Clouds

I have escaped from the cloudforest for just a few hours to Otavalo, famous for its artesanias market all over the continent. There is a surfeit of ponchos here. A veritable surfeit. But I haven´t got time to gabble about the really very groovy intricately carved wooden bottles and tiny chess sets and swarms of hippy trousers. I have to catch a bus back to the middle of nowhere very soon so that, barring landslides, I make it back for the party at the thermal baths tonight. I´ve never been to a party at a thermal baths before and it sounds very indulgent. It makes me think of Romans and spies and the word lozenge. Lozenge. Another reason I must be rather speedy is that the guy in the cabin next to me has been searching on google for "machine guns" for the last half an hour. He is now on a Swedish militia site. I worry, internet, what his next step will be.

So I want, in the brief time I have, to talk about clouds.

There are many types of clouds in the cloudforest and they are all truly excellent clouds. A friend of mine once said that if clouds existed in only one place people would come from all over the world, and pay hundreds of pounds, to see them. He´s right. Clouds are great. Really top. And the clouds in the cloudforest are some of the best clouds there are.

Sometimes the clouds seem coughed out by the forest itself, forming from nowhere into tiny pockets, clinging to the serried trees where the mountains dip away; sometimes the clouds cluster suddenly and chase you up and down the trails, impossibly fast, and thickly threatening; sometimes the clouds splatter themselves into a meandering path of pearly globules on the strip of struggling milky blue at the horizon; sometimes the clouds choke the sky in layers of thick grey carpet, closing in, slowly darkening and darkening through the afternoon until they burst and fill the world with rain for hours and hours and hours; sometimes, when you´re very high up, machete-hacking your way through a verdant plateau, the forest disappears in the swarming miasma and it´s possible to believe you are standing on some magical floating island, glinting every hue of green above an endless, vaporous void. Occasionally - and only ever in the mornings - some determined blue fights its way through the grey and white; and
even more occasionally, the sun, usually a jaundiced yellow, barely visible, sweating behind viscous layers, burns itself a searing hole and threatens our skin and our eyes.

But it doesn´t matter so much. The sun will come later. At the coast. In Peru. For now, the clouds - not to mention the jungle, sweltering in the swollen air; the local children, perma-smiled, tiny, and ubiquitous; and the locals, forever offering lifts, greetings and scarily strong purro - are enough to ensure I am a very happy bear-tracker indeed.

How to disappear completely

This week has been a busy week.

On Monday we went up to Secret Garden, Cotopaxi - the home-cum-hostel of Tarquin and Catherine, who set up Secret Garden, Quito five or so years ago and have now moved out to the mountains. We got there late morning, lazed around all day, marvelled at the price, the view and, later, the food - then we got beaten at Scrabble by an American bird enthusiast called Justin. He got Martinis as his first word. We never caught up. This was a blow; Andy and I have spent over ten grand learning how to be good at Scrabble.

The next day we toddled off early to climb up to a glacier on Volcan Cotopaxi. It´s possible for beginners to make it to the summit - something like 19,000 feet, I think - but the cost was out of our range (100 quid). Just as well. Hannes, a volunteer in Quito who went on the trip with us, stayed at the refuge for an attempt. His guide fell through the thick snow and they had to turn back. No refunds. Ouch.

The walk up was exhausting, but fantastic. The altitude defeated two of our fellow day-trippers, Katrin and Phil, who gave up at the refuge at 4800m. To be honest, I couldn´t really identify the glacier as a glacier due to the vast amount of snow that was falling. This did not, however, detract from the sheer joy of gazing across a vast, craggy, deadly expanse of pure white. On the way down I ran and got a severe headache. Nonetheless, I definitely won. There´s no doubt.



Wednesday was the best day. We trekked upriver, waded through pools, jumped from jagged stone to jagged stone, got caught in a hailstorm, managed to make our way back; then I got sick, threw up, felt better. It was great. I will never again be so convinced I am Indiana Jones. As for the illness, I don´t know what happened. One minute I was fine, the next a twinge, then a gradual gut-crushing for two hours. Then release. Weakness. Recovery. A proper 24-hour affliction.

But the river! Oh, the river! Twirling, soaring plants of every shade of green intermingling with each other and cutting out the darkening sky; clear trickly water bursting into surprised rapids behind huddles of soaked, lumpen stones; cookies and tea on a sudden clearing; mudslides and moss and indescribable smells and secret shuffles from behind the thick foliage. And then the hail. Hard and painful. And Andy had no jacket.

I suppose it was quite dangerous. One slip and a twisted ankle would have left us all in trouble. But I had my superb waterproof coat on and was quietly euphoric behind my serious instructions to less scrabble-happy comrades.

Thursday: I was supine, recovering from my strange ailment; Andy went bike-riding, cut his leg up a little, tired himself out. He had a jolly good time.

Friday we quite fancied horse-riding, but didn´t go for it. Legs still too weak. We´ll horse-ride later. We played Scrabble. Got Fecund. On a triple word score. We both felt much happier with our reading degrees after this.

On Saturday we came back to Secret Garden, Quito, from where I write this. And today we went to the centre of the world - and the museum that lies upon it. There´s a horrifically touristy complex of shops and restaurants and all kinds of rubishy things around a monument where the French got the equator wrong by 200m or so. The much more well-hidden museum on the actual ecuator was far better. THE WATER WENT STRAIGHT DOWN INSTEAD OF SPINNING CLOCKWISE OR ANTI-CLOCKWISE! YOU COULDN´T WALK STRAIGHT DUE TO CENTRIFUGAL FORCES! THE GUIDE BALANCED AN EGG ON THE HEAD OF A NAIL! Needless to say, it was pretty great.

But this is the last you´ll hear from me for a while, dear Ecuadorian internets. We´re off to the Intag cloudforest to track bears for four weeks. I probably won´t have a chance to get online until April.

I have to go; I´m missing dinner. There are many more photos on Facebook. Including this one.

















That´s Quito, that is.