While waiting at the Banos bus termainal to head out to Riobamba, a good portion of people I had met at the hostal made an appearance. They were catching the same bus that I was, some heading onto the buses final destination of Guayaquil, or were changing at Riobamba to another bus into Cuenca. I was pretty determined to get to Riobamba to find out whether this Devils Nose steam train was running. It was here that I met the Canadian Dev and his Aussie girlfriend Lissa.

Unfortunately for Dev, the excitement of playing his musical instruments for everyone outshone the fact he had left his day pack at the terminal. Later I found out Dev was a musical fanatic, so it made sense he’d remember his instruments over his pack, which contained his passport and wallet. 

We all got off at Riobamba and the three of us caught a taxi together into town. We parted ways as I sort out a hostal and they to find an internet cafe and phone to cancel his credit card. After heading to a hostal nearby, I wander the town and checked out the train station. It was pretty obvious from a distance that no Devils Nose train was running from Riobamba, as the train tracks were being ripped up and replaced. I seemed to be cursed even in Ecuador by trackwork! I had heard this was the case and there was a possibility that the train was running from the last stop 5 hours away, but still charging the full amount. Even worse was the rumour that the train was also being renovated and had been replaced with some weird yellow Disneyland-esque thing. 

It wasn’t worth the trouble, so the next morning I headed to the terminal and caught the next bus to Cuenca. And I’ve got to say in retrospect, it was a good choice. Cuenca would end up being my favourite city in Ecuador, and everyday there was a relaxing joy.

The trip south went from the mountainous Andes into seirra. The change in scenery and even the look of the villages was dramatic. Suddenly the mountains changed from grey-green forest to rolling stunning green grass, and the houses couldn’t be more of a stark contrast to the north. They weren’t wooden shacks, or grey concrete homes that had yet to be painted (if ever), but every home was large, colourful and outright beautiful. It was like another country, which is something I can say is the greatest strength of visiting Ecuador – for such a tiny country you can see such an amazing divisity not only in the climate and environment, but also in the poeple and how they live. 

The bus arrived in Cuenca in the evening and I caught a taxi into town where there was a cluster of Lonely Planet recommended hostals. Unfortunately every hostal was full. I’m not sure why this was the case in the first week of being in Cuenca, but there were alot of backpackers I ran across also having trouble finding a hostal. I ended up staying in a new part of a hostal that we still being renovated. It wasn’t the best stay, the room and bathroom weren’t ventilated so things started to smell pretty quickly. I eventually left and found another hostal nearby that was a couple of dollars more expensive, but infinately better.

The first morning in Cuenca I hit up breakfast in a place called Stencil, named becaused the walls were covered in stencils of famous people. This cafe/bar would soon become one of two local hangouts for a group of us. Looking up from my breakfast who should walk in but Dev and Lissa. It’s funny these moments where you meet random people along the way, and the next thing you know you bump into them again as you’re all on the similar route to the next destination. 

Lissa had been living abroad in England and Canada for the past two years, and had met Dev in Columbia. The two of them had been travelling together since then for the past two months. She had to eventually leave Cuenca, and Dev, to head to Piura in Peru to catch a flight to Lima and finally back to Melbourne. She was the first Aussie I had come across in my trip, I had come across a lot of Americans and Canadians, but not an Aussie. So it was nice to talk ‘Australian’, and Dev was such a lover of Australia and he pronounced Australia like we do! 

The three of headed out to Caja National Park, an absolutely stunning park that is massive in size and contains 250 lakes that has rivers pouring into it from Ecuador, Columbia and Bolivia. The bus dropped us off at the entrance, which unfortunately for us is the entrance to the park, not the entrance to the walking trails. There were the three of us and an Argentinian couple stranded briefly before we all hitchhiked to the actual entrance some 20mins drive up the mountains away.

After some brief rain and holing up in the lodge entrance, we headed off into the park. The Argentinian couple decided to only do the lake walk, so we thought yeah, that doesn’t look so bad, we’ll do that too. The five off us set off for a hike around a very, very, deceiving sized lake. 

It must have taken us about 4 hours to walk this trail. The altitude is very high too, so the air is thin and at certain points I had to stop for a breather. It turned out it was only myself and the Argentinian guy that don’t deal with altitude very well, although for him it was worst as he felt like his heart was about to explode from his chest. The highlight of the trail was when the trail appeared to end abruptly, and we weren’t sure where it continued down a cliff face down to the lake. Dev, the lunatic he is, found what looked like a trail that was pretty much a 45 degree walk back down. Myself and the Argentinians waited at the top as Dev and Lissa tested it out. Dev yelled back invisible from sight, ‘oh yeah it’s good, the trail gets better down here!’.

The trail, in fact, got worse. With the previous rain there was an awful lot of mud. The last part of the downhill trek involved an impossible drop. I watched in horror as the Argentinians struggled down it, and next was my turn. Bumming it down I slipped and would have continued sliding down the slope if Dev hadn’t been there to catch me and stop the forward motion into mud and razor grass. But we were all down and the rest of the trail back around the lake and to the lodge was magnificent. Covered in mud we all headed to the road, after some soup at the lodge, and tried flagging down someone to take us back to Cuenca. Eventually a mini van stopped, and to our surprise it was the owner of Dev and Lissa hostal. An hour later I was showered with clean pants on, and headed to met Dev and Lissa at where our second hangout was to be – Habibis. 

Habibis is a shisha (or pipas in Ecuador) cafe that sells kebabs, or shwama. Cuenca has a lot of middle eastern style shisha cafes for some reason they can’t explain, but Habibis is by far the best and we must had gone here at least once a day for a smoke (favourites were apple and mint, and we got to try a new one – coconut which was pretty good too) and a shwama. We also became friends with Xaviar, the guy that pretty much ran the place.

After Lissa left, Dev and I decided to do a Spanish lessons. Lissa spoke pretty good spanish, and Dev was pretty good too after learning from Lissa. At first we tried out an American teacher than ran a secondhand book shop. He used to be a university professor in Spanish, and it really showed. It was very academic, and while it was interesting, it wasn’t what we were looking for. We ditched him and went to a different place that was more about learning how to converse in Spanish rather than a day studying the grammar. 

Between learning from Lissa and Dev, and the spanish lessons, my Spanish got a lot better. It was more surprising that I had gotten this far in Ecuador with such little spanish, but after travelling so much to foreign speakikng countries you can surprise yourself how easily it can be to communicate using body language, even if a little frustrating. 

There were many other backpackers we ended up meeting in the two weeks. We almost felt like locals after a while, getting to know shopkeepers and cafe owners, but Sebastian became the guy we kept on running into in the strangest of places. Sebastian was an Argentinian living in Cuenca that seemed to know everyone. He was an odd person; his story was his girlfriend left him back in Argentinia and he moved to Ecuador afterwards. He was always a little vague and not wanting to talk about it – understandably – but I couldn’t help shake the feeling there was a more to his story than just his girlfriend leaving him. Even when I said to him he should come back to Argentinia when I arrive there, he said he can’t go back home, and didn’t eloborate from there. 

Still, he was a sincerely nice guy that just wanted to go out with company. And learn guitar too; when he found out Dev was a guitar genius he wanted to learn from him and even play at the open mic night at the local Inca Bar. One thing Sebastian kept wanting us to do was go with him to what he called the Brasillian bar. I had a look around for this bar one day and couldn’t find anything that appeared to be Brasillian where he said to met him. Eventually our paths would collide there. 

Having breakfast one morning at an excellent Columbian cafe, Dev noticed a cafe across the street that has the magical works – Musicka – on the outside. As I mentioned earlier, Dev is a music fanatic to be point of obsession and then some. So we headed over there to check it out at lunch time. Turns out it’s run by a Brasillian lady, Jama, and her daughter, Nila. After getting along and chatting with the girls, we had lunch and discovered this was in fact the Brasillian bar that Sebastian was always talking about. 

The proper name of the cafe was the Om Galleria – a place of spiritual worship of Pachamama, or Mother Earth. They were performing a ceremony to Pachamama the coming weekend, something Sebastian wanted to go along to. Both myself and Dev were unsure whether to attend, it was a real religious ceremony with a shaman and the drugs to go along with it. The night of the ceremony we were headed to go to a saxaphone concert instead, and we naturally bump into Sebastian. We head to Om to check it out – the ceremony was starting in ten minutes, time to decide what to do.

Dev decided to leave and head to the sax concert. Me and Sebastian stayed for the ceremony. 

There were ten of us at the ceremony. This included Jama and Nila, the shaman and his apprentice, a couple from Barcelonia (the guy) and Argentinia (the girl – Argentinians are everywhere in Ecuador), a younger girl and guy, and Sebastian and myself. We all sat in a cirlce around an amazing diagram made of small stones representing the four elements – earth, fire, water and air – that took the shaman two hours to make. 

The air was full of smoke mixed with what smelt like eucalyptus, and the apprentice was charged with keeping the fire live for the ceremony, adding the white powdered insense to the coals and blowing it with a feather. 

The first part involved tabacco wrapped in what looked like bamboo leaf. It was passed around and we said our name and what we hoped to find in the ceremony. Sebastian helped in the translation from Spanish. We then drank Iowaska, followed by the shaman chanting. Next a bowl of San Pedro mushrooms in honey was passed around, each of us saying thanks to the group, however the more religious spoke for some time and sadly I don’t know what exactly they spoke of. More chanting, singing and music followed this and time itself melted away. 

I have no idea how long this lasted. We were all given plastic bags incase anyone was sick (a common side affect) and only briefly I felt nausious, but the moment ultimately took me. It’s difficult to describe, other than to say it wasn’t about getting high on drugs but experiencing something personal and deeply calming.

The haze lifted and lastly Nila was asked by the shaman to roll a somewhat huge joint to conclude the ceremony. It was described earlier that the experience through the drugs was like flying on an aeroplance – Iowaska was like the take off, to ready your mind. The San Pedro was the flight, to experience the journey. And finally the maijunana to take you back down.

We passed the joint around and each again spoke. We could say what we liked, some said a lot, others just spoke a few words. The closing of the ceremony involved Nila pouring water into a cup and offering it to each of us as thanks for attending. 

The apprentice shaman was a card. He was making jokes and was in a great mood throughout, until he was sick. The shamans drink a lot more of the Iowaska than we did. We had a small bowl half filled, which was about three mouthfuls, they have a full bowl or more. Iowaska is extremely hallucigenic and causes sickness. After he threw up in the toilet he was in and out of conscienous, almost to startling effect. One moment he’d have his head bowed and seemed to asleep, only to suddenly awake to speak, then back into sleep. To overcome the effects of the Iowask the shaman does an intense ritual to his apprentice. A ritual the locals knew to back away from.

The shaman takes what can only be described as metho. It’s a pungent alcohol smelling liquid with herbs soaking in the bottle. He takes a mouthful and blows it over the apprentice. To the chest, to the stomache, to the back, then the apprentice hold out his hands, and the shaman blows more to his hands. The apprentice then breaths deeply from his hands. And then again. And again the shaman blows more of this stuff into this hands and the apprentice has to breath it in. Twice he almost vomitted, but then something came over him and he offered his hands again. The shaman drank and blew more into his hands, and the apprentice, like a automaton, brought his hands to his face and breathed it in, completely undisturbed by it. Again he offered his hands, and again the shaman drank from the bottle and blew into the waiting hands, only to be breathed in by a stone faced apprentice.

The ritual and ceremony was now at an end. With the lights up and the smoke cleared, we all reflected on what we had experienced, while Jajilla and Sebastian made food in the kitchen. Six hours had passed and after some creamy pasta I arrived back to the hostal at 4am in the morning. 

I knew I had to leave Cuenca now, and continue my journey through South America. Several days later, after learning some chords on a terango (kinda like a mandolin) and meeting yet more Canadians, including an Indian whose brother was Dutch but with the same Canadian father, I jumped onto the bus headed for Loja. The city of Loja is where the international bus to Peru leaves from. 

After a couple of days in Loja, and some really good pizza (the pizza in Ecuador is normally terrible), I get to the bus terminal early in the morning only to discover on Sundays there’s only two buses to Peru. One at 7am and the other 11pm. I wait out the day and night, get on the bus after being frisced for weapons and video taped by the local police, and sleep my way into Peru. 

So now I’m in Piura, Peru. This afternoon II head out to Chaclayo, the first major city surrounded by amazing pre-Columbian ruins. The northern parts of Peru are where the most imporant and amazing ruins are located, even the amazing Machu Pacchu in the south pales in comparision. Here is the largest adobe built city in the world, and the oldest city in all of South America is also here. I’ll be nerding out on ruins for the next few weeks, or maybe more!