The Waters of Zamora
March 29th, 2009
View the trip so farThe bus ride to Zamora was a fun one. We left Macas around noon, and over 12 hours later we arrived in Zamora. Twelve hours on two buses makes one´s ass feel numb, but that wasn´t the fun part.
About an hour outside of Zamora it started to rain, and when I mean rain, I mean rain like I have never seen before. It was just walls of water. Apparently the locals hadn´t seen rain like this in a long time either.
We were riding right along when all of a sudden the bus jolted to a stop. There was a mudslide in front of us and the bus driver had tried to ride over it, but was unable to. Everyone in the bus got up and was sticking out their head in the pouring rain to see what was going on. Water was rushing down the side of the mountain right next to us. Jens was sitting at the window so he had a better view of everything that was going on. I leaned over to see. While he is looking behind us, he says ¨Holy shit, the car behind us just got hit with a mudslide and trees¨. My breath left me for a moment. Then people on the bus started scream, in Spanish of course, ¨Go! Go! Its all going to come down on us! GO!¨ There was some really tense seconds while the bus driver decided what to do. I just kept thinking, great we are going to get stuck on this bus tonight and be buried in mud slides. Jens just kept laughing. I don´t think he could feel the tension on the bus like I could since he doesn´t speak Spanish very well. Finally the bus driver decided to make a move, revved up the bus and got us over the mudslide in front of us. We made it over it and so did the car that was behind us. Thank someone that we got on this bus and not the later one, otherwise we would be stuck on the bus for sure.
We arrived at Zamora just after 1 am. It was still raining, nothing like before but it was raining hard. The bus terminal was full of people and buses unable to go anywhere due to the rain and road conditions. We decided to walk to the hostel that we wanted to stay at. When we got there, soaked, I may add, no one answered the ringer. Their court yard was right next to the river and the bridge, and there was a huge waterfall filling it up rather rapidly.
We noticed a hotel at the top of the hill and went up it to hopefully get a room there. We rang the bell and waited for a minute or two, when someone finally came out. They had rooms, in fact we think we were the only ones there. It was a really nice hotel, all new modern furniture and clean rooms, even wet ones. The first one that she showed us had water leaking from the window so she gave us another one.
When we woke up the next morning there was no water. We told the woman downstairs, and she investigated. Apparently the whole town didn´t have water due to the torrential down pours, and wouldn´t until later in the evening. We spent the day walking around town and checking it out. It is the smallest town that I have stayed in to date, and it was kind of nice being the only gringos in town. We did get water that evening, but when we tried to shower the next morning, before heading to Loja, there was no water again.
