A Means to an End

I´m back in ¨civilization.¨ So last I wrote I was leaving Vilcabamba for Zamora. I did get to ride with Che! There was this neat town called Matacayo with a pretty old blue mosque-looking church. The trip through Loja was uneventful and easy.

Starting out of the city was on these terrible roads and I was praying that it would improve at some point. Improve indeed! We arrived at the top of a mountain within about 20 minutes and I was treated to the most amazing views for the next two hours.

We literally drove in and out of the clouds.

I must have counted 150 waterfalls before I gave up and just appreciated them.

The landscape always changes so dramatically here. You´re in a bus for an hour and you feel as if you have been to six planets. I don´t know if the pictures reflect my claim (it may just look like different shades of green), but just trust me. We were following what is known as the Podocarpus Forest. It starts with an alpine feel just outside of Loja and then transforms into amazing tropical (think Jurassic Park and Lost together) foliage and vistas.




The strangest thing was happening. On my left was this mountain-Bavarian landscape and on my right was Hawaii. In the middle was a river, the dividing line between an ecosystem stand-off.

No joke, not one plant from one side dared cross to the other, and I bet that´s been going on for 10000 years. I once again said to myself that this country cannot get any more beautiful. It´s just not possible. Unfortunately I´ve already spoken those words 5-6 times in my 10 days so I may just shut up now. I arrived in Zamora, knowing that it was a stop-off point on my way into the beginnings of the jungle (the real jungle this time, Amazon I mean).

I walked around town to scope out all of the hotels and chose the moderately shady one. I was actually enjoying the town at the start. It is a frontier town that acts as the center for gold mining in the country (not commercial, more the 1849 San Francisco type). That has meant lots of people seeking fortune who come, get drunk, don´t find gold, fight a lot, and hire prostitutes (this is Lonely Planet and some locals talking, not me).

Anyways, it´s given, what should be a great city with nice infrastructure, a nasty edge. Everyone was pretty unhelpful and crass. I was trying to figure out how to get to my next stop, and ecolodge SE of town. The name of the town it´s in is Las Orchideas (the Orchids). I started asking around how to get there and here are some answers I got:


You mean the flowers?
Take the 6 o´clock bus (I later discovered there was no 6 o´clock bus)
There is no way to get there (what does that even mean??)
Go ask a policeman
(the policeman) Go ask the bus attendant.
(the bus attendant) Try showing up tomorrow morning.

By that point, I was pretty upset with Zamorans. I went back to the hotel hoping to get some peace and quiet. On my way in, the owner lady asked what I was doing in Ecuador. (I have discovered that no one know what public health is, so they just take me a for a doctor and I go along with it to save time). I go through the same thing with her, and she responds ¨What are you, a doctor of cows!¨ She begins to laugh and some other ladies join in. I guess I didn´t look smart enough to be a ¨real¨doctor. I just walked off (feeling bad for any vets in Ecuador). I had a decent dinner and decided that it wasn´t worth being frustrated here, I´d just figure it out in the morning.

I woke up and went to the bus station. Within 5 minutes, I was on my way to Las Orchideas. I passed thourgh countless former gold towns and had to switch buses in a place called Zumbi.

It wasn´t a bus I switched to, it was a mud-tire open air beast of machine, meaning that the roads were about to get significantly worse. We went on for hours through towns with similar sounding names (Zurmi, Zurmbi, Paquisha, Pauishta) that all looked abandoned and the same.



The landscape was once again fantastic and I chatted to a nice local who told me about each place along the way.

We arrived in Las Orchideas 4 hours later, much more sore than I would´ve hoped (I swear they must have a machine that just digs potholes so they have things to repair because I´ve never seen so many!). I now had to hike 3 km across rivers and up hills.


At half past 2, I arrived, a little worse physically than when I began, but happy to have made it.

Love
Kent