The journey can really be half the adventure here.
From Celendin we took a beautiful, bumpy, steep, long, fascinating journey to Leymebama. Getting to Leymebamba the man who was going to setup stuff for us to do hadn’t arrived yet, so we spoke to the Belgian volunteers who are currently there. In the end we decided it would be too big a hassle to try to force a project for a month and then leave with possibly no replacements for what we’ve done. So we decided to go to Ecuador until December.
Day 1
Getting to Ecuador was two full days of travel that was exhausting, but interesting. We began the journey from Leymebamba at 5AM on a crowded combi (shared minivan) to Chachapoyas, the nearest “city”. I can tell I’m getting used to combis because I was actually able to sleep a little bit despite my head bobbing in every direction.
Chachapoyas kinda sucks. And we were stuck there allllllll day because the road from Chachapoyas back to the next main highway is being widened and paved to a two lane road, and so is closed from 6AM until 6PM. We played in on the really slow Internet and sat around in the city until we could escape. Our route out of Chachpoyas to Ecuador we kinda had to figure out as we went since there’s no direct buses to almost anywhere we want to go.
From Chachapoyas we took a bus to Baguas, from Baguas we hurriedly caught another bus to Jaen and then we spent the night in the nearest cheap hostal we could find. Phew.
Day 2
From Jaen you’re pretty close to the Ecuador border – distancewise. However the roads are bad so timewise it’s another full day. From Jaen it’s another combi to San Ignacio. From there it’s a shared taxi to the border, and by shared I mean a standard hatchback car, but with 3 people in the front and 4 people in the back seat. Nobody talked, but man were we all close – for a long time over a very bad road. This gets us to the border in the middle of nowhere though.
We had heard that this border crossing was out there, but we didn’t expect that there would be no guards, and the people who do paperwork take 3 hour lunch breaks, and then once you’re on the Ecuador side there’s no transportation until a farmer comes at 5:30PM to haul you to Ecuador in a truck. We just hung out in the river and went for a swim while we waited about 4 hours for everything to get ready.
The farmer truck was a fun form of transportation with little wooden benches – until it got dark, crowded and started pouring and blowing rain. After enduring that we arrived in Zumba and promptly bought a bus ticket outta there. We heard there weren’t any ATM’s in Vilcabamba (turns out there is one now), so we went straight to Loja for the night. Phew. Those were two long days of traveling. As my father commented, traveling here can be hard on your butt, in more than one way.
Now we’re in Vilcabamba, where people supposedly live forever and there’s a ton of foreigners. It’s quite a bit more expensive than Peru, but I attribute that to all the foreigners. It seems like all the really interesting businesses here are started by foreigners. There’s a vegetarian restaurant run by a French women, the coolest hostals are run by Canadians, and Europeans, the farm we’re going to volunteer on is owned by an American woman, and the most recommended local guide is from New Zealand. It’s kind of a shame that as a generalization in many South American countries the locals don’t get more creative than to open the same exact businesses that everyone else opens.
Anyway, we’re off to a farm a little ways out of Vilcambamba that Kim found online. I haven’t read as much about it as she has, but hopefully it’ll be cool. There won’t be internet or any other form of communication there, so it may be a while before I post anything again.