Chugchilán

I´ll try to post pictures later. The computer I´m on now doesn´t have very high resolution. I spent three nights at a permaculture farm/hostel in the tiny town of Chugchilán. Getting there was an adventure. The town is high in the Andes (at almost 4000m) so the road is very winding and narrow. Also, it had been raining a lot resently so the already scary road was even scarier. I would never have guessed that a bus could have made it up that road, but the drivers here are amazing. My first day there me and two other travellers hired a guide (14 year old kid from the village) and hiked 7 miles from an old crater that´s now a lake. At 4000m elevation, 7 miles took us 5 hours! The next day, we hired another guide with some mules and rode through the countryside and up to a cloud forest reserve. To me, riding a mule through fields of corn and beans, passing indigenous women women with their children strapped to their backs, was a true Andean experience.

The next day I met a group of Germans who had met someone with a pickup truck who was driving out of town. After weighing the risks and benefits of riding in the back of the truck versus taking the bus again, I jumped into the truck with the four Germans. The ride was pretty uncomfortable and uneventful, until the driver decided it was time his daughter started learning how to drive. She did very well for a 11 year old!

Now I´m in Baños, and I´ll write more about this town later.