This post is rather unrelated to my research, however yesterday I had perhaps the weirdest travel experience of my life and it's too strange not to share. As part of our unexpected stay in Quito we've been exploring the surrounding areas. Yesterday we decided to take a short trip to Otavalo, a nearby market town. We got there with no issues and spent the day browsing the wares and hiking to the nearby Peguche waterfall. The trouble started when we tried to catch a bus back to Quito. Around an hour into our journey the bus suddenly stopped and people seemed to be arguing with the driver. I could tell they were saying something about not being able to return. Eventually they made us all get out and gave us a dollar. So there we were, an entire bus full of people dumped unceremoniously on the side of a highway somewhere between Otavalo and Quito. I know that in A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche's "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers" is tragically ironic, but I've always felt it was a pretty good description of being a traveler, especially when things go wrong and you have a fairly limited grasp of the language. A very kind woman carrying a tiny white dog told us she was also going to Quito and hurried us onto another bus, where we proceeded to drive to somewhere called (I kid you not) Jerusalem. Our second bus then stopped midway down the highway, turned parallel to the road (accidentally T-boning a cop car and crushing its back light in the process), and we we're kicked off again. This time our savior with the dog told us we all had to walk to somewhere near Quito where we could then catch a taxi into the city. We still were having trouble grasping what was going on; we kept asking - was it an accident? A landslide?, and kept getting negative responses. Our companion was nice enough to find someone who spoke english to explain it to us. Apparently there is a pilgrimage that occurs every year around this time, where the people of Quito walk to the shrine of the Madonna de Quinche many, many kilometers away. So many people participate that they actually shut down the highway leading to Quito until 6am the next morning. So with no other options we started walking. At first it was kind of nice - the night was clear, the air crisp, and we had some amazing scenery to walk through. After an hour and a half it became clear that we weren't going to get a cab anytime soon. We eventually ran into the people headed to Quinche, first just a trickle but soon the whole highway was full of people of all ages walking. And on we went... for nearly five hours. Every once and awhile we'd stop and ask a cop how much further, unfortunately for us the answer always seemed to be "ocho o diez kilómetros" regardless of how far we'd come. Walking the opposite direction of what seemed like the entire city of Quito proved to be difficult as we found ourselves continually jostled and crowded off the shoulder of the highway. We eventually made it to Quito and walked through the tollbooth into the city, but even then the roads were closed. Finally we asked some cops in a car how much further and they took pity on us and drove us the final 5km to where we could catch a taxi. Overall it was quite an unexpected journey. We tried googling this event afterwards but surprisingly little information was available. A warning to anyone thinking of traveling to Quito - don't leave the city on the 21st or if you do, plan to make it an overnight trip. Oh, and apparently this coming weekend they do the same thing.
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June 2016
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