Ecuador – It’s a Jungle!

Ecuador – It’s a Jungle!

We went from the arid and dirty Peruvian coastline to the lush and tidy jungle of Ecuador. A very pleasant change! Crossing into Ecuador at the small border at Macará, we followed a busload of passengers, that completely overwhelmed the border staff. A few hours later we emerged as the sun was setting and we scrabbled to find our first overnight stop in Ecuador. The next day we drove to the very pleasant town of Loja where we spent a few days recovering from a rather nasty bout of “northern Peru”.

From Loja we headed north to Cuenca, a large and modern city with a significant foreign and retired population, predominately American, but with some British too. We stopped to look at a high waterfall on the way. It was a steep hike to get to it.

We explored the historic centre, visited a museum with shrunken heads and visited a Panama hat museum (“Panama” hats actually originate from Ecuador) during the day and took a tourist bus tour at night to view the beautiful Christmas decorations/lighting. It is a very pleasant city indeed. Very liveable! And the currency is the US dollar which makes things easy.

Just by chance we were invited to dinner with a group of expats/locals, one of whom was the British Honorary Consul. Gary warned us against visiting the the coast (the UK FCO now list the coast as “Essential Travel only”) and recommended what turned out to be an excellent inland route north.

We crossed a high mountain pass from Cuenca, visiting Laguna Maylas on the way, to Limon Indanza and then turned north. By now we were in true jungle and the weather was very changeable. Pouring one minute and baking hot sunshine the next. We visited some small towns along the way and just before Puyo we visited a chocolate factory and a lookout over the jungle with a swing over a cliff face (Dave plucked up the courage to have a go).

In Puyo we met Olguer and Jessenia, who are building their own overlanding truck, and we stayed on their property for a few days.

Before leaving Puyo we visited a monkey sanctuary (where Dave was frisked by a monkey for food) which was great fun, and the day continued to be so: we ate a very tasty meal at a trout farm, visited a waterfall and took a zip wire ride across a deep gorge.

We then rolled into Baños de Agua Santa for Christmas where we spent Christmas exploring the town and fixing a few things on Big Bertha.

We hope you had a Merry Christmas wherever you are and wish you a Happy New Year.