Alausí, Ecuador in March 2023
I was recently reminded of an event that occurred while I was in Ecuador in March of 2023. I had been participating in a Christian youth camp in the town of La Maná. I was with a couple of other workers (Rick and DeAnna) there that wanted to visit Cuenca. None of us had visited it before so we traveled there. Once we had taken Cuenca in, we began our trek back to Quito from which we would take a plane back home.
It was March and the weather had been very rainy. Our return from Quito took us through the small Andean village of Alausi from which we would take the Panamerican Highway back to Quito.
Alausí is in a valley that hugs some steep mountain slopes. These slopes have deep ravines and unstable volcanic soils. With the record rains the region was experiencing that month was a disaster in the making.
When we approached Alausí we encountered a partially blockaded road with a warning sign - but no clear detour other than to return to where we had been. Rick, who spent his youth in Ecuador (and therefore our expert) urged DeAnna, who was driving at the time, to continue through it. The town was close by. So, we did. We saw the road to the town but decided to proceed as everything still looked fine. Then we were blocked by a small landslide over the road.
Makeshift Road around Landslide
There was a makeshift road downslope from edge of the landslide, so we drove down to look at it. Upon inspection we determined it was only fit for motorcycles and high clearance off road vehicles. We turned around and headed into the town.
Rick talked to some of the locals and discovered that not only was the road impassable, but the alternative route through the town to the Panamerican Highway was blocked by a protest. Locals had decided to use the landslide as a way to express their grievances about insufficient infrastructure from the government. There was a path to the Panamerican, but it would be an adventure.
We decided to get a bite to eat in a restaurant that was open in the town before we set out on this two- hour detour. It wasn't a place we would have chosen normally, but it was open. We had some pollo y papas fritas. It was acceptable but not particularly good.
We got back in the car and Rick took the wheel. We followed the instructions to take a winding gravel road over a mountain on to Guamote. We drove about fifteen minutes and encountered a fork in the road. We took one of the forks. It led us back into the town. So we returned to the road and took it back to the fork and took the other one.
The trip was nearly two hours long. The path was foggy with frequent light rain. Streams of water washed down the road on one side or the other occasionally snaking across the road in small, but navigable, creeks. Cars and truck were inching past each other as we competed to make a one lane gravel path a two-lane thoroughfare.
If front of us were locals who had procured a taxi to evacuate Alausí. Every few hundred meters they would get out of the taxi and walk behind it as it inched ahead. Apparently, they feared he would careen over the side of mountain.
For us, Rick drove slowly and intently. I looked over the edge to assure his tires would remain on the road. DeAnna was our prayer warrior from the back seat.
When we arrived at the Panamerican Highway, we stopped for a restroom break and a refuel. I took over the driving the remainder of the way to our hotel near the Quito airport. We thought our adventures were over.
They were, but later the next day we learned that the small landslide had grown into a large landslide a short 18 hours after our time there. It filled the stadium in Alausí. Where we had been was now under the mountain. Even today, three years later, they have not found all the victims, and it remains dangerously unstable.
It was certainly an adventure the three of us will never forget!
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