Monday, March 27, 2006
The most beautiful bus ride you´ll never see:
We would have taken pictures, but the batteries for the camera didn´t charge correctly in the few hours we had back in Baños after our jungle trip, and we didn´t have spares (we´ve fixed that now). The road from Riobamba (a couple hours south of Baños) to Cuenca (one of Ecuador´s 3 big cities), along the "Avenue of the Volcanoes" in central Ecuador is a long rural 2 lane highway that winds thorough some incredibly lush green fields of corn, pasture, and other crops I can´t identify, there are scattered cows, little black piggies, and fuzzy dirty sheep - everything feeding on the fertile volcanic soil. From time to time this landscape gives way to drier patches of scrub and pampas and pine, but the overall color is a brilliant green. The well ordered farm land doesn´t tend to be terraced - the crops just climb up the steep hillsides, and those that work them climb too. Now and then a red woolen poncho stands out like a lonely flower. The valleys are speckled here and there with little towns with cobbled streets and church steeples, buildings of brick and stone, of mud and cement - some brightly painted - a few grassy parks and white mausoleums.
Throughout the afternoon the light was magic. The sun shining through clouds of rain - once a rainbow - the valleys filling with clouds in this high country. Once we saw from below the clouds opening to reveal a green hilltop shining in the sun with bright blue sky behind. Then we worked our way up the next hill and we were on our own glowing platform, looking across at the neighboring with nothing but clouds below us.
As the day ended breathtaking views continued to break beneath us of the twilight lit valleys dotted with low hanging clouds and occasional twinkling towns. When sun set we were sorry to see the landscape fade away.
-ellie
Kepfram & Ellie, 12:06 AM
