Andes & Islands
At the end of a perfect trip, Journalist Katie Hickman and family vow to return to Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands
I am with my family on the roof of a train high up in the Andes of Ecuador, and we are having the ride of our lives.
The train is part of the Trans-Andean Railroad, once one of the glories of South America. Immortalised by Paul Theroux in his book The Old Patagonian Express, the railroad was begun in 1895 with the aim of linking the Pacific port city of Guayaquil with the capital, Quito.
Reaching altitudes of nearly 12,000ft at its highest points, it is not for nothing that the railway became known as one of the great engineering feats of the day.
When I lived in Ecuador in the late Seventies, it was still possible to travel almost the entire route, a journey which took the best part of a day, and one that I still remember as one of the great experiences of my life.
So when I returned there last summer on a family holiday, I was determined that my husband and two children should have that experience too.
The air smells delicious, tinged with the scent of ecalyptus leaves.
We joined the train at Tambillo, a small town about an hour's drive west of Quito. The Chiva Express turned out to be not a train at all but a specially converted bus adapted to run along the rail-tracks.
From Tambillo we were travelling through valleys of 9,000ft and more. Here the lands of the occasional big farms, or haciendas, are interspersed with the smaller adobe and thatch houses of the Indians. Old men and children work the fields. Everyone has a vegetable patch, chickens, goats and a dog in a kennel.
There were fields of alfalfa, and of lupins, grown not for decoration but for their edible beans; wild flowers in the hedgerows.
Everyone stopped to wave at us, except two small boys who, to the children's delight, ambushed us enthusiastically with their toy guns. The air here may be thin, but it smells delicious, tinged with the scent of eucalyptus leaves.
At midday, we stopped for a snack. From here the Chiva Express climbs steadily higher. Our view all day had been framed by the backdrop of the Andes: jagged peaks, many of them snow-capped, with wonderful rumbling pre-Columbian names: Illiniza, Atacazo, Ruminahui.
Our journey ended just inside the entrance to the Cotopaxi National Park. Now, as we dragged ourselves to the bus that would take us back to Quito, one look at my family’s faces told me that the Chiva Express was as good, if not better, than the original train.
Our view all day had been framed by the backdrop of the Andes: Jagged peaks, many of them snow-capped, with wonderful rumbling pre-Colombian names: Illiniza, Atacazo, Ruminahui.
Limbered-up, so to speak, by the Chiva, we were now feeling adventurous enough to tackle the second leg of our Ecuadorian holiday: a visit to the cloudforest two-and-a-half-hours north-west of Quito.
After the thin, cold air of the high Andes, the gradual descent into the lush vegetation and balmy, almost tropical air of these forests was exhilarating.
Originally built as a biological research station, Maquipucuna Lodge, where we stayed (rustic, but quite comfortable) is now also the centre for a small ecotourism project.
Surrounded by tropical vegetation, the place teems with orchids, huge and beautiful bugs and, best of all, scores of brilliantly coloured hummingbirds that came darting and swooping around our heads as we sat in the open-air dining area.
It is incredibly beautiful under these canopies. Huge trees towered over us; vines and exposed roots hung down. There were orchids everywhere, and strange seeds and pods and fruits.
The whole forest echoed and reverberated with unseen life. The children, fuelled by pure chlorophyll, shot on ahead, imagining themselves in a scene from Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom.
Later that day we went to the Umachaca River to swim. The area is famous for butterflies as well as birds, and we watched whole swarms of them drinking in the rock pools, including the amazing Blue Morph, with its wings the size of iridescent-blue saucers.
We all wished we'd had longer. This cloudforest area is a small piece of paradise on Earth, so we'll be back.
Back in Quito we joined the rest of my family - my mother, two brothers, sister-in-law, and a noisy gaggle of small boy cousins - and took the flight to Baltra in the Galápagos Islands.
That first afternoon we sailed for North Seymour Island, where the children got their first taste of what the Galápagos are all about: sea lions, marine iguanas, and frigate birds displaying their brilliant red pouches right by the pathway, all quite unafraid of humans, and (were it allowed) close enough to touch. For my brothers, my mother and I, this is another powerful trip down memory lane. We first sailed here on the Bronze Wing in 1976, when my father (author of The Enchanted Islands: the Galápagos Discovered) was still alive, and we were all curious to see how much the Islands have changed. It was strange to have to stick so closely to the official path, where once we were able to roam freely, but there is still only one other group of tourists here to share the sunset.
On our second day we woke up in the perfect horse-shoe shaped bay of Santa Fé, where we saw marine iguanas, lava lizards, mocking birds and even a Galápagos constrictor. In the afternoon we cruised on to Santa Cruz to visit the Charles Darwin Research Station. The biggest shock for us was how much Santa Cruz has grown: but in nearly thirty years, what do we expect?
By the third day we have all found our sea-legs. The parents have stopped worrying about losing children and grannies overboard; the children have settled so happily into sailing life that it’s as if they have never known anything else. In between visiting the islands there was plenty of time for swimming off the boat, quite important with so many small children. Luke (11) and Sebastian (10) found the snorkelling particularly exciting: highlights included a whole shoal of spotted rays, a white-tipped shark, and turtles grazing peacefully on sea lettuce. Rather to our surprise, the rest of us became enthusiastic kayakers, especially when we reached the extraordinary mangrove lagoons off Elizabeth Bay. I particularly loved this trip: the smell of the water and the cool feel of the mangrove leaves, and the turtles with their strange little pre-historic faces popping up out of the water.
In the afternoon we anchored in Gardener Bay with its beautiful long stretch of pure white sand. Despite the presence of several other boats, the animals here, as everywhere on the Islands, seemed undaunted. None of us will ever forget the sight of a sea-lion playing a game of chase with all six children, scampering backwards and forwards with them through the surf, for all the world like an outsized puppy.
It seems scarcely possible that one trip could so entrance everyone aged from five to seventy five, but Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands surely did.
YOUR TRIP OF A LIFETIME
If you’re inspired by the Hickman family’s experiences in Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands, we can offer a wide range of travel options to follow in their footsteps, whether you’re a family or a couple; individuals or wanting to join a group. We work with over fifteen different boats in the Galápagos, from yachts to liners, and also feature hotels from which you can take daytime sailings.