Off to Quito
It's been a fun few days of rafting and — err, and not much else — here in Tena, but I'm afraid the time has come to depart. The weather is nice and warm here (if a bit rainy and humid), and the town is small and laid-back (if a bit of a dump), but I have to return to big-city life once again. I'm sad to leave Tena, as it was probably the last river rafting spot on my trip. Anyway, I'm sure I'll find more rafting to do, somewhere, sometime. Hopefully not too far off in the future, 'cause it's really daym fun.
Hopped on the 9am bus this morning, from Tena to Quito. When I got to the bus station (at about 8:50am), some guy came up to me and insisted that I get on the 9:30am bus, with a different company.
"But there's a 9am bus just over there", I said to him.
"Oh no, you don't want to get that one", he replied. "It goes the long way, via Baños and Ambato".
Naturally, I didn't believe him. So I went over to the ticket office for the company with the 9am bus, and bought my passage with them.
"You go direct to Quito, via Baeza (the quickest route), right? Not via Baños?" I asked.
"Yeah, that's right — Quito via Baeza", the guy replied.
"The people in this country always lie, don't they?" I sighed.
"Yes", he conceded, "They're all liars."
There was also a random fight that broke out, in the terminal, just before I got on my bus. Two local boys had clearly had an argument about something, and suddenly it exploded into a fistfight, right in the middle of the ticket-selling area. Anyway, only lasted about 10 seconds, before they both got dragged off by a pair of cops, who were there on duty.
The 6-hour bus ride was nothing amazing. I sat next to a nun the whole time: she gets on about 10 minutes after the bus has departed, on the edge of town, all garbed up in her white robes and her crucifix necklaces. Didn't notice her that much, however, as I was asleep for most of the ride. The two days of rafting that I've just done have really worn me out, and a day spent dozing on the bus was exactly what I needed. Don't know what the nun's name was, but in my head, I called her "Sister Catalina". Dear old Sister Catalina didn't bother me much, except to cross herself every 5 minutes or so (did she really think the bus ride was that dangerous?).
About halfway to Quito, we got stopped at a routine police checkpoint. Everybody was made to get off the bus, and we all had to show our ID (compulsory national ID cards for the locals, passports for the gringos) and let the cops search our bags; while more cops jumped on the bus, and did a quick search inside the vehicle. I guess they didn't find any cocaine, because they let us back on after 5 minutes, and we continued along the highway. The police drug checkpoints seem to be everywhere in this country: they're pretty paranoid about it, compared to Peru and Bolivia. And, of course, despite all this effort, there's still a guy on every street corner of every town in Ecuador, offering drugs to all the gringos that pass his way. Bit of a joke, really.
I was told that the scenery along the way, from Tena to Quito, is amazing. Can't say I saw all of it, as I was sleeping a fair bit, but what I did see was quite nice: lots of jungle-covered, cloud-enshrouded hills. I think I would have got a better view, however, if the weather was a bit better, and if I was sitting on the left-hand side of the bus. And it seems to be better during the second half of the trip, closer to Quito, as you get higher up into the mountains.
Took a while to get into Quito — despite there being an amazing network of express freeways, all the way into the city centre — as the southern suburbs seem to sprawl on forever. When we got near to Quito, I suddenly woke up, and found that my ears had popped and that I couldn't hear anything: must have been quite an ascent we made!
From the moment we hit the outer suburbs, to the moment we arrived in the central bus terminal, Quito struck me as a very different city to anything I've seen elsewhere, so far, in South America. The roads are amazing: multi-lane freeways going left, right, and centre, and connecting in elaborate spaghetti junctions. The houses seem to all be very modern, well-built, and actually painted: nothing like the endless slums that grace the edges of Lima, for example. The public transport is very western-like: shiny buses and cable-cars everywhere; and not a single spluttering, overcrowded combi in sight.
And the cars: a huge amount of Quiteños (the people of Quito) have their own cars! A bit different to what I'm used to around here — i.e. 90% of the vehicles on the road being taxis, combis, or trucks. Oh no, not like that in Quito: the roads are packed with Chevrolets, with Peugots, with Subarus, and even (in the centre of town) with the odd flip-top Beamer or two. Clearly, there's quite a big affluent middle class in this city.
We pulled in to Quito's enormous central bus terminal ("Terminal Terrestre"), and from there, I made my way by taxi to my hostel in the Old City. Going to be an interesting time here.