Andy bought a poncho. It is big and blue and very nice indeed. I refrained, despite the great temptation of many lovely grey ones, and the come-hither smiles of gilt-toothed Otavelenos.
The next day we boarded bus and trundled down the sierra to Latacunga; the starting point for our trip to the crater lake of Quilotoa.
A DIGRESSION ON VOLLEYBALL
Everybody plays volleyball in Ecuador; and every settlement - from the tiniest church-and-two-huts hamlet to the sprawling megopolis of Quito - has at least one court. Quito, in fact, probably has thousands. Often people play for money. Sometimes as much as $50. Big bucks anywere - ridiculous here. The quality on show is usually good, but not excellent. Ecuadorians, on the whole, are really not tall enough for volleyball. Andy, at 6 foot 3¨, is at least a head taller than almost everybody.
In Latacunga, however, we came across a match, on one of many courts behind the huge fading market, around which were clustered hundreds of people, toes tight to the blue rope that marked the court´s edge. They play three people on each team here: a guy who sets the ball, a smasher/tipper and an all-rounder. In Latacunga, each side had an alpha male, who would spit insults in the vague direction of his teammates when a point was lost. At one point, red-t-shirt guy - the alpha of the younger, late-teenage team - squared up to the referee, pressing his nose into his face in that peculiar, slightly homoerotic way some guys do when they want to look like they want a fight - but do not actually want a fight. It was tense. There was a long break in play when an older gentleman in the audience started lecturing red-t-shirt guy. Would the lanky youth punch him in his wrinkled face? It turned out no. But man was the testosterone winging about. I felt that we were one bad refereeing decision away from a proper ruck.
And you would not believe how good they were. This one kid, he can´t have been any taller than 5 foot 9¨, would leap about twice his height to bash the ball right in the very corner, or prod it just a millimetre over the net. There were sneaky shots and cheeky shots and show-off shots and flukey shots, but mostly it was just really, really fast and agressive and impressive. In the end, the salmon-like kid walked off, fed up, I think, at the violence spilling about everywhere. But while it lasted it was sublime.
END OF DIGRESSION ON VOLLEYBALL
The bus out to the little village of Quilotoa from Latacunga was clad entirely in red felt, the televison - also red - holstered in a cube of red plastic. Two dirty white frills ran the length of the vehicle, hanging down over the top of the windows. It felt like an oversized hippy-wagon.
There were a few other gringos, huddled together on the back row - Quilotoa lake is one of the country´s biggest tourist-draws. Indigenous locals filled up the rest of the bus; they all fell asleep, green and brown trilbys lolling drunkenly, within a few minutes. I have yet to master this impressive Ecuadorian art.
As ever, an array of goods were on offer.
A DIGRESSION ON THE SALE OF GOODS ON BUSES
At bus stops (and when the bus slows down, and when it doesn´t really slow down but perhaps changes gear), men and women hop on and shimmy down the aisle hawking their wares. So far in Ecuador, solely when bussing, we have been offered the following products: needles and thread; fritados; sweets; newspapers; music CDs; digital watches; regular watches; apples; bananas; DVDs of Hollywood movies; strange and unknowable meats; strange and unknowable fruits; around 10 different variations of ice-creams and lollipops and ice-cream/lollipop amalgamations - and pornography.
Occasionally a seller will begin their bus-rush with a mournful monologue; I only understand about one word in every four or five, but the tone of voice tells the story - and it´s never a happy one. These sellers tend to do a little better than their more vociferous compatriots. But most don´t sell a thing. The average seller spends perhaps thirty seconds on board before they hop off.
The best product-pitch so far was a couple of days ago on the bus from Ambato to Banos, where we have spent the weekend and today (Forgive the chronologal rupture, internet.) The man looked Eastern-European, but his Spanish was fluent - undoubtedly his first language. Every one of his features was slightly wrong. His nose hooked cruelly to a narrow point, encroaching on his top lip; greasy tendrils of hair escaped sporadically from where they had been slathered into the centre of his head, drawn away from thinning temples; his eyes were wild, impassioned, flitting from passenger to passenger as he lurched back and forth down the aisle, barely keeping his feet with the jolts of the road; his facial hair, clustered around top-lip and chin, looked like tiny sprinklings of iron-filings.
He pitched for over half an hour, handing out little green boxes to every passenger - except Andy and I. It took me about five-minutes of neck-craning to read the white capital-letters on the box. "Colon-cleanser," they pronounced. No wonder he felt he had to put on such a performance.
To no avail, though. After an age of pleading and plugging, the little green boxes were collected back up into his suitcase. I didn´t see him take any money at all, but I like to think someone surreptitiously slipped him a couple of dollars, burying their little green box deep into a seatside bag.
END OF DIGRESSION ON THE SALE OF GOODS ON BUSES
At Quilotoa, we dumped our bags at a hostel and wandered off to the lake. The lake in a crater. A volcanic crater (inactive, unlike the volcano near us here in Banos; don´t worry, internet, the lava runs down the other side).
I have overused the word beautiful to a silly degree in these blogs. And anyway, the word doesn´t do justice to the sight of a crater full of bright emerald water surrounded by jutting, craggy mountains, soaring up into the clear blue sky. It just doesn´t.
"That´s one of the most beautiful things I´ve ever seen," said Andy - and it didn´t seem a hackneyed or embarrasing thing to say at all. Because it was - for me, too.
And now I´ve been hogging the computer for too long and have written barely a quarter of what I would like. But I must go.
Today we abseiled down waterfalls. It was good.
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