Along Came a Spider
Ibarra is the largest town in Ecuador north of Quito. However, this does nothing to prevent it from being a pretty tedious place. We got gringo taxed for breakfast (50 cents extra each) and Sandra had a blazing row with the cafe owner about whether or not we could have mini sausages and bacon bits with our breakfast. As it turns out, she won and we could. God knows if they flobbed on them or not but it tasted OK to me.
The same cannot be said of Ecuadorian coffee, thus far it has been uniformly crap. Apparently, this is because the export all the best quality beans and then drink the dregs themselves; it seems you have to be Columbian to get the good stuff.
Anyway, after a swift goodbye to Sandra who was off home over the border, we headed west by bus to San Lorenzo.
Second only to Mortal Kombat in the entertainment stakes was a titanic struggle between 2 goliaths of the chess world. The 300 school children who crammed onto the bus high in the rainy Andes were fascinated by the two gringo masterminds making each move as if their very lives depended on it. Andy won.
Once at San Lorenzo we swapped buses at the main plaza (a dusty turning circle), legging it across the muddy road to make our connection to small town of Borbon.
I could write loads about Borbon and it"s tumbledown African shanty appeal. I could mention the history of the area, mentioning the African slave trade, eventual emancipation and the obvious continuation of poverty in the area to the present day. However, let"s just put that aside for a second because there was bloody enormous spider in our room that night. Andy wanted to call the thing Sidney.
I suggested Golgotha as it would easily have covered your palm with its fat plum of a body and black hairy legs. It was only after a good hour of quaking beneath my mosquito net under Golgotha"s watchful gaze that I eventually got some broken, sweat-soaked sleep.
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