Camping in Pululahua Crater

This weekend we decided to camp down in the middle of the Pululahua Crater.  We left Saturday morning, negotiated through the traffic-y roads in Quito and finally made it past Mitad del Mundo.  We found the 2nd entrance to the park and turned onto the dirt road.  We headed up the road to the entrance gate where we had to register with the guard.

I didn't realize that it was dirt roads all the way down (I should have anticipated this) so I was freaking out over every rock and washout rut in the road as Sung carefully negotiated his way down.  Last time we took Clio off roading we ended up paying $2000 for a new engine.  I was trying not to have a heart attack. Clio did great though and we made it down without a problem.  We're not sure how long that road was but it took about 35 minutes to get down from the entrance gate.  I think the whole trip from Quito took us about 2 and a half hours with traffic and 2 hours without traffic on the way home on Sunday.

Tyler and Sung - great views from near the entrance gate!

We found the "area de camping" and carefully pulled our car in.  Another park guy came and asked for our information and we registered with him.

The tires around the campfire pits are comfy but quite squishy!

We decided to head out hiking before the rain set in.  We asked the guy for information about the trails and he sent us up this small hill nearby called El Chivo.  The path starts just off the main road.

The path goes up to the saddle and then you turn right to a steep trail that goes up the hill

Sung starting on the 5.4 rock climbing section

Made it to the top!  Maybe 30 minutes to get up there?  It was a quick hike.

This picture shows the road that we took to get down to the bottom of the crater, yep, that really windy one, I'm glad Sung drove.

It started raining shortly after we got back from our hike so we took shelter near the bathrooms, played some cards, drank some beer, and Sung got comfy in his down booties.

We found out from our friends who joined us later that the Pululahua Hostel just next door sells a really nice map with all the hiking trails for $1!  Next time we'll plan to do the hot springs hike!

Ecuadorian Fruit!

This morning Lisa and I decided to go to the store and buy all the fruit that we couldn't readily identify and bring it all back to my house and try it.  In the store we stopped in front of each unidentifiable fruit and picked up a bunch of them, smelled them, squeezed them, trying to determine which one to buy.  We weren't sure what we should be looking for so we guessed we didn't want the hardest one in the bunch and we didn't want the squishiest one either.  At one point I was trying all the pepino dulce and a lady starts telling me in English that it didn't matter how soft or hard they were - the color was more important, that I want the yellow ones.  This caused me to start to second guess all of our previous purchases but decided that we better just go with what we had.

It took us a while to identify each of these (they aren't marked in the produce section, I guess you're supposed to know what they are) so I was watching like a hawk as the checkout guy at the grocery store was putting in the codes and the name would appear on the register display so between that and our receipts we were able to piece together what each one was.

It's kind of hard to read all the labels so from top to bottom left to right here is the list:

First Row:

• pineapple of course (not weird but I need it to make colada morada which is a drink associated with the day of the dead November 2nd, I'll post more on this later)
• melon canario (yellow mellon)
• guanábana (soursop)
• papaya
• babaco (no direct English translation that I can find)
• tomate de árbol (tree tomato)

Second Row:

• granadilla (passion fruit)
• pepino dulce (melon pear)
• pitahaya (dragon fruit)
• mandarina king (large mandarin orange)

Third Row:

• tuna (prickly pear)
• taxo (banana passion fruit)
• maracuyá (also translates to passion fruit)
• naranjilla (translation I'm finding for this is Quito Orange but this is really nothing like an orange, it is super super sour and it goes into my canelazo, a hot tea like beverage with aguardiente, a type of alcohol)

I had to take pictures of the insides of all of these because the insides generally look nothing like the outsides!!

Taxo

Unfortunately the taxo we had wasn't quite ripe so it was pretty sour.  We had a taxo tree in our back yard last year and we weren't tall enough to reach to pick them off the tree so we had to wait until they fell to the ground.  Turned out that was when they were perfectly ripe and sweet.  So inside it's a bunch of seeds with gelatinous but watery sweet outsides.  We just swallowed the seeds - otherwise it would take forever to eat if you spit out each one by one!  Overall I like this one - I will wait for the other one to get ripe and then eat it.

Tuna

It turns out "granel" just means buying in bulk so this fruit is just called a tuna or prickly cactus in English.  This one was sweeter than the taxo though it wasn't something that we wanted to keep eating.

Pitahaya

The pitahaya was delicious!  It is sweet and the seeds aren't prominent and don't detract from the flavor. I wasn't sure about the texture at first but we really liked it.  This was one of the favorites.

Maracuyá

The maracuyá is super sour but absolutely delicious.  If you like grapefruit you'll like this one.  We ate it with a spoon, seeds and all.  We ate the whole thing - yum!

Pepino Dulce

The pepino dulce was a little strange - the taste seemed to change as you were eating it, and the flavor was unlike anything I've tasted before.  We ate both the "meat" of it as well as the seeds in the middle.

Granadilla

The insides of the granadilla were just like the maracuyá (seeds surrounded by gelatinous stuff) but it didn't have all the flavor.  It wasn't sour like the maracuyá, and it tasted more like water than a fruit.  Or I guess I could say it had a "subtle flavor" - how about that for finding something good to say about it!  We still ended up eating a whole one so I wouldn't rule this one out completely.

Guanábana

So I've had guanabana ice cream and guanabana flavored cakes and things before and I've enjoyed them all so I guessed I would enjoy the fruit on its own.  I'm still trying to make up my mind on this one.  It comes off almost in sections where each of the seeds are.  It's milky, nutty, sweet, but watery at the same time.  The flavor is distinctive.  This one goes at the higher end of my like scale - I think I'll look up some recipes and see what I can make with it.  

Babaco

The babaco was a no for me.  The middle was like this spongy thing, we were speculating that you could just take the middle out and use it to do dishes or wash the counter.  Let's see - flavor-wise - it was like a lime flavored pear maybe?  What the heck am I going to do with the rest of it - it's huge!!!!

Tomate de Árbol

I've had tomate de árbol juice and I love it.  The fruit does taste similar to a tomato but slightly sweeter.  It's okay on its own but I think it's better as a juice with a little bit of sugar.

Naranjilla

Naranjilla is super super super sour but I like the flavor.  I love it in my canelazo and I bet it would be good juice with a bit of sugar.

Melon Canario

This tasted a little like honeydew - you take out the seeds just like a regular melon.  This one was the closest to the fruits that we are used to and was a good break from the other ones that had "interesting" textures and flavors.

Lisa with the maracuyá and babaco - they are huge fruits!!

What a fun morning!  I'll have to start buying some of these on a more regular basis - especially the pitahaya and the maracuyá!

Hiking Cerro Ilaló

We decided at the last minute to go hiking at Ilaló, a volcano located just to the east of Quito.  We followed the not so great directions in our guidebook and after a few wrong turns we eventually found the "trailhead" (really it is a bus stop where we weren't even sure we could park).  We asked a couple people and they assured us that we could park there though.  I guess it isn't like bus stops in the US where you'll get ticketed and towed if you park there!

So we drove to Tumbaco, the goal is to find the intersection where there's always a bunch of people crossing the street.  This is the "main" intersection in Tumbaco.  It's maybe a traffic light or two past the Puma gas station on the left.  If you get to this cool looking mural on the left you've gone a bit too far.  You could turn right here though and then turn right at the next road and then turn left to get on the road going up to the trailhead.

So going back to the main intersection...once you are there you want to drive just a bit further (200 meters or so) and turn right on the next road.  Go a little more than 1 km and the road forks, take the right fork and go a bit further.  Here you will see the church with the blue domes on your left.  From here you want to continue uphill.

Next you will see a sort of open area with a bus stop - this is where you should park.

The "trail" which is really a cobblestone and then finally dirt road is straight uphill from this open area.

Follow the cobbled road up and up and up...

Enjoy the views along the way...

I think this is Volcán Antisana in the background

A beautiful field nestled into the hillside

You will reach a junction where the road kind of ends and you can go straight or turn left - you want to turn left up this trail...it leads to a farmer's front "yard" but he is friendly and he assured us that we were on the right track.

Then you continue past his house and look for orange flags that mark the way

The trail gets really narrow at this point, keep huffing and puffing your way up

And finally you reach the giant cross!

This took us about an hour and a half but you can keep going up for another hour or so to reach the summit, it was hot and we decided to save the summit for another day.  Round trip it was a little less than 4.5 miles with 2000 feet of climbing.

We headed back down for some pizza at Ali's (right side of the road as you're driving from Cumbayá to Tumbaco), it was fancy but they seemed okay that we were in our workout clothes.  The pizza was good but as is usual for Ecuadorian pizza it was very light on the sauce!

Adventures with the Clio!

Our plan was to spend the weekend at the Secret Garden near Cotopaxi, a nice relaxing weekend outside of Quito.  I was looking forward to relaxing in the jacuzzi, hiking to the waterfall, enjoying the inclusive meals, not having to cook or clean up.  It would be such a nice weekend!

Hoping also to get some better pictures of Cotopaxi!!

The trip started off so well – I mean the car didn’t even have any flat tires (rare for our car that has them about weekly, even 2 at a time sometimes)!  And we (to my surprise) easily manage to shove camping equipment for 4 of us along with a guitar and 4 not so small people into our teeny tiny little Renault Clio – without strapping anything to the roof!  We head on out into Friday afternoon traffic and I opt to get out and walk to the ATM instead of continuing to drive to it in the car.  I get to the ATM, get money out (without any issue!) and walk back to the car just a few minutes after they arrived at the corner.  We soon arrive at bumper to bumper traffic we find out 20 minutes later that it was caused by a lane ending a mile or two up the road.  We get through that and are on our way to Machachi!  20 minutes later we again arrive at bumper to bumper traffic caused by construction that would result in one lane for each direction on the Pan American highway – at least we still had a lane and it wasn’t one lane to be shared by both directions! 

We get through the traffic, get some gas, stop at Tia for some beer and snacks, and finally start up the cobblestone road, it was 17 kms on this road to the Secret Garden.  The road probably should be only for higher clearance vehicles but Sung carefully makes his way up the road while drinking some Club (Ecuadorian beer).  We bottom out a couple times and then while going up a steeper section the car completely dies, I mean, the engine cuts out.  I assumed that he had stalled it accidentally and initially I thought nothing of it.  He starts it up and we continue and it dies again.  We repeat this a few more times until the car won’t start at all.  We all get out and are thinking about the options – do we try to make it to Secret Garden?  Can we make it to Secret Garden?  How far to Secret Garden?  Should we go back to Machachi?  Can we coast back to Machachi?  Is there a place to stay in Machachi?  Should we camp here?  Can we leave the car here?  Where are we?  So many questions, it was tough to tackle all of them at once.  But first we need to put on some warmer clothes.

We add layers and then Phil calls the Secret Garden and they tell us that we’re about 30 minutes away by car but they offered to pick us up.  Sung and I weren’t so sure about leaving our car and then having to deal with it from the Secret Garden the next morning.  We decide we better cancel the reservation and attempt to coast the car down the hill back to Machachi.  We push the car to turn it around and the car continues to die every 5 seconds which means that Sung has to use all his strength to get the brake pedal to work and he has no power steering either which makes it even more exciting.  He gives up about 10 minutes later and says that this is just not going to happen.  He pulls the car over as we finish off the 2 6 packs.  We get out again and kind of look at each other not sure what to do.  There is a farm house right there so we push the car into the driveway which completely blocks it.  We know we can’t leave it there so we walk toward the house at which point the dogs start barking and lights start turning on (it is now pitch black outside).  We talk to two ladies and a guy about our situation and they give us permission to leave our car in front of their house for the night.  We push the car into the spot and then stand there, not quite sure what to do.  We have no plan from here.  How are we going to get to Machachi?

We ask the owners if someone could take us to town.  They say of course and the guys pile into the back of the truck and I go in the cab with Jorge.  Jorge explains that he is a dairy farmer and he also raises crops like potatoes.  The two women are his sister, he is single without kids - I was shocked, I don't think I have met a single Ecuadorian who is his age who doesn't have kids.  He asks all about us, where we are from, if I’m married, if I have kids, we talk about food, the usual questions and chit chat.  We finally arrive at Machachi and he drops us off in the back alley of a hotel where there are already two Ecuadorians waiting to be let into the hostel, one of whom is wearing a ski mask.  We hope that the ski mask is for the cold and not for some kind of robbery that they were planning!!!!

We wait and wait for about 10 minutes and finally this really young girl lets us in the gate and we go upstairs and are finally shown a couple of rooms by an older lady who is not in a night gown.  Our room smells of sewer and had a bunch of really weird stuff in it.  I avoided the bathroom unless it was an emergency because the smell in there was worse than the room itself.  Just outside our window was a bar that had pumping music and yelling people until all hours of the morning.  Between the smell, the sounds, and the worry over how we were going to get the car off the mountain, I got very little sleep that night.

The bar outside our window the kept us awake the entire night before:

The weird stuff in our room:

The piglets and the shoe???  This should be a nursery rhyme or something, maybe I missed it as a kid?

Of course, the room would not have been complete without the kissing swans!

Next morning we eat breakfast and the older lady offers to drive us to her mechanic to ask him about the car - so nice of her - it is amazing how nice everyone was to us!  Of course before we leave we have to load a bunch of really heavy bags into the back of her pick up truck.  No problem, we're happy to help, but it's just funny it's so Ecuadorian.  We head to the mechanic (luckily his shop is at his house) who tells us that we need a tow truck but that he didn't know of one in Machachi.  But next thing I know he's on his phone calling someone and then he tells us to wait at our hotel, that the tow truck would arrive at noon.  After that we dropped off the cow feed or salt or whatever it was in the bags and headed back to the hotel.

We wait, and wait, and wait, and 2:00 PM rolls around and we are sick of the sewer smell and have to at least leave the hostel.  I'm starting to get anxious because all the mechanics close on Saturday by noon (if they're even open) and Sundays they are all closed.  This tow truck is probably never going to show up.  And I still have no idea how we are getting the freaking car down the mountain.

Sung hanging out in the hotel:

We finally give up on this tow truck ever arriving and head out to eat some lunch and as we're eating our chancho (pig roasted on a spit), potatoes, mote, and salad mixture feeling pretty helpless I suddenly remember that our insurance comes with roadside assistance!!!  Sung texts our insurance lady who responds and says that the tow truck will meet us in the plaza in 45 minutes!  Horray!!!  We were SHOCKED that when we got to the plaza an actual tow truck DID SHOW UP!!!  Amazing.  We rode with our savior up the mountain 45 minutes to the farmhouse where he expertly hooked up our car and secured it.

We head down the mountain and the car is shaking all over the place, alarm going off from all the movement, Sung constantly hitting the alarm button to shut the thing off.  After a LONG ride down we finally got off the cobblestone road and into town.  We brought it immediately to the mechanic that we had met the day before and OF COURSE! he wasn't there!  But his dad was and he allowed us to leave the car and he assured us that he would be able to fix it.  In all other car repair scenarios in the past we've had to go to the Renault parts place and buy the parts and bring them to the shop before they'd even think of doing the repair.  So I'm thinking my next week was going to be running to Machachi a bunch of times.  But the dad said they would get the parts and fix it so we'll see!!

Monday Update: the car is ready!  There was a crack in the oil reservoir (probably from us bottoming out) and they repaired it and added new oil - $100.  I'll be on my way back by bus tomorrow morning with the cash - hopefully it's as simple as handing over the money and driving the car back home to Quito!