Quito is not high, in Andean terms, but the altitude did affect us. Just climbing the stairs of the hostal would leave you a little breathless, so Cusco at twice the altitude will be interesting. We are quite glad to be leaving behind the polution and the reports from other travellers of robberies in the city and else where, so we head for Papallacta on a local bus.
The thermal springs are mean´t to be the best in Ecuador and they don´t dissapoint. Set amongst beautiful scenery, next to a river with hills on all sides and the snow capped Antisana volcano standing ominously in the background, you can lay in hot pools and admire it all. There are about 9 pools of varying temperatures, beautifully crafted and maintained by the hotel next door. It closes at 9pm, so you can wollow in hot sulphur water and look up at the stars in the night sky, fantastic!
The next day we returned to Quito for one night and then caught the bus in the early morning to Cuenca. A journey that was supposed to take 9 hours, ended up delivering us to this laid back colonial city, 12 hours later. It took an hour and a half just to get out of Quito, the bus stops on every corner trying to get punters not just on the seats, but packing the aisles as well. The clouds were low, so we got no view of the volcano´s on route and then we struggled up into the mountains, lovely scenery but felt like we would never get out of them. Then we broke down, which precipitated nearly every male passenger (except me) to get off and look under the bonnet and fiddle with engine. Whether one person new what they were doing, or whether the combination of many mechanical minds in tandem had the effect, the result was us limping off again after about 45 minutes. The last 2 hours were spent looking at the driver through his rear view mirror, his eyes were drooping and his colleuge (not co-driver) didn´t appear to be proding him with a very large pole. I was willing him to keep on putting cigarretes in his mouth to provide some kind of stimulus to his rapidly deteriating senses. Nicotine, it appears, delivered us safely to Cuenca.
a travelogue in the time of the information superhighway
1994
My story starts in drizzly, dreary, grey England. I worked as a nurse in a specialist cancer hospital in Manchester. One day, I suddenly entered her world, there she was. At once beautiful, but decaying visibly. Eyes that melt you, fumbled for reasons. High on morphine, she slumped on the chair. Her legs, previously long and graceful, were now fat and full of fluid. She was loosing her hair, something that upset her most. We all witnessed her struggling with the remains of her dignity and modesty, but she carried on fighting. Her mother applied facial cream like a corner man at ringside, her father just looked lost. She was a twenty seven year old woman, right before us, dying in her prime. She seemed to hold up a mirror to the thoughts sailing across my mind, a metaphor for what we've all become and what will become of us. So much potential, so much waste. It is at moments like this that we can take the looking glass to our own fragile existence, and ask questions of it. Cancer had infiltrated her womb, the very giver of life. I became aware of a feeling that her death had released something else, a thirst for living itself. She haunted me. Four months later, I set out on an adventure to view the world that she would no longer see.
Posted by don quixote
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