sv evi

My partner Riki is a keeper, folks. He stayed home with Tomu & Jade for 5 days so that Mo, Luz and I could do a 24 mile trek from village to village in the Andes, ending at the Quilotoa Crater. What a treat for a mama of 3 little kids! 

We began our trip with an 8 hour bus ride to Latacunga on a rainy Wednesday morning. We had been advised that we could go somewhere closer to Cuenca if we wanted to hike in the rain. And when it rains in Cuenca, it is a often a torrential downpour (or pour down, as Tomu says). As in deafening, coming in our house in many places. Mo looked at me while it was raining, and said, so we could be hiking in this? Yep, I replied. But, we reasoned that we were staying in hostels in the evenings, so we knew we could get dry and warm. We brought umbrellas as well as full raingear for the three of us. And we planned to start hiking early, to try to beat the rain, which usually falls in the afternoon/evening. It felt like the right adventure level for traveling with a 9 month old baby.

In Latacunga, we took a taxi to the next town to wait for the bus to Sigchos, where we would begin our trek. Then another bus to an intermediate town, and finally we arrived at Sigchos at 6 pm, after 11 hours of travel. Whew! Luz did great, napping on us in the Ergo, and playing in our laps on the buses.

Waiting for bus #2

I’ll let the photos tell most of the story, but basically we walked 8 miles a day, for between 4.5 and 6 hours a day. We left at 8 am. each day, hiked down to the river, crossed it, then up to the plateau on the other side. The trail was a combination of small trails and wide dirt roadbeds. The Andes are impossibly green and breathtakingly gorgeous. They are so steep, and many ridges reminded me of dinosaur spines, they were so skinny at the top. We passed farmers working in their fields and met people on the trail. All were enamored by Luz.

I normally carried Luz and the small pack.

A rest break turned into frantically hurrying on as we were attacked by large flying biting beetles that land on you and are hard to flick off.

The river we crossed each day.

This is Maria holding Luz. Maria had 11 children, 2 of whom died shortly after birth. I cannot imagine 11 pregnancies, having my body stretch out so many times. She was very sweet, we chatted with her for awhile. She speaks Quichua. It was cool to be in indigenous villages where all the women wear traditional clothes: a fedora, long hair wrapped in a colorful cord, knee-length skirt, tights, flats, and often a scarf. These women live at 12,500′ and are farmers–it boggles my mind that they wear skirts and tights all the time. And so cool to hear people conversing in Quichua.

Hiking around the crater rim.

We met two brothers from Argentina, and they taught us a hilarious card game called “truco”, or trick. It involves communicating your cards to your partner via a memorized set of facial expressions. (Ex. Raise your eyebrows=ace of spades). I can’t wait to play it again. The last day we had to also hike up to the crater, than partway around it, so it was the toughest day. And…we didn’t get rained on at all the whole trip!

We saw these rainbow flags everywhere, and at first we thought: gay pride in Ecuador? Sweet! But later we found out the rainbow flag is the flag of the indigenous Pacha Kutic political party, and elections are coming up in the Cotopaxi province.

Waiting for the bus to Cuenca in a shelter at the side of the highway by Latacunga. The way home took only 9 hours instead of 11.