Roads

Roads 

Now that we've been to the farm and back, I have to say that the old Vermont-ism "you can't get there from here" is on a different <ahem> plane in Ecuador.   It's a different scale altogether.  Pete's farm is roughly 30km from Otavalo as the Andean crow flies, just under 20 miles.  Yet the trip runs two and a half hours on 55K of road.  And what a road it is!

The surface is gravel, for the most part, but to call it gravel is like calling the Sistine Chapel a church.  It's like constant micro-washboard punctuated regular thunderous shocks and thuds.  (I don't think anyone -- or at least Pete -- bothers with shocks since they wouldn't last that long anyway.)  Because it's still summer here -- one of two seasons directed by Pacific currents -- cars and busses kick up a super-fine dust.  The dust coats everything in a fine light film, not least your teeth if you're prone to gawking at the scenery as I am.   And then there are the switchbacks: sometimes long and looping, other times alarmingly abrupt, but as regular as corn in Iowa.  All the while, the paramo and later the cloud forest drop away from the road with vertigo-inducing sharpness.

The Andes in northern Ecuador run in two parallel ranges, and Otavalo sits between them on the inter-Andean plane.  Going from the city to Pucará in the Intag region takes us over to the western slope of the Andes, out of the rain shadow and into the cloud forest.  Though there is no pass -- the road winds up and around the Cotacachi Volcano -- t's obvious as soon a you cross over to the western slope.  Everything is greener and lush, so long as it's not been deforested -- and that doesn't  start in earnest until further down.  The road dips in and out of the clouds (surprise, surprise) and winds its way on in a roughly downward way for another hour and a half.

The village of Pucará sits at 2,100m.  We arrive on a Sunday, and there's a soccer game going on.  Most of the town has turned out to watch, and still I don't think the concrete bleachers are full.  It's partially sunny, like most days here so far.  We haven't gone more than 40 miles, but it feels like we've gone back in time 60 years.