Thursday August 30/12 update
The Boys are doing good and gobbling up everything I put in
their sight. Today I will be spending
most of my day getting this blog prepared as there are many photos involved.
There are many things I didn’t have time to mention
yesterday. Tuesday, on the way up we
stopped in Alausi, (yeah I know it’s a lousy name), which has a great statue to
San Pedro (St Peter) dominating the town, and it is the hub for the train ride
up the Devil’s Nose Mountain. It was $20
for the train ride which zigs and zags, backwards and forwards, up the mountain
at an incredible grade that defied most predictions. Many people used to ride atop the train but
we believe that practice was stopped after a few people got killed. We opted to just tour the town instead.
The hotel in Riobamba
was pretty neat with a few great decorations and lovely cacti growing in the
restaurant window. There was a bakery
next door where I bought a huge banana loaf for $3 to take with us on the trip
to see the volcano.
There is a military base in Riobamba with a couple of really old tanks at
the entrance. Miguel explained that
there is a lottery now for military service between the ages of 17 and 19. If chosen, you have to serve a year at no
pay, and you get menial duties of guarding things like new sewer pipes waiting
to be installed.
Miguel enlisted the aid of a local friend, Bolivar, to help
guide us to the local sights and to the best view of Tungurahua erupting. The trip was complicated, so we were glad to have his expertise.
On the way we stopped at this town called Guano, which
loosely translated means Manure, or colloquially, Shit. So now I can honestly say I have been to Hell
(in the Cayman Islands) and I have in Shit (in Ecuador ). Actually this was a decent town with many
craft stores, apparently known for leather goods, and a beautiful central
park. Another point of interest was a
small museum behind the church which held an actual Mummy that was just incredible
to view.
Beside these buildings were the ruins of an old monastery,
built between 1550 and 1560, and destroyed in an earthquake in 1797. We just don’t have that kind of history in
our country. These ruins were guarded by
a young llama that didn’t look real, and a big sheep.
I am including a few links to these following mountains so
you can familiarize yourselves with them.
On Wednesday, we were up early and waited on the
others. Anne and Michael came down at
7:30 and Miguel at 8, so we had a nice $3 breakfast, packed up and headed out
at 9:30. On the return to El Altar we took more shots of
the area and its people. Crossing the
one large river we discovered another “broken bridge” that is now abandoned as
a tourist attraction, just like the one in Cuenca .
In the town of Penipe
at the base of El Altar Michael paid an indigenous man in a yellow hat and
poncho 50c to take his photo and asked him a question. Then the man began reciting information
non-stop until we drove away. As we rose
up the mountain it was odd that the lower part was just a dirt track, dangerous
in the rain, while the upper part was oiled or paved. We could see patches of blue sky for a while but the
higher we rose we just encountered more cloud, fog and drizzle or rain.
We had no view of Tungurahua which had had quietened
down over the last few days but there was no independent confirmation of
visible activity due to the cloud cover.
We hung around for a while, hoping again that the wind would magically
blow this cloud away but the weather got progressively worse. Like I mentioned yesterday, we amused
ourselves photographing the locals going up and down the road with their soggy
animals delivering milk to some depots.
It seems that we do not have people living high up in our Rocky
Mountains like they do in the Andes , with
fields right to the summits. The
differences in climate and composition of the mountains are the
difference. Volcanic mountains are
incredibly fertile, so that is why the locals risk their lives to farm in this
danger zone.
It was a little frustrating to see the weather again get
clearer as we descended. I took many
shots of the high Andes through the van window
while in motion and also many shots of the mountains covered with patchworks of
farm fields and some of the greenhouses.
The indigenous people are always doing something along the highway and
carrying loads on their backs so we get a few shots of them always. I am amazed how many shots turned out. There are so many I won’t post them all,
otherwise there would be over 100 of them.
We stopped at one town that normally has a clear view of Chimborazo but
again today we are out of luck. We
picked up some snacks and kept on motoring.
One of the features we did not like seeing were all the blue
“death hearts” painted on the highways to show where people had died, mostly
after a long downslope to a hairpin turn.
One location had many, many hearts and that was very sad. I didn’t even realize until I was processing
the photos that I managed to catch some indigenous ladies putting flowers at
one of the markers.
We are unhappy that our mission was not fulfilled, but we are certainly happy with some of the other photographs that we managed to obtain, especially in the rain on El Altar.
We are unhappy that our mission was not fulfilled, but we are certainly happy with some of the other photographs that we managed to obtain, especially in the rain on El Altar.
Today I received an email from NetTalk wanting us to pay to
renew our NetTalk in a month. Here is my second
(third?) response to these bozos today:
Further
to the email below I decided to call your support phone and was on hold for 90
minutes. I just started relating my tale to Giovanni about all our prior
problems with the two NetTalk Duos and suddenly I am talking to a busy signal. Since I was not being rude or abusive in any way, just giving the background
of our odyssey with NetTalk, I really doubt that he hung up on me but I am
flabbergasted that he has not had the courtesy to call me back to finish our
conversation!!!! I'll be damned if I am going to wait another 90
minutes on hold just to have the same thing happen again.
We have nicely
requested a fair extension on our expiry date for this unit that was not
properly activated until March 12, per the emails below.
We have been nice
about this and have had absolutely no response from you folks.
So now you should give
us ONE good reason why we should renew???????
Needless to say, I do not recommend that anyone get involved
with NetTalk. Spread the word.
That was today’s excitement. Please see all photos at souvenircuenca.blogspot.com. Hugs to all.
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