We left Chugchillan on 5 buses, 1 taxi, and a smelly 12 passenger van crammed with 17 people. After hours, we arrived in Banos, a small town on the cusp of the Andes and the Amazon. We went straight to the mercado in town and gorged ourselves on a big meal for $1.50 before finding a hostel. That evening we walked around the small town trying to accomplish everything on their '10 Best Things to Do in Banos.' We would finish the list the next day by visiting the natural hot springs next to a giant waterfall. A common system is to sit in the heat for five minutes before subjecting yourself to the cold water of the falls. Lightheaded with a little tingle to the skin you'd plunge back into the heat. We grabbed another cheap meal at the market before heading to the roof of our hostel to relax.
I laid in my bathing suit to help it dry before putting clothes back on. Little did I know I would fall asleep and wake up with my stomach redder than the meat hanging from hooks in the tepid market. That night we would find a cozy place to watch the super bowl in Spanish and listen to foreigners mock the halftime show for how flashy America has to be. The next day we headed out of Banos but not before a few more market meals, all "sin carne, por favor." We headed to the town of Otavalo, some ways north of Banos, on a bus that took eight hours. At one point we were stopped by police and shouting ensued. We couldn't understand what was happening but for some reason the driver asked for another dollar from everyone. We got off the main road and began to take a back road, stopping first to fill up on gas with our extra bus faire. For some reason, we were not able to use the main road and now the journey would take us on underdeveloped roads through the mountains of Northern Ecuador. Oh yeah, and it would take over an hour and a half longer. We got to Otavalo at night just as it had begun to rain. We walked to the center of town before checking into our hostel for the night. Otavalo is known as a market town and is home to the biggest indigenous market in South America.
We headed first to the fruit market where we stocked up on any exotic fruit we'd never tried before. Back at our hostel, we'd test tasted them all, liking most, vowing never to eat others again.
We then went to the crafts market and spent most of the rest of our day there, buying alpaca scarfs, sterling jewelry of turquoise, jade, and spondyls, and paintings of the surrounding areas.
We had a blast haggling with the street vendors and trying our best to communicate with them in Spanish. The next morning we headed out of Otavalo to the border town of Tulcan, hoping to cross the next day. We'd heard horror stories of people waiting 4-6 hours to cross both borders in or out of Ecuador. What we didn't know was that Venezuela was having a huge exodus of people who could no longer afford food in their country after rapid inflation. This alone would inundate the border patrol and cause the whole thing to take eleven hours. Before heading to the border, we explored the cemetary in town which had one of the biggest topiary displays in the world.
Large bushes were formed into turtles, birds, human-like firgures, and monkeys surrounding large tombs and family plots. We got to the border midday on our first attempt but were told by some other Americans to go back to Tulcan and retry in the early hours of the morning; they had been there for six hours already and were still at the back of the line on the Ecuadorian side (entering Ecuador). We toiled away the rest of the day in Tulcan and returned to the border at 5:45 am after a terrifying walk in the dark, with all of our belongings, to find a taxi.
We waited on the Ecuadorian side for three hours, at one point having numbers written on our arms, before I got my stamp and went to wait outside for Moose (my friend). I saw him at the counter before he dissapeared. Panicked and standing with both our backpacks on the Colombian/Ecuadorian border, I searched the building with my eyes to find a trace of him. I really wish I had been wearing my glasses that day. After nearly 20 minutes, he reamerged telling me there was a problem before returning back inside for another ten minutes. Apparently when he had entered Ecuador via the river, they had made no record of it and the border officials were suspect of why he was not in their system.
Luckily they let him through and we walked to the Colombian side. The unfortunate thing is that there is no 'in' line or 'out' line, we are all corralled into the same line. Even though 90% of people, mostly Venezualans escaping to Peru, were heading south, we would still have to wait to enter Colombia. There was little water, no food, and no shade for most of the day, burning the tops of my feet and any other exposed skin. After eight hours on the Colombian side, we made it through, feeling like I had just hiked 25 miles in the desert. We made it into Ipiales, the border town on the Colombian side, ate a huge meal, showered, and slept like babies until late the next morning.