Roadtrip Mindo to Quito

After a lovely three days in the cloud forest we were due to set off back to Quito on Wednesday after lunch.  When we woke Wednesday we could sense something was different in the traffic along the road in front of the lodge.  We were told at breakfast that with the heavy rain there had been a landslide during the night a little way down the road and that the road was closed with no way around.  This is the main road between Quito and the Pacific coast at Guayaquil. Guayaquil is the second largest city in Ecuador so this road carries very many cars, buses and trucks.  Because it's such a major road we thought it would be cleaned quickly.   Silly us!!

At one o'clock we made our first attempt to leave and joined the queue of traffic.  In half an hour we travelled less than a kilometre.  There were people wandering up and down the road looking for food and diversion.  No traffic was coming from the west.  We decided to go back to the lodge for coffee and a think.

 

At two thirty we started our second attempt at travelling back to Quito.  There was still no traffic coming from the west and the west bound lane was basically at a standstill but a police officer indicated the road should be cleared in 3 hours so we slowly shuffled forward in the queue.  At this stage some people had been waiting on the road for up to 12 hours including families on the intercity buses.  An enterprising woman was selling containers of hot food out of the boot of her car.  The small shops and cafes along the side of the road were being hit for snacks and drinks.

Mobile cafe

After a couple of hours where we intermittently inched forward and then were stationary for long periods cars and trucks started to come from the opposite direction, some hooting their horns in seeming celebration, but still our progress was slow.  It took about 4 hours to get to the first point where there was a landslide and there there was a bus that had gone off the road and was leaning into the bank of the cutting.  It looked like it had been forced off the road by a vehicle going wide around the mud and rocks on the road. It didn't look like the sort of accident where there'd be serious trauma but it would be hard for the passengers to get out.  We continued in the same stop start fashion with lots of vehicles coming west and us making little progress.  Cars trying to push further up the queue and making a third lane in places wasn't helping and the very long car transport lorries were having real problems getting around the curves any way without that added hazard.  My only entertainment was the colourful lights on the front of the trucks, When we reached the major mudslide it was apparent why they were moving and we weren't.   There was no-one directing traffic and the east travel lane that was still blocked.  The west bound traffic was not being courteous! 

Progress improved until we reached the next major mud slide.  By this time the traffic in both directions was at a standstill.  It was dark and raining hard.  There were no workers clearing the debris and at this stage I was resigned to sleeping in the car.  Our driver was still confident though he had no information to base that on - no police anywhere and no phone signal.  Other drivers he quizzed had no idea what was going on either.

We continued on slowly.  Traffic had stopped coming from the west which was good as the road is narrow and windy and with the rain that meant one fewer hazard.  We reached the town of Nanegalito and found that police were stopping traffic from travelling east.  There was a line of trucks and cars there a couple of kilometres long.  We continued on our way through the rain and fog and finally reached our hotel in Quito at about 11 o'clock.   It was such a relief!  I was so glad we'd been talked out of taking the public bus and had hired a car and driver on Tuesday afternoon instead.  It is an horrendous experience though I could see how much worse it was for others - those on motorbikes and buses -  and it will give us something to talk about for years!