It was January, and several months earlier I had decided to take a semester off from college while the rest of my friends were studying abroad and come to Latin America to do some volunteer work.  I was staying at a homestay in Quito and volunteering at a clinic for Children’s International, one of those sponsor-a-child organizations you see informercials for all the time on TV.  But my internship hadn’t started yet and I had the day free.  The other volunteers staying at my house all had to work for the day, and over breakfast my Señora suggested that it would be a good day trip to go up the Teleférico, a cable car that takes you up from the city’s elevation of 2,900 meters to the top of a mountain where you can see beautiful panoramic views of the city and the surrounding countyside.  I had no other ideas, and that sounded pretty cool, so at the early hour of 8:30 AM I hopped in a cab outside my house and set off.

            I arrived at the Teleférico, paid my $4 entrance fee, and got in a cable car, making small talk in Spanish as best I could with the Ecuadorian family I shared the ride with.  Then we arrived at the top.

            The top of the Teleférico was not exactly the natural wonder I had imagined.  To start with, there was a mini-mall at the top with souvenir shops, camera stores, restaurants and bars, none of which were open yet as it was not even 10:00 in the morning.  Second of all, the day was cloudy, as I later learned mornings in Quito tend to be, and you could see nothing of the city, nor the country, nor anything more than twenty feet in front of your face.  So I was at the top . . . what now?

            To hop back on the Teleférico and go down seemed like a waste of time, and of my $4.  I noticed that a lot of people who had gotten off the cars with me were hiking farther up – in fact, many of them were decked-out in full hiking gear, complete with walking poles and face masks for the cold they anticipated at higher altitudes.  I was wearing a tank top and cut-off sweatpants and carrying a day-pack with my Nalgene and a Spanish dictionary in it.  I quickly ruled out a hike up.

            I wandered around for a few minutes, up to a look-out point where, indeed, there was nothing to look out to, then pondered my next move.  I noticed that, in addition to the trails up that many were taking, there appeared to be a trail down.  It seemed to be a sort of service road, which made sense to me.  I figured that the Teleférico employees probably took their pick-ups up the road when they needed to do maintenance on the poles or the cables or whatever.   Well, since I didn’t want to go up, I figured it would be perfect to hike down.  As long as I kept roughly on the path that the Teleférico took, I figured the worst thing that could happen was that I would end up in some special maintenance parking lot and have to find my way back to the tourist entrance to catch a cab home (and in Ecuador you can even coger them).  I started down.

            I had been walking barely five minutes when I came upon a chain link fence that was closed, locked, and guarded by an armed uniformed guard.  Hmmmm.  A kink in my plans.

            “¿Puedo pasar?”  I asked.

            “No.”

            “Ehhh . . . ¿y porque?”

            “Esta prohibido.”

            Well.  Prohibited, you say.  I didn’t understand why there was a road there if you couldn’t go down it, but I wasn’t about to argue in broken Spanish with a guy with a gun.  I turned around and started to head back to the cable car.

            “Chica!” He suddenly called to me.  I turned around.  “Siga nomás.”

            Go ahead?  An interesting change of heart, but hey, if the guy with the gun said so . . . I went back to the gate, where he instructed me to squeeze through a hole between two poles where the door of the gate met the fence.   I kept going.

            After only a short while I realized that rather than taking me down a relatively straight path following the cable car, the road I was on was instead taking me to the right – pretty far to the right.  In fact, I could now not see the Teleférico at all, nor could I see the city.   But I was in pretty hilly terrain so I convinced myself that they both were just around the next curve, obscured by the land around me.  When the road forked I took whichever path seemed like it would take me back towards my destination.  Then I started seeing the cows.

            There were cows, there were chickens, there were fields, and barns.  I could no longer deceive myself – I was in some serious country, and there was no one around.  Not a single car nor person had passed me on this “service road” the entire time I had been walking.  But by now I had no choice but to keep going.  Eventually I came upon a farmer.  I knew I was lost – I needed help.

            “¿Ehhh . . . donde esta la ciudad?”  I asked.

            “¿La ciudad?”

            “Sí . . . como camino a la ciudad?”  Here I was, crazy gringa wandering lost around the countryside, trying to walk her way back into the city.       

            “¿De donde eres?” He asked me.

            “Los Estados Unidos.”

            “¿Estas solita?”

            “Sí,” I replied, with a nervous smile.  “Solita.”  I wasn’t afraid to tell him I was alone – it was fairly obvious, and besides that I was pretty sure I was both taller and heavier than he was.   He asked me how I got there and I gave him a short version of my travels from the Teleférico.  He gave me a little lecture, telling me more or less how much of an idiot I was (though in much nicer terms) and sent me on my way.

            An hour and a half later, after asking directions at two more forks in the road, and hiking down some paths that were so steep I couldn’t walk straight down and had to snake my way across them, where the only footprints were horses hooves, I found myself on a paved (well, cement brick) street where I could catch a cab back to my house.  All in the course of a morning.

            At this point you’re probably more amazed at my naivety than my bold sense of adventure, but this experience was the first of many similar, though far less shady, exploits that marked my days in Ecuador.  There is a bad proverb that says “life is a journey, not a destination.”  Ecuador is, seriously, a journey.  You go to Otavalo, the market town in the north, and start off on a path along some train tracks.  Follow the sound of the water and all of a sudden you come across a magnificent waterfall, where classes of children are taking a school trip.  On your way back, you find yourself behind a herd of goats being led to water by a nine-year old child.  You trail them around a corner and find yourself in a perfect little meadow next to a bubbling stream where some cows are drinking and munching on some grass.  You sit on a tree stump and stare one in the eye, less than 3 feet away.  This happened to me in several meadows, on more than one tree stump.  Wandering was my main mode of transportation in Ecuador (besides the $3 buses that you can get to take you all over the country).  I would find somewhere I liked, sit for a while, then get up and wander some more.  I got a lot of strange looks, but I also discovered a lot of beautiful places.  You can’t count on any destinations in Ecuador – roads are poorly marked, guidebooks are outdated, but it really doesn’t matter because there are so many wonderful things to see you’re bound to come across something.

            Ecuador is an amazing country – it’s tiny, but its location on the Equator and its varying altitudes give it some of the greatest biodiversity anywhere in the world – there are mountains and beaches and rainforest and cloud forest, there are cities and country, you can surf and hike, horse-back ride and canoe, take the subway to a museum or rent a bike to a waterfall (of which, like cows, there are many).  And nothing you could possibly want to do is very far away.

            That said, you should not follow in my footsteps and decide to hike down a non-path through a locked, guarded gate to the middle of nowhere.  Especially in the city, you have to watch your belongings – armed robbery is rare but I had several friends who had their pockets slashed on the subway or their purse stolen off the back of their chair.  Don’t carry a lot of money around at once, and if you have your passport on you (which you generally should while going out, even just within Quito but definitely while traveling) keep it close and hidden.  But as long as you follow some common-sense rules (obviously something I have to work on, but I was lucky) you should be completely fine.  Ecuadorians are very friendly and generally love talking to foreigners, assuming you speak somewhat decent Spanish.  If you’re from the US, be aware that there is a fair amount of negative sentiment towards the US government, but Ecuadorians do a pretty good job of separating the people of a country from their government – after all, the Ecuadorian government has rarely served the best interests of the people.

            The cities might be a bit dirty, but the countryside is magnificent – and though there is a decent amount of tourism, still very underdeveloped.  Take off on a path and you’ll probably end up somewhere amazing.  Beautiful, inexpensive, a million things to do in a very small space – Ecuador is truly a backpacker’s paradise.