicer (she must have been the top sister). This local gossip, by the way comes courtesy of Jorge, who knows what’s going on around here.

You can’t believe how big Chimborazo is, pictures don’t do it justice. No wonder people decided these volcanoes were gods or the homes of gods.

We turned off a good road onto a dirt track to cross a mountain pass. The road wasn’t too bad (no need to engage 4WD today), but it can get tricky in bad weather. I’m not comfortable giving the car such a hammering and would have slowed down a bit, but the Mitsubishi Montera (now 19 years old) seems well suited to such an environment. It’s a V6 2.7-litre petrol and isn’t very economical, although petrol is only $1.83 per gallon – less than 40p per litre. Lucy was getting a bit shaken in the back and gets painful contractions with the rough road.

We came off the dirt road onto a metalled surface and then turned off again onto a dirt track to Santa Domingo.

Santa Domingo is 3530m (11,500ft) and it’s hard to breathe once you start ding anything physical such as climbing the stairs. The centre of the community is a church and square, surrounded on three sides by school, church, cheese factory and the abandoned furniture factory where Tom and Lucy got accommodation. The central square has pigs running around, dogs and llamas. In the morning, people bring milk to the cheese factory from surrounding smallholdings, they arrive with two plastic cans strapped each side of a llama.

We walked down to the nursery (you get free nursery care in the high Andes) where children were playing out. Lots of them know Tom, Julia and Aureliano. The toys are worn out and play equipment is old tyres and logs. There’s a steel climbing frame and some plastic slides which all went flying when there was a blast of wind.

The rooms they have been using are above the old furniture factory. There’s a big room which they have used as a playroom. It was the old school and when they went in the last lesson was still chalked up on the blackboard (quite spooky). They also have a living room/kitchen warmed by a wood stove, where there’s a sink, fridge and gas hob; large table with benches and two settees. They have a bathroom and large bedroom which had two doubles and a single bed. It’s warm enough when the stove is lit, but very cold without it (and in the other rooms). Drinking water is from an office-style water cooler, milk is bought from the cheese factory each day and has to be boiled before use.

A local man had set up an interview for Lucy with his 90-plus mother, who had direct experience of the Simiatug uprising and the seizing of the land from the hacienda owners. She was able to give Lucy a first-hand account (she lives on her own over 3,500m in a hut with her animals) and in exchange for helping set up the interview, Lucy had promised her son a copy of the video, so we set off to take it to him in the nearby town of Salinas.

It’s a drive of about 45 minutes and Salinas is a pretty place with a central square and busy streets. It’s also quite industrious, making cheese and an orange liqueur among other things. We bought some cheese and chocolate. The man we were to deliver the video to lived further up the valley from Salinas, along quite a narrow rough road. He wasn’t there, but Lucy left the data stick with his wife. It seems odd to leave a piece of modern technology with a woman in a rural shack, but why not?

We were back before dark and enjoyed a nice meal of beef, potatoes and onions cooked on the wood burner. I wanted to go out to see the night sky, but there were three sodium lights in the main square, so light pollution was worse than Thorney. It was also very cold and blowing a gale, so I wasn’t tempted to venture away from the community.