Andes Mountains

With the workshop canceled for the week Becky and I immediately decided there was a definite need to travel. We would have 6 1/2 days until we had to be back for a workshop. And so, the next morning after I got just under 3 hours of sleep I woke up and finished packing and we didn't get ready fast enough for the 6:45 bus but took the 7:30 a.m. one instead. The bus ride started out going through the bleak countryside that surrounds Guayaquil. But then it turned into miles and miles of banana plantations. We even passed a Dole plantation. I saw some but mostly I slept for the first 2 1/2 hours. Once I had caught up on a little bit of sleep I enjoyed watching out the window. It's one of my favorite things to do in life, watch landscape pass by. I wished that I had control of the bus and could stop it about a hundred times to get a good picture from a good angle that wasn't slightly blurry from motion. But, I made due. The banana plantations turned into groves of what looked like giant pineapples. Since the tree looked like a pineapple we assumed they were pineapple trees. There is a strong possibility that that is bad logic.
Slowly, the various tropical fruit plantations turned into tropical jungle covered hills. Then the tropical jungle covered hills turned into towering sharp jungle covered mountains. The bus wound up and around the mountains for hours, climbing higher and higher. The first time I saw the Andes mountains, half covered by clouds, took my breath away. I had no idea our destination was to go inside the clouds. Slowly the bus took the curves, stopped for construction delays, and bounced through pueblo roads. Higher and higher. I couldn't believe it. The views just kept getting better. But eventually I had to stop taking pictures because we were in the clouds and I couldn't see past the side of the road. I decided to ice my broken finger and so I stuck my hand out the window. It worked rather well. Sometimes I even alternated with heat treatment by sitting on my frozen fingers. Mostly I just iced it though. :)
I thought about the people who built the roads and wondered how many died from falling off the cliffs. Seriously. I thought I was going to die just driving on it. The Andes Mountains are incredible. I've never seen anything so sharp and never seen roads that actually climbed to the top of peaks before entering into the Andean highlands. The Highlands were something else. The greenest rolling hills and plains I've ever seen. Like Park City except 25 times better. And lots of indigenous people in traditional dress. By this time I had taken about 180 pictures of the scenery out the window and now that the roads were less windy I stopped trying to take pictures and let myself fall back asleep for a little bit.
To my pleasant surprise we never came down from the mountains. Quito lies in a skinny long valley. The city is fantastic. I already like it 10 times more than Guayaquil. But that's another blog entry. Bottom line of this one is that my first experience with the Andes Mountains was the highlight of my stay in Ecuador thus far. Incredible.