ECUADOR: Bananas, elections and landslides

I'M AT: El Tren Dorado, Riobamba, but wishing I was in Cuenca.

I tried to leave Riobamba on Monday, a six-hour journey to Cuenca, but, much like the train, the bus turned back after four hours and came back to Riobamba, as a landslide had blocked the main road.

 

You´d imagine that big cities would be amply connected but no, the landscape here is so mountainous that the ´main´ road is pretty much a dirt track in the sky, so when the mountain crumbles, so do everyone´s travel plans.

 

Anyway, back in Riobamba I met a surprised Katy, who I´d left that morning, and we had a cracking Chinese, so the day wasn´t all wasted.  She did level the scores at cribbage though.

 

So the next day I left Riobamba again, half the man I used to be, and this time via Guayaquil.  And believe me, ten hours is a long time to keep waving away the fried banana salesmen.

 

The journey contained very many sparkling white herons and their miniature bookend offspring, huge fields of bananas, all bagged for harvest, moped taxis, enormous stalls selling enormous melons, and the first touch of 30 degree heat since I landed.

 

And everywhere you go, every available space has been painted red, yellow and blue with the name and affiliation of one of the twenty-odd Presidentail candidates in the forthcoming election.  Quite simple but no less impressive for it.  VOTE CYNTHIA.  And they will.  Saatchi and Saatchi could learn from this.