Click on a photo to enlarge it.
We stayed in Ibarra for 8 nights at a campgroung run by Hans who is German but has been in Ecuador for around 30 years. For the first five days we had a lot of rain and a couple of disasters!
After our long journey through Colombia to get to Ecuador we had a lot of sorting out to do and got out our water filter because the water at the campground isn't potable. Our mistake was to fill it up and leave it overnight - not normally a problem except when you don't tighten the screw for the tap and 2 litres of water leaks out! A nice greeting in the morning! So we had a wet carpet and it was raining! So we used a fan to try and dry it but it was still soaking wet two hours later when it finally stopped raining. So we moved everything to get it out and hung it over a washing line. Despite having a lot of rain we managed to get our carpet dry after one downpour and before the next rain came. It also meant doing an unplanned spring clean - we were exhausted before we'd even had breakfast!!
The campground is right by the Laguna de Yahuarcocha and we managed to walk around it, which is almost 11km, without getting too wet. There is also a racing car track which means it can get quite noisy when the racing cars zoom around. Fortunately that didn't happen very often and we went out to take photos and videos.
Finally, after 5 days of rain, on day 6, the sun came out so everyone wanted to do their laundry! This was our next disaster! We were third in the queue for the washing machine so we had to set up our own washing lines as the campground lines were full. First mistake - part of one line was under a tree ... Yes, you've guessed it ... bird sh?*! ... I mean poop!
I went out to turn it all around etc and noticed the droppings right on our quilt cover!! So I fetched water and cloths to remove it. Suddenly I got hit from behind by a car reversing!! I got pushed through one washing line whilst shouting "Stop!" in Spanish. I was pushed to our next washing line and only just managed to get out to the side as the reversing car hit a parked motorhome with a loud crash!!!
The car was covered in our laundry and some of the washing I'd had over my shoulder at the time I got hit was on the floor! The car had taken some skin off my left elbow but I was really lucky not to have been knocked to the ground!! I went to give the driver a piece of my mind ... but the car was empty!!! It belonged to Hans' wife but one of the workers had used it. He hadn't put the handbrake on! I'd seen the car parked there and I'd also heard someone banging the car door shut behind me as I was sorting out the washing. So he must have fetched something from the car and closing the door was enough to set the car in motion.
The car didn't travel very far but it hit the bull bar (protective grill) on the front of the parked motorhome. No damage to the motorhome but a badly dented boot and smashed rear light on the car!! I found the workers nearby and was amazed that no one had heard my shouts!! I don't think they realised the car had hit me because they were more worried about Hans' wife's reaction. She was pretty relaxed about the damage but needed to get the rear light fixed as she would get fined by the police.
I couldn't put our 'now dirty again' washing in the machine because it was full. A German family renting one of the houses on the property had used it after me and that's where Kirsten was. So I went up the steep hill to tell them they're washing was done and tell Kirsten what had happened.
I guess I was lucky but our washing was filthy dirty and had to get washed again. It was already 2-30pm so I wasn't sure it would dry! At least I got rid of the bird poop though! Always have to see the positive side of things but I thought getting hit by bird poop was supposed to bring you luck not get run over by an unmanned car!!
During all the rain we tried getting a boat tour around the Galapagos Islands. We found two really good tours but the prices were exorbitant. Almost as much as the Antarctic tours which you can only do between December and March whereas the Galapagos tours are year round.
When we asked about PCR tests and what ifs regarding people who are positive, it got worse. We need a negative PCR test within 72 hours of flying out to the islands but we'd have to pay the full price for the trip right away because we're booking last minute. So we'd pay a week before getting the test. If one of us is positive we won't get reimbursed because they won't be able to sell our cabin to someone else at such short notice.
On top if that, if someone gets symptoms during the trip, everyone on board will get tested at the next port. Those who are positive will be quarantined in a hotel for at least 7 days at their own cost!!!! No money back either! It got worse - when we looked up insurance to cover us for cancellation etc we couldn't get any as Ecuador is on the red list. In other words we might end up paying the $10,000 cost for a 15 day boat trip we can't go on if we get a positive PCR or costs us thousands more for hotel quarantine whilst missing out on the boat trip!
Needless to say we didn't book!! Just a few days later, the rules changed which meant no PCR test was needed. The change came into force on the day we would've needed to get our test for the trip!! Oh well it wasn't to be. Can I class that as another disaster? Not really, but we'd asked the agent if they would give us a discount and include the cost of the flight for the same price. They refused. Only a few days later they gave exactly that discount to the two campers we'd met at La Bonanza campground in Colombia!! I guess they didn't want us!
Not really welcome to Ecuador!
The day after our laundry debacle we packed up, cleaned up, and dried our water filter to put it away again. We only drove as far as the town of Ibarra 11km away to do shopping, buy a sim card for Ecuador so we can get internet, and fetch money. We had to try several ATMs before finding one that would accept international cards. We'd already tried Western Union but they now charge too much and their exchange rate was terrible. It seems that a great deal has changed in the two years of pandemic. Travellers like us are going to have to adapt to the new normal!
We couldn't get our sim card working and had to go back to the shop. We're probably the only people who don't know how to re-configure a smartphone. We still don't know, because they did it so fast it was impossible to see what they did. Later on, we still had problems. The sim card itself was slightly too big for the compartment and my phone wouldn't work properly. We literally had to file it down so it fit!!!
We stayed overnight on the parking area of the large central park. We stayed here 2 years ago but this time we got woken up early by lots of school children cleaning the area and scraping all the weeds and vegetation that had grown between the concrete blocks where the cars park! It's a massive area so they obviously volunteer on a Saturday every so often to do it.
We left Ibarra and took a different route south to the way we drove 2 years ago. It was a fantastic drive along a canyon on a very good road. There was lots of traffic coming in the other direction from Quito - obviously people on a day out at the weekend.
We stopped and bought some Bizcochos, famous for this area, to have with our coffees and continued to a campground near Quito airport. Unfortunately they have more than doubled their prices, from $4 per person to $10 pp for the night. Their explanation was that it was due to the pandemic, but they'll just end up completely losing business now everywhere is opening up again.
We'd wanted to check them out as a storage possibility if we went to the Galapagos Islands but didn't ask about storage because their overnight prices were so high. We checked another place around the corner but they wouldn't let us in because we hadn't booked in advance! Oh boy, things have really changed over the last 2 years.
We had parked out on the street whilst checking and decided just to stay there for the night for free. It was perfect. We got a fast internet connection using our new data and even went for a walk, steeply down to the river and back. Don't they say that he best things in life are free?
The next morning we got up at 7am to watch our football team thrash a team that was second in the league, 5-0! I also got the most points in our little scoring group! Our next stop was the thermal pools in Papallacta at 3300m in the hills above Quito airport. We went over a 4,063m pass to get there on good roads.
Once off the main road, the route to the thermal pools was extremely steep in places. We got to a large parking area by a hotel and some public thermal pools and went for a 1 hour 20 minute walk through a forest by a river. It rained on our way back but it was a lovely walk across bridges and past small rapids in the river. We also looked at some of the cabins at the hotel which looked really expensive!
The public pools cost $9 per person but Kirsten didn't want to go in because it was packed with people! So we drove further east towards the amazon area of Ecuador and stopped at a parking area for climbers called Peña Pivico. It was really foggy as we left the thermal pools area and visibility was virtually nil! We drove through the fog and then into rain. It was still raining as we arrived at the car park and we pitied the climbers who were returning to their vehicles soaking wet and freezing! Plus there was no internet connection! We ended up staying for two nights because it just didn't stop raining! Miserable! At least there was a short pause in the rain to go for a walk along the gravel road, steeply uphill to get views of the area.
The next day was another disaster day! It was still raining and very muddy. We found a petrol station en route where we could get water and empty our rubbish. Kirsten bought a Claro card but when she put it in it didn't work because it was out of date! So she had to take it back.
Further down the road in Baeza we saw that the road to Lago Agrio was closed but no explanation! So we parked in the town and Kirsten spent a very frustrating 2 hours trying to get a Claro sim card from a Claro shop. The card didn't work at first and she was told she'd still have to pay the $15 for it!! She had to come back to the motorhome in between to get her cable because her phone had run out of power!
In the meantime, I got out of our motorhome to ask a coach driver about the road closure, stepped on a wobbly footpath block and got sprayed with dirty, muddy water! Super! The driver told me the road had been closed since last November, three months ago, due to a massive landslide and would take months to re-open. Everyone had to go south, and left over the hills, on a different road to get there.
Kirsten finally got her sim card sorted out and then needed to get on the computer to change our GPS route - she stepped on an avocado in the process! Totally squashed it all over her sock! Well, she never does things by half!!
So it certainly wasn't one of our best days! The road south was terrible - full of water filled pot holes, road slippage, tarmac ruts and concrete slabs. There were dangerous bends where concrete slabs were jutting out but no land underneath them - swept away by the rain! I guess the road damage was to be expected seeing as it is the only road now for all the traffic. But it meant it took us 90 minutes just to do 30km! It was already 6pm and it gets dark by 6-30pm so we needed to find somewhere to stop for the night.
Fortunately we found a slightly muddy parking area with a security guard. It belonged to a now closed hotel - one of the many pandemic casualties - but at least we could park for free before heading off into the amazon area for our next adventure.
