Ecuador Part I

Ibarra, Ecuador

When we pulled into the line up at the border we immediately recognized Oliver and Carina’s Camper only a few cars ahead of us, so Karen jumped out and surprised them. The Border crossing was Quick and easy, a nice change from Central America. The Germans knew of a place to camp for free in Ibarra so we followed them up a long rough road that eventually led to a nice property at the base of Volcan Imbabura . When we arrived the incredibly friendly Australian owner Graham had no problems with us camping on his property. He has a beautiful lot overlooking the city, and it is also home to a small tree nursery. Here, we also met Peter, another German who is riding a motorcycle solo around S.A. and yet another German couple travelling by luxurious motor home. Oliver and Carina had to buy bus tickets in the city so Graham offered to give us a lift to town in the back of his pickup. After they bought their tickets he drove us up to a beautiful restaurant overlooking the city, here we watched the dramatic sun set and then had a nice meal while watching the sky change colours and the buildings in the city light up. What a magical welcome into Ecuador. For the next couple of days we relaxed at Graham’s and got caught up on a few things. Then we decided to get a bit of exercise and go for a hike up to Imbabura, a 4630m. volcano behind the house. We packed all of our overnight gear and were off. Graham drove us up the road until he ran out of gas and then we continued on from there. It was a hot day and we were not accustomed to the altitude so we moved very slowly. By the time we reached camp at 4260m. we were both exhausted, dehydrated and starting to cramp up. We set up camp took in the views, had some dinner and were in the tent before dark just to keep warm. The night dragged on for what seemed like days, we both lied there restlessly tossing and turning waiting for the sun to rise, at one point we thought it was around 6 am only to be disappointed when the clock read 1:30. When we finally got up we skipped breakfast and were off for the summit. On our way up we had a huge condor circle overhead and check us out, our first condor sighting! We arrived at the false summit and realized that we would have to traverse a long way around the whole crater to get to the real summit. At this point the clouds were moving in quickly and we lost all of our visibility especially Karen who’s glasses were completely fogged up. We decided to keep going, but then only a hundred or two hundred meters from the top we had to head back before we got completely soaked. We took a quick break in the tent to warm up then packed out and headed down. The down is always more punishing than the way up so we were looking forward to catching the bus down near where Graham had dropped us off. Unfortunately though the bus went by when we were cutting off a switch back and since there are only two busses a day we had to walk the entire road back to Grahams place, it was 2200m top to bottom and an extra 10k or so, which took us forever.

The next day we were walking like we were ninety, barely able to step out of the van without grimacing in pain, so we decided to visit the hot springs. Thirty something kilometres later and we were soaking in the hot waters of Arco Iris. After two relaxing hours at the hot springs we started to make our way back to Ibarra. But only one kilometre from the springs the van stalled and we lost all power. Luckily we coasted off the road into a safe pullout, where we began to investigate the problem. Within minutes we had a couple of locals helping us and calling their mechanic friend who showed up minutes later to see if he could help. Josef was studying at a mechanic institute in Ibarra and seemed trustworthy. He thought that the problem was coming from the distributor (hall sender), so he took it with him to see if he could find a part, while we were stranded on the side of the road for the night. Luckily it was a very safe and tranquil town where the locals were chatty and no one bothered us. The only down side was that there was a decaying dog carcass beside us that smelled awful. A few beers and some cribbage passed the time before we fell asleep. Then at eight am the following morning Josef returned with our distributor, no new parts but he did clean it up so we tried it again. And again we had no luck; it would turn over but wouldn’t start. We decided to tow it back to Ibarra, but found out that a proper tow truck would cost $120.00 so we opted for plan B which was to tow it behind a pickup with an old decrepit rope. We let Josef take the wheel since we had never done a tow like this before. For the next couple of twisting up and down highway hours Josef wore out our brakes, but we survived. Then when we arrived in Ibarra we were surprised that the van was running, Josef had tried jumping it on the way a few times and it finally caught. We still wanted to go to the mechanic’s, but Josef said “it’s running isn’t it?” so we drove it back to Grahams with spongy brakes. Once at Grahams we turned off the engine and fired it up twice, with no issues, problem solved. The next morning we woke up and decided to be safe and take her to the mechanics, but she had another idea....she wouldn’t start. The Germans and Graham all had a look at it and did some tests and once again it seemed to be the distributor, it wasn’t delivering a spark. So we took the part down town to see if we could get another one or get it repaired, we found a VW store where we could order parts but first we took it to an electrical mechanic to get it tested. After a quick unconvincing test he said that it was fine. We then had him make a house call and look at the van, where he said the problem was in the computer. He got us to take the computer to a friend of his outside of town to see if he could take a look at it, but when we arrived he said that he couldn’t do anything without the car, and he also didn’t believe that it was the computer that was broken. We could bring the car back to him on Monday if we wanted (a $70.00 tow at least). We decided to order in a hall sender and wait for it’s arrival after the weekend.

Cotacachi and Otavalo

We were starting to get itchy feet so we took a bus to Cotacachi for one night, it’s a small town known for it’s Sunday leather market. We spent the afternoon wandering the main street looking at all of the different leather products, our intensions were to buy some small things but when we saw all of the beautiful jackets we knew we had to get one for each of us. Hours and hours of shopping and we finally found some that fit our tall and lanky long armed bodies. Unfortunately we liked the most expensive jackets that we had seen, isn’t that always the way. They ended up dropping the price of the two jackets by $170.00 so we decided to buy them, at a great price. We didn’t bring enough cash with us because we weren’t intending on buying anything expensive, so we had to visit the bank machine, we tried all three in town and none of them worked. So we had to wait till the morning to try them again which also gave us time to think about our potential purchases. The next morning we still were interested in those jackets so we tried the ATMs again and were once again denied. We decided to take a bus to the nearby town of Otavalo to try the ATMs there. Otavalo is known for it’s huge Saturday artisan market, and is quite touristy. The first machine we tried spat out $20 bills with no problems. After an hour of exploring Otavalo (and buying some nice art) we went back to Cotacatchi where we paid for our jackets. We still had our eye on a few other leather pieces so we threw caution to the wind and bought 2 stools, a wallet, a purse, and a cowboy hat for Pete. We just couldn’t turn down the awesome prices for beautiful leather! It was our first splurge of the trip and well worth it.

Back to Ibarra

We returned back to Ibarra refreshed and had high hopes for the new part the following day. The next morning we headed into town and were reminded that we were in Ecuador...they ordered the wrong part!! Hmmm, what to do. We decided to go back to the VW dealership to see if they could get the part, but of course everything closes for 1.5 hours for lunch so we went grocery shopping instead. We decided were done wandering around aimlessly so we went back to Graham’s to rejuvenate. Karen then went with Graham to help a friend make puppets and Pete worked on the blog. With a bit of time off from thinking about our problem we came up with a plan...tow to the mechanic and let him give it a go in the morning. Graham said he’d do the towing so the next morning Patience got hooked back up and off we went. We unhooked for the downhills and made it through town pretty smoothly and Patience is now in the competent hands of Bolivar. Only time will tell....

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