Instant repeater Ecuador

Dear diary,

First of all, I want to make an official apologize to each and everyone who has not received an email in ages. I would like to blame it on working and traveling.

We are now on our very final week here and we still have tons of things to do. I have I even surprised myself with the results. It is actually a lot of fun and the dull days a month ago are since long time forgotten.

When I left you the last time, Calle was on his way and we were planning on climbing Cotopaxi. Unfortunately, Calle injured his rib while playing in the waves in Venezuela making this impossible Instead we spend the time enjoying life here in Quito. Eating nice dinners and such. We even had a parmiddag (!) (eng. dinner for two couples…?) enjoying Vannesa’s world famous BBQ wings.

After making the must-do trip to Otavalo to buy souvenires we went down south in Ecuador. Basically we did a re-run of the trips I have done before. Starting in Puerto Lopez to see the whales (still not jumping in front of my camera) and continued to a cute little beach town called Montanita where we played in the waves (yup, Calle never learns).

We took our second night bus to Banos, where I was during my third week, where we actually got to climb a bit. There is a volcano there that puffs out smoke once in a while which you can see if you climb a hill and if it’s not cloudy. Which it was. We got a nice view of the village though.

Leaving Banos for Riobamba took us 5 hours instead of the usual one hour because of some stupid road reconstruction. Sooo much busriding! Riobamba is famous for a train where you sit on the roof. It’s not the one I took before but a little bit nicer. The first few hours, the entertainment was basically watching the farmer kids run up to the train waving for the tourists. This was probably really cute when it started some time ago but now they wave basically only for the tourists to throw lollipops at them. I might be cynical but it wouldn’t surprise me if their parents run back and sell them to the next train with tourists. However…the train ride was at times marvellous, riding (on the roof) up on mountains with steeps for about 100 meters below you once in a while!

After Riobamba we came back to Quito for a day. I came in to the office but started to feel worse and worse. At 17 I went home, slept for one hour. Got up, had a diarrea with the power of five Ecuadorian waterfalls and threw up a couple of times. At 21 we left for Amazonas. Again with a night bus. I was starting to feel a little bit better then but it was not a very pleasant ride. So…10 hours away from Quito we changed bus and went up the dirt roads for 4 hours more. There we took a canoe for 3 more hours into the heart of Amazonas…or maybe the stomach of Amazonas. It was a wet part of the jungle.

The jungle turned out to be amazing especially for kids like Calle and me. We quickly found a tarantula hole in the ground and started to lure it out by filling the hole with water. A technique I learned in Costa Rica (thanks Felipe!). The second tarantula was brought to us during dinner. Appearantly, it fell from the roof down on the head of the chef! We looked at it. We didn’t eat it . Together with some exciting stories from the guide we were ready to go to bed for our first night after carefully looking for tarantulas on the walls and boas in the bathroom (it really could happen!).

The following days we went around the rivers looking at monkeys (Pippi Långstrump-monkeys), pink dolphins and birds. One night we went out in the forest part of the jungle to see predators that normally hide during the days. We encountered magnificent fist-sized spiders. We saw one catch a moth in its web, tying the net around it (while still alive) and then finally make the bite. Absolutely amazing! We also found some 10-15 cm large crickets (sw. syrsor) and glowing worms.

Another night we went out with the canoe to search for anacondas. Unfortunately we never found one but we found a boa up in a tree which the guide brought down to us to hold.

During the days, we took hikes and saw other cool stuff in the forest. Milk producing trees, flammable trees, lemon tasting ants (sw. Mowgli: Eta myror!?) which were really, really tasty!, 5cm ants and so on. Other days we went out with the canoes paddling and looking for I don’t know what. It actually was not as many animals there as it might seem like but the nature, especially out on the rivers, was amazing.

The number one cool thing in the jungle however was to fish piranhas. We did this from our canoes that always had a small puddle of water in them because they were leaking. The fishing technique to get piranhas is to put some piece of pork meat on a hook and use a small…fishing stick?…fish stick…piece of wood with a string tied to one end. Then you splash the stick in the water as hard as you can to excite the piranhas. When you feel a jerk you pull and hopefully catch one. This is where the fun part starts. You have no net to put it in. The only thing you can do is throw the meat-eating fish into your small, shake canoe. There it can swim around in the puddle biting off the toes until you catch it with your hands. The problem with this fish is that its head is so hard it is impossible to kill it by smashing it against…well, there is nothing to smash it against in these small canoes. The way to kill this bity little creature is to literally bite his head. You bite it just over its eyes, feel the head bone crunch, bite a little bit more. After a while it stops screaming and moving… Thats how you fish piranhas! Me and Märta caught two really big ones which we had for lunch later.

I, of course, planned the return so well so that I was sick on my way back to Quito as well. While writing this now I am coughing all the time.

Well, this might just as well be the last entry of this diary. I am coming back to Sweden August 20th and the presentation of the thesis is scheduled for September 5th at 13.00. You are all very welcome of course! The last week we are probably going to work a lot so don’t expect any emails or calls.

Puss

Christoffer

ps. I have put up a lot of pictures. They are really good so please take the time to look at them.
ps2. Please write a comment, it would be nice to see which ones that has actually been reading my BS during these months!