Cuenca

During coffee at he Quito hotel, we set our goal for the day; first and foremost, to find our way out of the city, and then travel about 280 miles south to the town of Cuenca.  The coffee was too good to be hasty, so we hung around for the third cup.  South Americans are generally not privy to the concept of the bottomless coffee cup, so as to avoid further glares from the waiter, we took our leave to the streets of Quito Centro Historico.  Fourty five minutes later, we were still touring Quito Centro Historico, desperate to find the one passage to the Pan Am Highway.  After a quick move into the regional bus station, we spotted the only apparent avenue to the one street that would end our suffering.  It would require us to masquerade as a bus and pull through the bus loading dock, sandwiched between two big green busses loading for immediate departure.  Well, if you act like you belong there, you generally can get away with it, so we returned the stares of the bus passengers with smug confidence, and avoided eye contact with busline officials.  We soon made a clean break from the station onto the right highway entrance  and were on our way south on the Pan Am.  

The route took us up similar terrain as the previous couple of days...steep, windey, slow mountain road, between 9,000 and 11,000+ feet in elevation, averaging just over 40 MPH.

A few hours into the day, south of Riobamba, we found ouselves stopped in traffic just outside of the town of "I Can't Even Spell It".  Yes, it was day 3 of the 4 day Carnival celebration, and thousands of people were jamming all transportation arteries into and out of the town.  For the next three hours, we travelled all of one mile.  After the first hour, Jim left the Little Red Truck, out of boredom, to take a walk and to witness on foot this extraordinary gathering taking place, while I plotted the death of every driver that agressively edged infrond of me.  As I previously mentioned, some of the odd forms of entertainment for the revelers was to throw buckets of water over each other and to squirt unsuspecting people with streams of soapy foam, shot from big aeresol cans.  As I inched along in the quagmire of cars, trucks, and busses, I made the fatal mistake of making eye contact with a group of teens in the back of a pickup.  Before I could react or defend myself, I took a direct and unprovoked hit  of soapy foam in the head through the window for what was all of a few seconds, but what seemed like minutes...I took it like a man, acting as though nothing had happened, and not to let the unrully teens have their satisfaction.  After regaining my eyesight and my dignity, I decided that such an act would never again go unavenged.  I purchased one of the aeresol cans from one of the street vendors weaving in and around the stalled traffic.  I was heretofore determined to return all future acts of aggression toward me.  Even thoughts of preemptive strikes filled my thoughts, ala the tactics of the Bush Administration. Nevertheless, I was now properly armed to defend myself and return firepower from all future perpetrators. 

Meanwhile, Jim was nowhere to be found and had been gone for about an hour.  An aggressive racetrack type move to advance in the line allowed the LRT to begin moving forward at a brisk walking speed.  I was worried about Jim, and knowing he was a pacifist at heart, he would not be properly armed with an aeresol can of soapy foam.

As the LRT slowly picked up steam, I moved through town alone.  Ultimately, I advanced to the far edge of town and finally found a place to pull over in an abandoned gas station lot.  I parked, locked the truck and climbed to the top of the camper shell to wait for Jim to find his way out of town.  As I sat there, I heard a commotion coming from the road as about a dozen fellows piled out of two trucks in the middle of the road.  They began yelling, waiving their arms, and working themselves into a frenzy over an incident that I could not decipher the origin.  The mayhem increased, as the croud began arming themselves with sticks the size of baseball bats and rocks.  They began beating on each other in a circle that resembled a rugby scrum.  Slowly the scrum moved my way, and withing seconds, the full scale brawl was on the side of the truck, so close that I had to lift my legs to avoid being pulled into the scrum.  The brawl was in perpetual motion, and quickly moved to the far end of the lot, giving me time to breath.  I was rightfully scared, but equally upset that I locked my iPad in the truck with it's video capability...how many people on my block have a video of a Ecuadorian brawl?

To my chagrin,  the mob changed direction and moved back toward my direction.  In seconds, they were back upon me and the truck and throwing baseball sized rocks and chunks of concrete at each other, one whizzing inchesWe awoke to more rain at the Quito hotel.  After coffee that had a bit of a chocolate finish to it, we established our first goal..to find our way out of the City.  We relied on the hotel proprietor for directions..."easy", she said, a statement backed up by her son standing nearby.  Fourty five minutes, and two tours of the City later, we were finally back on the Pan Am Highway heading south.  You see, what she didn't tell us, was that the correct route out of the city was marked by a sign that was 50 percent destroyed, effectively indecipherable. Stressed by 9:30am, we repeated much the same kind of drive as the day before, up and down on slow, windey mountain roads between 9,000 and 11,400 ft in elevation.

At the first opportunity, I pulled over into a vacant gas station lot and waited for Jim to make his way out of the city.  I locked the truck and climbed on top of the camper shell for a birds eye view of the mayhem.  Suddenly, directly to the side of me an incident occurred between two truckloads of people in the street...about a dozen people jumping from the backs of the respective trucks yelling, waiving their arms, and working themselves up into a frenzy.  It only took seconds for me to realize that I was witnessing the beginnings of a public brawl that ultimately would last a good 15 minutes.  The two sides grabbed whatever weapons (no aereso cans), sticks, boards the size of baseball bats, and rocks, and began beating each other.  They moved like a Rugby scrum from the road directly toward the truck ,until they were literally under my dangling feet.  Yes, I was scared, but I was equally upset that I haad locked my iPad in the cab of the truck...yes, the iPad with video capability.  The scum was so close, I literally lifted my feet to avoid becoming one of the participants.  

 past my nose, another just missing the headlight and grill.  If it were not for the semi heroic effort of a lone armed soldier, I don't know how the brawl would have ended.  Ultimately it did end, and Jim shortly caught up to the truck on foot, with stories of his own, some involving attacks of soapy foam from aeresol cans.  It seems that as he doubled back to find the LRT, he took the wrong fork in the road and totally lost me.  In the end, all was well, and we cut back into the slow moving line of traffic and proceeded on our way.

Needless to say, we were way behind schedule, and arrived into Cuenca about 10pm.  Without a GPS, we opted for the time tested technique of hailing a cab, asking for a hotel recommendation form the cabbie, and following with the LRT until arrival.  The hotel was 5 Star, and one of the top five hotels hotel stays of my life.  We earned it.  Note:  the photo above of people walking on the stroot has nothiing to do with this blog entry.  it merely appeared from nowhere, and i don't know how to remove it without destroying the entry.