Quito and from there to Colombia

Finding my way to my CS host's place in Quito wasn't easy but when I finally made it he and his family gave me a warm welcome and took me to their beautiful house in Tumbaco, 30 minute bus ride from the capital. Ingo is known in area as the gringo alto, the tall foreigner, and his 2m 5cm height makes him the centre of attention where ever he goes in this land of midgets. I loved it, 'cause close to him nobody even saw me. He, his beautiful girlfriend Genny and the two gorgeous señoritas of the family, Emily & Elise, showed me around in the Quito old town and had lots of patience when I was trying to find vegetarian food in a local animal market fair the next day.

Ingo wanted to increase his farm size (now only including two dogs, two cats, six ducks, four geese, quite a few non-egg-laying chickens, a rooster, a hamster, two rabbits, a lama and a goat) with a female lama and a male goat, but luck wasn't on our side and he only ended up getting his wallet stolen by three old ladies. I was sorry it didn't happen to me instead, especially because I only had 15 dollars.


Besides lama riding they introduced me to many new interesting looking fruit, some of which were delicious just like that and some which taste better as a juice. The funkiest looking one, yellow Pitaya, was my favourite.

Ingo built a fire to celebrate me leaving the next morning, even though I had left them and their wifi to peace for a whole day when I was out discovering Quito ;)






Quito is one of these cities with a spectacular location - in between several volcanoes, one of which is still active, just waiting to give the locals a warm ash shower one day.







Since being well for over a month seemed too long for me, I desided to check out the views over Quito from Teleférico, a cable car taking you to the altitude of 4100 metres. The ride to there (8,5$) was pleasant, but I didn't expect the first symptoms of the altitude sickness to hit me within five minutes.

So after taking a few pics I took the next car down and was met by a worried member of the staff offering me oxygen as soon as I got out. I said no thanks, I'm used to this by now... ;D In 2800 metres the headache, nausea and dizzyness were gone nearly as quickly as they had arrived.


After a few days in Quito it was time to say goodbye to Ecuador and to the southern hemisphere and take a bus to Tulcan (4,5$) at the Colombian border crossing the Equador on the way. In spite of all the warnings I had heard the crossing went smoothly and not me nor my belongings were searched even once.

From Ipiales on the Colombian side I took the first bus to Pasto (5h, 7000 cop, 3€) and was lucky enough to get a seat on the right side of the bus to enjoy these amazing views. (Note the trucks on this pic on the right)



I've now been in Pasto for two nights and haven't really discovered much to see or take pics of in the city. I found a veggie restaurant but besides the nice dinner I also got an overdose of Taoism and meat demonisation there. I'm no longer surprised vegetarianism is not popular here - trying to frighten folks to stop eating meat is hardly going work on anyone with a half a brain (or a year old brain damage).

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Rio negro and Finca Vrindavan with beauty inside and out

I left Baños to go couchsurf with someone I was really looking forward to meeting: Patrik, a Nomadic Amb from Sweden, who lives in a Hare Krishna monastery (read: beautiful cabins in the jungle) in Rio Negro only 40 minutes by bus (0,5$) from Baños. As you know, I don't really consider myself a very spiritual person, the non-ghost-non-spirit-non-god-non-horoscope-non-nada believing atheist that I am, but after living in a religious home for 17 years I figured I could take it and experience something new and unique. After a day there I could just politely say I was in a hurry and get back to Baños to soak in the natural hot tubs. But that's not quite how it went.

I was welcomed to the Finca Vrindavan by a girl with the warmest hugs ever, Liz or madre Lalita, who had come to visit the village with her two fellow-munks, Dhruva and Parsad. We got a ride to the finca from a 70-year-old grandpa who tried to convince me to move in with him by for example calling me "Es-linda", 'is-beautiful', which he thought suit be better than Elina and I managed to resist the temptation and stay with the Hare Krishnas instead.
The finca could not be located in a more beautiful place, in the jungle by a river, and after I had picked a room in the cabins Liz invited me to join her for a shower in their waterfalls just a two-minute walk away. We walked past the sweat cabin, a natural sauna, and chatted for a few hours of krishnas as well as everything between the heaven and the earth before joining others for a delicious vegetarian dinner. Only at this point I found out that Patrik wasn't even there; he had fallen ill and had to get to Quito just one day before my arrival. And everyone still seemed to feel like it was completely natural for me to stay there, even though my host was away!

Liz told me lots of things about Krishna and their religion, but I won't bother you with that - you can find out more on wikipedia or on this Krishna website, if you're interested. But I do want to share the interesting rules of the finca: vegeterianism, abstinence from sex, drugs and alcohol, not harming animals or using animal-tested cosmetics, not entering the kitchen before you're cleaned your mouth after eating something and not tasting the food when cooking (because the first bits are for Krishna). I helped in cooking and cleaning and got to learn to make some yummy veggie foods that I'll definitely have to try making at home.

But above all, I just felt at home. The warmth of these people was all around and the peacefulness and beauty of the finca indescribable.

I attended one temple service and felt curious of the different rituals and music that I got the experience for the first time, but at the same time felt like it was all so similar to the different Cristian services I had to attend when I was younger - different manners, same ideas - and was happy not the participate more. I feel the same about Hare Krishnas as I do about Cristians: true faith that makes people happy is a wonderful thing, just something I don't need for my happiness.





I left the finca for a half a day to visit some of the tourist attractions in the area. First I took a tarabita (1$), a cable ferry, across a river in Manto de novia and walked a 2km path in the jungle to the next tarabita (1$).












Then I continued to Rio Verde to see the cool Pailon del diablo waterfalls and walked the ecological path (1$) to behind the waterfall - getting soaked and getting really sore legs from all the stairs climbing were totally worth it.







I wonder how Rio verde, 'green river', got its name?

Meeting my host Patrik (Madhu) for the first time the same evening was nice, especially because after talking about him with Liz I felt like I knew him already. The next day I went to Baños with Liz to try the famous natural hot tubs, but was a bit disappointed to find out that they were only three big pools with different water temperatures. Some seemed to react very strongly going into the hot or cold water, but for anyone who's walked from a Finnish sauna to the snow and back into the sauna, it really wasn't much of an experience. Taking my morning shower in the fincas own waterfalls was way cooler - colder but cooler.

On Friday I said my sad goodbyes and gave about a hundred hugs to the finca inhabitants and head off to Quito through Ambato (total 5h, 4$). The same morning I had been given a "Meat eaters Anonymous - would you like to give up killing?" badge as a present so decided to see how long I could keep off from meat. So far so good and haven't even been tempted yet. But we'll see how that is when I get to my next post.

A road with a view; Guayaquil-Guaranda

It's not only the ride the Cuenca that is beautiful, also the town itself is pretty. Many stay for days but I felt ready to go after two days, maybe missing some of the 'things to see', but so what. Next time, ey?







From there I could've taken a bus directly to Baños, my next target, but LP had managed to convince me that even though the road from Guayaquil to Guaranda wasn't really on the way, it was definitely worth seeing. So I took off to Guayaquil (4 hours, 8$) and continued from there to a place I'd never heard off, but it's location on the map fit my plan, Babahoyo (2 hours, 2$). There was not much to see in the city, but it was nice not seeing ANY other gringos at all, all locals.

After a night in a hotel closest to where my bus left me (10$ for a suite) I took the first morning bus to Ambato and made sure I had batteries on my camera. First it seemed that the whole trip was going to be a waste of time, because it was rainy and very misty, but as soon as we started getting higher, above the mist, the views got more and more amazing.








At the Ambato bus terminal I bumped into an Israeli girl who asked my help in getting to Baños and after being (nicely put) misinformed by four different people working in different bus companies, we managed to catch the right bus directly from the street (1$).


One of these annoying sellers that get on buses in Latin America to disturb you by shouting their sales speeches and trying to get everyone to buy stuff they don't want or need made the mistake of sitting next to me on the way and tried to make conversation. I couldn't of course stop myself from telling him what I think of his profession, but bought some chewing gum (that I donated to another sales dude) anyway. He said that he knows other gringos too, but they are nicer. "Hah, hah, ha - really?! Nice gringos, how could that be...?"

In Baños I went against my normal style of avoiding LP hostels and joined the Israeli girl who wanted to stay in Hostal Plantas y Blanco (dorm bed for 6,5$) even though many other hotels on the way there provided private suites with cable tv for 8$. Wifi made the difference. My latest travelling companion proved to be the spitting image of the gringos I call LP backpackers by asking me to join her for a pizza: "I don't like the local food at all, not that I would've tried it either. It would give you a diarrhea for sure. I mean, food isn't really part of the local culture you want to experience, is it?".

When I told her I've had 90% of all my meals in the last 6 months either in cheap, non-LP-recommended, locals-only restaurants or on the side street food stands, she looked simply shocked. Yeah, I happen to think getting to know the food culture is a vital part of experiencing a new place.

In the dorm I met a Canadian couple who had by driving too fast managed to break a street buggy they had rented, or from their perspective, that suddenly broke when they had only used it for half of the time they paid for. They didn't speak Spanish and the Spanish-only speaking owner was holding their passports until they had paid 50$ extra for the damage they'd caused. I went in to translate (read: tear that scam guy into bits) and we managed to find a compromise for 30$ and I offered to translate some vital information for future buggy drivers into English so this, the couple completely misunderstanding his instructions because of the language barrier, wouldn't happen again.

The couple spent a lot of money on their very short ride, the rental office lost a lot of money for repairs and for lost rental time, but everyone loved me and wanted to buy me drinks and dinner in the end.

Instead of visiting the natural hot fountains Baños is famous for and that were the reason I had decided to come here, I sat the whole next morning online trying to figure out my return flight situation: Mexicana stopping its flights to Europe. I had read online that they probably wouldn't refund anything and getting my money back from the credit card company might take a while, so I had already got emotionally ready to cut my trip shorter than planned and found a decent combination of four flights taking me from Venezuela to Finland for 6200sek in the beginning of October.

Just before booking them I decided to invest in giving Mexicana a call to confirm that they can't offer me other options and it's a good thing that I did. After waiting in the queue for the Mexicana U.S. customer service on Skype for over a half an hour and not being able to get help 'cause the service agent couldn't hear me (hey for skype!), I went to give it another shot in local call centre. After a 34 minutes and luckily only a few dollars, I got an answer I didn't expect: I'd have a flight home on the same day as originally planned, just with another airline. I was to happy to find out I'd get to see Central America and my mates in Mexico again, but sad that I'd lost the perfect excuse to come home early and spend more time with the good peeps of Finland before starting to work again.