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