Stick-shift Buses and Epiphytes
MAY 12TH:
Beep beep! We’re in the tiny bus again!
We started out today by driving out of Quito to our next location/hotel for the trip which is the Iyarina Lodge. We started our morning by exploring a neighborhood a few blocks away with amazing black coffee and pastries. We ran back to grab our bags and pack into a quaint, small bus driving us through the mountains. And it was stick shift. On windy, cliff-ridden roads. Oy.
We were bumping along climbing in altitude until we reached our first stop of the day, a mountain overlook at 13,000 feet. Moss was covering all of the rocks, and there were a variety of flower species dotting the stone landscape including a few varieties of moss. The roots don’t actually collect any nutrients; they only act as an anchor, an adaptation to the freezing mountaintop temperatures. The views of the valley below were well worth the slightly chilling wind tearing across the flat, open sections. The air smelled fresh, and every ten feet had a new, colorful, exotic flower or berry like the Andean cranberry that was sweeter the closer to the bottom you ate and more sour and biting the closer to the top you got. We picked them right off the bush in the mountain and ate the bright pink berry as a group. Are we all drinking the Kool Aid? Absolutely.
From there, we stopped by a hot spring surrounded by mountains, changed into swimsuits, and took a dip in the hot water. The air was steamy all around and felt so rejuvenating after a few days of 12-hour hiking, site visits, and exploring, as amazing as all three of those are.
From there, we drove another few hours further up into the mountains. It was clear and blue in the sky and the mountains were green and luscious and then BANG, we drove right into a white, dense wall of mist and clouds. We hiked into the cloud forest on an incredibly mossy, stone-y, wet trail. One side had a muddy cliff going upwards with trees growing out of it, and the other pitched off sharply many feet down into the floor of the rainforest. We hopped over fallen trees with precarious footing and pulled each other across natural bridges, mossy footing, and cliff edges. The trees were covered in epiphytes, which are plants that grow on plants (ie: moss). It makes sense why Ecuador is one of the world’s most biologically diverse places!
On the way out, we grabbed cheese empanadas and the best black coffee I’ve ever had. It was smooth and sweet with a nice, earthy aftertaste. The cheese in the empanada was slightly sour and very warm and stringy, and the outside was a slightly oily, crunchy shell. We sat on the curb and watched trucks go by around the mountain bend in front of us, and they all honked and waved at us with smiles on their faces – a mirror of our own behavior.
I love Ecuador.
Next time I write to you, we’ll have spent our first day in Iyarina and spent time with an indigenous tribe deep in the Amazon. Until then-
Katie Gallo