Day 38 Thursday 1st November: Kate works her Magico!

John writes;

Well, what a 24 hours since our last blog. Riobamba was not the quaint colonial town we had expected. With a 250,000 population, it was scruffy and run down. Not only were the bars closed but most of the restaurants were too, although we did eventually find a reasonable one with ‘piped’ music and every other tourist in town. The ‘full English’ breakfast this morning sums up Riobamba, so we were happy to leave for the short hop to nearby Alausi.

Despite Mike’s optimism in last nights blog, the cloud cover didn’t lift although again we saw different landscapes, with lots of agriculture in the valleys and river beds and many local indigenous people cultivating what looked to be very fertile land.

The road climbed up towards Alausi revealing some huge landscapes to which the camera just doesn’t do justice. We made it to 11,050 feet, below yesterday’s peak of 11,450 feet and again short of our Costa Rica record of 11.600. We’ve been above 9,000 feet for the last 4 days and none of us has had altitude sickness so good training for the heights of Peru and Bolivia, where we will be above 12,000 feet for a week and peak at 16,600 feet!

The approach into Alausi is spectacular but again the camera doesn’t do justice to its steepness and how the town clings to the hillside.

We are staying at the Cabanas Samay Magico ecolodge which is a very twisty journey 25 miles past the town. Booking.com and TripAdvisor both said it’s difficult to find but we continued confidently armed with varying map apps although mostly relying on trusty Kate on Waze. The road became truly spectacular, rivalling Colombia, but with very different countryside – more shades of pastel rather than the deep jungle colours. At last the numerous volcanoes showed their form but never clearly through the haze.

Armed with conflicting information we stopped for a coffee at the cute 1 track village of Huigra. Using our best Spanish, we were directed by the coffee lady and got lost with 5 minutes of leaving.

The road climbed steeply, becoming very narrow with a drop off of a few hundred feet. Bumping into a local we were advised to turn back as it was a dead end and so confidently ignored Kate and followed the Maps.me app back towards Alausi and a 17 mile gravel road to the Magico marker.

Our new road became increasingly steep and the drop offs became thousands rather than hundreds of feet so no hanging out of the window for pictures this time! The marker was fake news, as was the Booking.com map marker too and we found ourselves stuck thousands of feet up a narrow mountain track with no signal staring thousands of feet back to the main road! Retracing our steps to the peak we sneaked a signal and called Magico using our best Spanish only to be told the Cabanas, were 5 minutes past the Huigra coffee stop, exactly where Kate had said! At least we saw some llamas.

Looking over the edge going downhill is much worse than going up but with our resident rally driver in control we eventually arrived safely, like Magico. Not quite what we expected – more like grass huts than an ecolodge but near the main road and no more drops offs for a while!

Actually until tomorrow when we head back up to Alausi to catch the Nariz del Diablo (Devils Nose) train for a spectacular switchback ride through the mountains. Again we are hoping for an improvement in the weather and also fingers crossed as Mike thinks he has only bought 1 way tickets to the middle of nowhere!