Ecuador 4 – Otavalan Idyll

I am sorry to say goodbye to Otavalo. We have so enjoyed staying put, living in a home, and establishing a bit of a routine. We are enjoying  exploring local ingredients, in the local Indian market. There seems to be such an abundance of food here. Fabulous vegetables, herbs and fruits and pulses, coffee, and dark pure chocolate, sold loose by the kilo. The choice of fruits is immense, there’s naranjillo, and passion fruit, black berry and blackcurtants, strawberries mangoes and pineapples galore, all sold by Otavalan Indians by the wheelbarrowful. We discover a shop which sells homemade natural ice creams and fruit lollies of all colours and flavours, which we go back to regularly, until we discover this area is a bit famous for its ice creams generally, mainly made by Rosita in big copper bowls and these fruity ice creams are to be found verywhere.

The children and Mark continue with their Spanish lessons every afternoon, and we do occasional small expeditions in the mornings, to the surrounding area.

Adela and her entourage, husband, Jorge, daughter Lupe, her husband Edison and their 2 children Joshua and Ariana, plus the baby twins, come out to meet us here for the day, all piling into a four wheel pick up truck. It’s a lovely day. The children run off in the garden together and build a tent from anything fabric they can find in the house. We show them around the hacienda grounds and Adela and Jorge are particularly interested in the vegetable garden. Adela never goes to the doctor, she grows in small pots on a little balcony in her flat, all sorts  of medicinal herbs and vegetables. She recognises everything in this garden and knew exactly what to do with with. Boil the leaves of the naranjillo  and steep a hot flannel in it, that will be good for your sore shoulder! A few leaves of this and that in a tea takes away the head ache. In a country in which every visit to the doctor is a costly business, you soon find a way in which to resolve things for yourself. Very resourceful. Adela and Lupe and I cook lunch together. I feel totally at home and comfortable with this family; in spite of absences of big chunks of time, Adela is in every way the same familiar, loving person, who became so much part of our lives.

We head to the Hacienda Cusin, to do some horse riding. This is the sister hacienda to Las Palmeras, where we are staying. This is a very lovely hotel owned by an Englishman Nick Millhouse. He has had affiliations with Ecuador most of his adult life, though he hasn’t lost his Eton accent, We get chatting to him over lunch. He is charming and fascinating and extremely knowledgeable about Ecuador. He tells us a bit about Ecuador, it’s political stability, the dollarisation of Ecuador and how successful the current president Alfonso Correa has been, though he is becoming a big of a megalomaniac and is currently trying to pass a new law which will enable presidents to stay on for a further term… Say no more.

We have some very friendly American neighbours Malcolm and Marcie who have retired to Otovalo. They live in one of these beautiful houses on the estate. He is a musician and has a fantastic moustache that he clearly waxes and fiddles with, Marcie was an IT consultant.  They have given up their roaming lives in the US and decided to settle here. Nick Milhouse, (owner of the hacienda Cusin and the Palmeras) sold them the house on the Palmeras estate, including all the beautiful furniture, rugs, pictures on the walls, for a sinch. They are incredibly friendly and frequently pop in to chat, offering all sorts of advice. Malcolm offers to take us to the hot pools in his four wheel drive jeep, essential for driving off road here. We make a picnic and head up there after breakfast. It’s an hour’s journey. There is no one there and we have the place to ourselves. There are 8 different pools to choose from, all in varying degrees of heat, with a freezing cold plunge pool to cool off in. The pools  cascade down the hillside, all colourfully painted and fun.

Malcolm and Marcie join us for supper one evening and bring with them some delicious, home-cured roof smoked trout.  I can imagine this would be a lovely country to retire to.

We befriend a local Otovalan taxi driver, Chistian, who comes in his taxi truck to take us on our local expeditions, a lovely drive up a very steep hill up, up, up a hill, with no bends, just straight up through the clouds and out the other side to Lake Mojanda, for a walk half way round around the perimeter, well almost, followed by hot chocolates at the hacienda Mojanda.

Life here has improved immeasurably for the average Ecuadorian even since I was here 20 years ago. The Otovalan Indian now has land rights and local farmers are being incentivised to grow crops, such as quinoa and Chia, – the super foods which the west are so obsessed with. I am so impressed with Ecuador. Major roads  have been built throughout the country, linking major cities, which would otherwise have been impossible to get to when my parents were living here. The streets are so clean, everywhere, from Quito to Otavalo. All the rubbish is sorted and recycling is collected every week and the streets in the towns are hosed down at night time.

It seems that the best horse riding in Ecuador is at the Haciendas, which are beautiful Colonial farms.  Once Spanish Missions and monasteries, they are now lovely hotels, others just working farms.  The horses are better looked-after and fed here. We feel we are in safe hands. It’s a beautiful way of seeing the countryside. The kids love it , and I am transported back to my childhood in Mexico, where we  regularly went riding in Valle De Bravo. These hills are clad in Eucalyptus trees and the perfumed air is divine. The countryside around here is very beautiful and mountainous, but agricultural none the less, with fields being ploughed and cultivated on extremely steeply inclinen slopes, curiously there are no terraces here.

We visit the Condor Park. This is a beautiful bird sanctuary perched high up on a hill. We sit in an outdoor amphitheatre, where we see various birds of prey swooping down over Otavalo, returning to be fed by its keepers. I have never particularly been that interested in bird watching. It is usually Mark who stops the car to get the binos out when he sees a large bird hovering above. However, having seen a bald-headed eagle swooping down to its perch right behind our heads, I am now a convert. It’s not till you see them in the flesh that you realise the power of these magnificent birds! I shall have to pay more attention, when we next go to Mull.

 We were hoping to see a condor, particularly as we have come to the “Condor Park, ” but it seems they are an endangered species. With only 50 condors left in Ecuador they are protected here. So we have to satisfy ourselves with viewing them through a fence. Many of them are shot and killed by campesinos who are fed up of having their animals swept away by these almighty birds. However we do see one of them flying from its perch to the ground, as a large  chunk of meat is thrown into its cage, at feeding time, the sound of it flapping it’s wings is awesome.

I wished we’d planned to stay here longer, months even, however our house is booked by other people, so now it’s time to leave our beautiful little idyll and move on to Cuenca. This time it’s a night bus – 10 hrs of it and I am dreading It, but we just don’t have the budget to fly these distances. We could do it by day, but that seems too unkind to the kids. The roads are good here and although I haven’t wanted to do any night drives in any country up till now, with the exception of New Zealand, I feel the roads are a lot safer here.

We have to get the 8 o’clock bus from a corner of Otavalo, It’s late, we wait half an hour, an hour passes by, buses come and go, people get on and off, bundles of blankets, sacks of potatoes are loaded into the hold of the bus. It all seems very organised. All the luggage is tagged, the owner is given a receipt. The children are entertained by the girl who sells videos in her shop, so they are not bothered by the wait, but no Cuenca  bus. At last it arrives at 10 o’clock. It’s come from Colombia. As soon as I get on I know it’s going to be ok. The seats are all reclining back into an almost prostrate position. Good that means we will get some sleep. There is a bit of a kerfuffle as our seats are already occupied by other people, who refuse to budge, so we just sit elsewhere, but we are all spread out, which isn’t ideal. I want to be with the children, so that I can look after them. Then someone gets on the bus and of course we are in their seat and they insist on having their seat. So we all have to get up and like a Mexican wave, correct our seating. This takes a long time to sort out, as the people in our seats are being obstinate. Everyone gets up and moves to their original seat – this involves a third of the bus, which is already on the move and to add to the confusion and the noise, a couple of Colombian guys start busking at the front of the bus with their accordion and guitar and for a minute I have dreadful images of being hijacked by Colombian musicians. But no one pays them any attention, no one gives them any money, they aren’t very good, they slink back to their seats and the bus continues on into the night. I haven’t slept a wink, too aware of the movements of the bus, convinced we are going to collide in the night, fall off a precipice.  Thank fully the children fall asleep quite quickly, as the film showing on the screen at the front is very violent. We finally arrive in Cuenca at 7 in the morning and I feel very grateful to the driver who got us there safely. We head to a cafe for breakfast to while away some time before we can move into our little town house, in the old quarter on Mariana Cueva y Larga.