Seven Hours to Canoa and up to our knees in mud

In principle of course there is no real reason why a goat should not be standing at a bus stop just like anyone else. It is just not something you necessarily come to expect when you live in Scandinavia.

This was one of the many things I saw on our seven hour bus trip to Canoa, a small village on the coast, on Saturday. (This is the first time I have had internet access since then).

It was all a little bit surreal. The men (apart from Frédéric) were all frisked before getting onto the bus, and we set off to the (very loud) sound of the Grease medley with added Spanish rapping over the top. (You're the one that I want...you are the one I want....Si, Si, Si). It was 6.45 in the morning and having not been awake for very long it all felt a bit too much.

Somehow the rest of the family managed to sleep during most of the journey, but I just stared out of the window and found the journey fascinating. The image that will remain in my memory for a long time was a man who was working in very dangerous conditions rebuilding a wall that had been damaged by an avalanche. It was hot, he had no safety equipment at all and the drop below was more than a hundred metres. Yet despite all that, as the bus raced past at 300km per hour he saw a stranger staring out of its window and raised his hand in a friendly wave. He was working in appalling conditions and probably still had another ten hours to go, but he still had the energy, when he caught the eye of a stranger, to wave and smile. I will never know who that man was, but I will remember him nonetheless. In a lot of ways that little scene sums up the image I have of Ecuador.

In any event, I will keep this entry short as I am exhausted, having got up at 6 o'clock for the last five mornings (flight to Lagua Agrio, man spitting in Lagua Agrio, bus to Canoa, early meeting yesterday and early meeting in Portoviejo...cancelled again....this morning).

I should apologize for the photos which are very poor quality given that I was taking them at high speed through a dirty window and in the rain, but they will give you some idea at least of some of the scenes. These are some of the things I saw.

Luscious green vegetation and the snow capped mountains of the Andes, seven piglets scrabbling in the dirt for food, children aged no more than ten putting tar in wheelbarrows to lay a new section of road, dozens of abandoned building projects, handpainted signs offering services and goods of varying kinds, rows of brightly coloures washing hanging out to dry in the rain, whole pig carcasses hanging on hooks, a horse so thin that its ribs were visible, a water park with slides and swimming pools that was completely deserted, women and children in their best clothes going into pastel coloured churches, crosses to commemorate where people had died in road traffic accidents, men sitting on plastic chairs simply staring into space, huge banana plantations and orange groves, front yards containing dirty children and shining clean cars, hundreds of small wooden shacks with corrugated metal rooves....

...these are some of the images you will see should you ever decide to cross Ecuador on a bus.

We had been told that Canoa was a small, picturesque tourist destination on the coast. We had also been promised that after many weeks of rain in Quito we would be greeted by the sun. Sadly this was not the case. For the millionth day in a row it was raining. In addition I should tell you that there is no asphalt in Canoa, so the streets had turned to mud. You can probably imagine the rest.

Seven tired and sweaty passengers getting off the bus after a long journey to find themselves up to their ankles in mud. This was the evening before the morning when I got up at 5.45am to travel to a meeting which in fact was not happening at all. Let me just say that this was not the high point of our trip. Still, Canoa proved to be worth the effort for a lot of other reasons, but more about that next time.