The Devil’s Nose

Ecuador is a small country which has everything: the Galapagos Islands, wonderful beaches, volcanoes and the Amazon. But what I always enjoy the most are the landscapes it offers.

My best recommendation to those who are interested in enjoying beautiful landscapes is the following: the train ride to the “The Devils Nose”.

 

 

 It is known as the “Most Difficult Train in the World” and it ranks as one of the biggest attractions in the country. Its name comes from the rock-face on the mountainside which the tracks descend as they zig-zag down from the Andes – the rock-face has shape similar to a nose.

 

Upon arrival at the small town of Alausí in the Central Highlands (about an hour-and-a-half’s drive from Riobamba), we took the original but reconditioned and refurbished railway which connects the Andes with the coast of Ecuador. From there, we wound down to the river at Sibambe, where people from the area received us with a traditional dance called “el baile de las cintas” (similar to a British May Pole).

 A small museum, cafeterias, a view point to enjoy the scenery and a souvenir market are the attractions at Sibambe, all very well restored or built from scratch by the Ecuadorian Railway Company.

 

Everyone who visits Ecuador should take a ride on the train!

 

Pilar Albuja Ponce

Isla Corazon – An island shaped like a heart

Text and photos by JP Verdesoto – Metropolitan Touring Ecuador

An island shaped like a heart, with the heart and passion of its people

There are only a handful of places in Ecuador that make you wonder about how things were in the coastal shores of the Pacific back in the days before “we” arrived here, beginning a one-way process that can often be irreversible –in terms of progress and development– when there is no ethos of conservation or sustainability.  Nature will hardly ever give you a second chance.

One of these places is Isla Corazón (Heart Island) in the Province of  Manabi, about one-and-a-half hours’ drive from the provincial capital of Manta.  Isla Corazón is located near the the town of Bahía de Caraquez, in the estuary of the Chone River.  An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. This magical place is full of life and friendly local people, who are the main characters in this play of environmental conservation.

The fishermen of the village of Puerto Portovelo, through the local Association of Naturalist Guides and Mangrove Conservation (“ASOMANGLAR”), aim to protect their natural resource in order to provide more eco-friendly economical alternatives to their communities.  Through their efforts over 12 years of management, the community has managed to reforest the area that was affected by many shrimp farming corporations that built their shrimp pools, pretty much cutting off the whole mangrove line along the estuary. Once the native mangrove forest began to be destroyed, the harmful effects on local wildlife and also on the low-scale artisan fishing taking place got worse. The local people realized that their catches were decreasing. They were faced with a choice: work for the shrimp companies or cut more mangroves to sell as wood and get some cash to survive.  But this would not be enough to make a living over the long term, as already the mangroves were already being decimated…

By 1998  “El Niño” came – El Niño is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, an oscillation of the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific having important consequences for weather around the globe. Among these consequences are increased rainfall across the southern tier of the US and in Ecuador, which has caused destructive flooding, and drought in the West Pacific, sometimes associated with devastating brush fires in Australia. This particular El Niño almost wiped the entire community off the face of the earth due to the heavy flooding.  Some of the wildlife, already affected by the consequent problems of the mangrove reduction, was on the verge of extinction.  Protecting the mangrove banks along the estuary and coast line is paramount because it forms a shield which stops erosion from flooding and also provides a refuge for many species in the area.

This tragedy awakened a new state of mind and consciousness in the local fishermen, who swore to protect what was left of the mangroves and make them grow for the benefit of all.  Today,  they have successfully achieved the growth of the mangrove from 50 hectares 200 hectares in the area of Isla Corazon since the project began in 1999.  This outstanding hard work has been done entirely by hand, and has considerably increased the numbers of marine birds, as both are directly related.  The frigate bird colony that lives on the island has more density per square meter than any other colony, including the Galapagos Islands.  The undeniable truth is that birds, mammals, reptiles, plants, fish and other species have found here, once again, a natural refuge, and this time with the help of the people, once their fiercest enemy and now its closest guardian and sponsor.

These natural elements and the personal stories told by the native guides as they take you paddling through magical mangrove tunnels, showing the wildlife with passion or visiting their community and its organization, will indeed have an impact in your life and they way of appreciating your surrounding.  It leaves you with the good sensation that we are still on time to save these and other spaces of life!  You will undoubtedly have a great experience…

But let’s add to this the good service provided by the local Hotel Casa Ceibo (www.casaceibo.com), with outstanding cuisine with the chef’s personal touch in preparing seafood and using the most flavorful local ingredients, great wine and spacious, cozy social areas that will make you think twice before checking out.  Add smiley, friendly staff and you will never want to leave this hideaway of peace and tranquility that everyone always looks forward to from time to time.

I cannot guarantee that you will experience exactly the same as I did, but I do guarantee that, if you have the chance to visit here, give yourself the opportunity to explore just a little bit further along the beautiful Ecuadorian coastline!  You will be pleasantly surprised.

Text and photos by JP Verdesoto – Metropolitan Touring Ecuador

Galapagos sapiens – Why the Galapagos Islands are special

Yacht La Pinta and kayaks at Floreana Island

The Galapagos are an archipelago of volcanic islands and islets that rise up from the bed of the Pacific Ocean 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) west of Ecuador. On a desktop globe or on Googlemaps, they look like a set of freckles on the ocean’s cheek, incongruous and entirely unexpected. They emerged from the ocean just yesterday in geological time, created by a crack in the Earth’s crust between two tectonic plates, known to science as a volcanic hotspot. A very hot spot.

The Galapagos are special because they have never been connected to the mainland.

The flora and fauna that reached the islands’ shores – before the intervention of Man at any rate – had to survive the hundreds of miles of ocean first. Mammals failed almost entirely to complete the journey. Over millions of years, only a small rat made it. The kings of Galapagos fauna are reptiles. How did they get there? They were washed away from the banks of rivers on the continent by flash floods, floated on rafts of vegetation skippered by whimsical ocean currents for weeks, and finally disembarked, fortuitously impregnated.

Over millions of years, these reptiles, and many of the marine birds that also alighted on these volcanic isles, adapted to their environment. In the words of Charles Darwin – in fact, the sub-title to the first edition of On The Origin of Species – their survival followed the principle of “the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”.

Marine iguanas warming up for the day's activities

Thus a land tortoise that began little bigger than your foot grew to the length of six year-old child; a cormorant became flightless as it gained an advantage by fishing underwater rather than flying; one species of finch arrived and adapted to its environment to such an extent that there are today 13 species; and a mutation of a land iguana whose offspring were good swimmers thrived and reproduced, creating the marine iguana, unique to the Islands. Flora too, mutated and adapted. The scalesia tree, for example, which reaches heights of a good 10 metres (30 feet) in the highlands of some islands, is from the same family as the diminutive daisy.

The Galapagos are special because the islands are a living laboratory of evolution.

The animals of Galapagos evolved and developed in isolation for millennia. Although the islands were discovered by the blown-off-course Bishop of Panamá in the mid-1500s, it really wasn’t until the 19^th century that Man took any notice of these ‘enchanted isles’. In fact, mariners hated them. The ‘enchanted’ of the tourist brochures is really a mistranslation of the Spanish ‘encantadas’ which should really translate as ‘bewitched’ in this context. Cloaked in garúa sea mist for half the year, black and foreboding, occasionally spewing volcanic fire, and with very few sources of fresh water, no seaman worth his salt wanted to spend any time in the archipelago.

But the whaling trade changed this. The Humboldt Current that carries nutrients northwards from the frigid seas of Antarctica brings vast schools of fish and cetaceans. For the whalers who sold whale oil to the citizens of the burgeoning cities of North America and Europe, Galapagos’ fame grew almost like that of San Francisco in the midst of the gold rush.

The whalers wreaked havoc on the islands’ ecosystems. They let domestic animals loose for future use, chopped forests for burning down whale fat and carried off tens of thousands of giant tortoises, whose meat would sustain them on their long sea voyages. The reptilian tortoises, stacked five-high in the holds of the ships, could last three months without water – the ideal meals-on-shells.

These sad events, however, pale into nothingness when compared to Man’s millenarian depredation of the South American environment. Within only a few thousands of years of homo sapiens crossing the Bering Straits, all of the continent’s large land mammals (with a couple of exceptions) had been exterminated. The survivors developed an in-born fear of Man. Land mammals ran a mile. Birds flapped for their lives. This is the world as we know it; the relationship with the natural world we have come to accept.

Galapagos are special because the animals have no fear of Man.

Blue-footed boobie close-up

Fortunately, between the whalers arriving and the establishment of the Galapagos National Park in 1959, the Islands’ creatures didn’t develop an ingrained or inherited trait of fearing Man. They do not consider us a predator or cause for alarm – they don’t even surreptitiously shuffle sideways to get out of our way. This is due in greater part to the fact that the Islands don’t have any large carnivores – the Galapagos hawk is the biggest predator. In fact, exploring a visitor site on Galapagos you have to take care not to trip over a family of basking marine iguanas, step on a blue-footed booby’s nest or stumble over a sea lion.

In Galapagos, the animals are all blissfully unaware that just a few hundred miles away their kin would have been clubbed, clobbered, feathered, skinned, boiled up with some potatoes or sold by the likes of us faster than you could say evolutionary biology.

Not only are the Galapagos the ‘origin of the Origin of Species’, but they are one of the few places on the planet where you can observe these species at will, in comfort, with enough time to contemplate their remarkable characteristics, and to reflect upon our place in the great tree of life: to realise we are just one twig at the end of one branch of that tree; to realise we have a responsibility to that tree; to realise we have no more rights to be up in its canopy than any other creature.

Tropic bird in flight, Galapagos Islands

Sharing time with the creatures of Galapagos is a privileged chance for reflection. On this trip, I dived down underwater and did loop the loops and twisted and turned with a young sea lion pup, over and over with new lungfuls of air. I sat observing dragon-like land iguanas beneath prickly cacti. I stood on a wind-swept cliff edge and watched tropic birds, pelicans, boobies, lava gulls and storm petrels ride the precarious currents above the glinting, silvery sea. And none of them took the slightest bit of notice of me.

The Galapagos are special because we, in our wisdom, have decided to protect them as such. Long may we continue to be so sapiens.

By Dominic Hamilton, Head of Communication, dhamilton AT metropolitan-touring.com

To join Metropolitan Touring and explore the Galapagos Islands, see http://www.metropolitan-touring.com/GalapagosIslandsTours/

Touched by the Spirit of the Andes, Ecuador

Spirit of the Andes – from Quito to Cuenca along the Avenue of the Volcanoes

Like all good trips, this one is already becoming a blur and it’s barely over. We seem to have compressed so much into a short space of time it’s untrue. But such is the magic of Ecuador.

I could write a chronological blog of the itinerary so far, but I think that captured impressions are perhaps more powerful. If you would like to read the day-by-day programme, please view it here http://www.metropolitan-touring.com/content.asp?id_page=198.

Taita Chimborazo - Spirit of the Andes

So, yes, impressions:

Hide-and-seek
A mesmerising dance takes place every day in the Andes between the volcanic peaks that puncture the mountains that run longitudinally through the country and the clouds that form, dissipate, swirl, puff, embrace, smother and dance around them. The physics of this are elemental, and somewhat prosaic. But the overall effect, as one travels through the mountain ranges is anything but humdrum. It’s stunning, and constantly stimulates the eye to reappraise and look again.

Ticking the volcano list:

El Altar's crown of peaks at dusk

Like birdwatchers with their list of species, it seems that we travellers through the Andes have a similar list, only ours are the evocative names of the volcanoes that we pass or can spy in the distance as we travel from Quito to Cuenca in the south.
This journey is dominated by three peaks: Cotopaxi, Tunguruhua and Chimborazo. Each different, each imposing. But there are also the co-stars, like El Altar, the Illinizas or Carihuairazo, and then the cameos by the likes of Sangay and Antisana. There is a certain excitement associated with spotting these (mainly) snow-capped peaks, and anticipation at turning a bend in the road to meet a prospect of one, glimpsed through the hills and clouds.

Unfinished houses:
I wish more of them were finished, but it’s part of the growth of the country, part of the hope in better times, in changes to come. Aesthetically, it’s not that pleasing, but you can’t take hope away from the people of the Andes.

Squares:
Fields and fields, lines and lines of crops chequerboard the Andean countryside. It’s like a giant chessboard, with checks separated by groves of eucalyptus trees. These squares even march up near-vertical hillsides, such is the peasants’ love of rectangles and squares and rhomboids.

Vapour:
Like the clouds of the high mountains, water is everywhere in the atmosphere here. When we descended to the roaring waterfall of the Pailon del Diablo – the Devil’s Cauldron – swirling masses of water vapour billowed out of the rocky bottom of the pool, rose up and caressed our faces. Winds were whipped up by the very force of the water crashing down. But these winds could be seen, devised. Millions of charged water droplets that make the perceived visible.

On the way to Chimborazo

Another V, Verticality:
Perhaps too literal a word for one’s experience of this phenomenon, but it goes a great way to explain why Ecuador is so special. Take today: we began at 3,000-odd metres, half-way between the high Andes and the Amazon, descended into the cloudforests around the town of Banos to around 1,500 metres – a sub-tropical land of forests, orchids, butterflies and hummingbirds – and then climbed up higher and higher through the last of the towns and villages around the base of the mighty Chimborazo Volcano and up to the haunting páramo beyond, right up to 4,000 metres. From there, we wound down to the city of Riobamba, back at around 2,300 metres. Such diversity in short distances… Such contrasts in such short spaces of time. Everything changes with each kilometre, here in the Tropics, right on the Equator, all orchestrated by the verticality of the Andes as they rise up from the Pacific on one side, the Amazon on the other.

Connections:

Making friends in Palacio Real, near Riobamba

The Mother Superior at the Museo de las Conceptas in Riobamba had a kindly way, ambling around the grounds of the cloistered convent in her white habit. Having distributed the nuns’ special herbal tea to us all, she blessed us and wished us well on our way…
The owner of the well-run café-restaurant at the foot of the Pailon del Diablo waterfalls was called Wilfrido. We asked him what he thought was the spirit of the Andes, and he communicated his love for his small corner of this country like few people I’ve met.
The woman who led us through the fields of Palacio Real, near Riobamba, was called Trinidad. She showed us all the community’s vegetable patches and described the uses the local people put to all the plants. She spoke Spanish in staccato bursts, since her mother-tongue is Quichua. She had a beautiful, flashing smile. She laughed when she told us that her husband hadn’t approved of her getting involved in the community tourism project, but that one of her sons had told her to ignore him. She seemed pleased with her decision, and I am too.

Art and Athens:

Cuenca Cathedral and petals

Cuenca, known as the Athens of the Andes, is Ecuador’s third-largest city, and its most pleasant by far. We wandered the streets today and I was overcome with its charms. Rivers criss-cross the urban heart, while green mountains cup it on three sides. We spent the day among modern art museums, cultural centres, convents, flower markets, churches, cobbled streets, antique shops, viewpoints, Panama hat makers, and the banks of the river Tomebamba. There are few more enjoyable cities to explore by foot than Cuenca, by my reckoning, and I am left with a longing to return to explore more.

A Rush of Blood to the Senses:
That’s what the spirit of the Andes feels like. From Quito to Cuenca is a quite a way, along the winding roads of this, the world’s longest mountain chain. The days are undoubtedly long. But I can’t help feeling my senses are more acute after our four days of travel – the blurry gauze of routine has been cleaned (if momentarily) from my eyes and from my head and from my heart, to reveal a more sensitive me, a man I used to know not that long ago, who has returned to surprise me with the gift of life.

View the Spirit of the Andes itineraries here: http://www.metropolitan-touring.com/content.asp?id_page=198