Brrrrrr.... I thought we left Canada?

Well it was a chilly few days up near Otavalo. Apparently a cold spell came through, something unusual this time of year according to the locals. It wasn´t even close to what you su...people must be experiencing but we were still stealing blankets from the other empty dorm beds to make it through the night.

We spent four night at a cool little place just out of the town of Otavalo. We thought it would be a cool and fun idea to walk to the Hostal our first day with all of our gear, since their website said "only an hour walk out of town". What it failed to mention was the 45 degree incline! So after an hour or two (we lost count), we made it up there and not a moment too soon, because it started pouring rain minutes after dropping our bags.

It was a beautiful location, up in the rolling Andean hills, checkered with farmland and neat little buildings. The town of Otavalo was below, and you could see a few other smaller villages close by, with the cloudy peak of Volcan Imbabura right next door. A short walk over the rigde from our hostal and you can look down on Laguna San Pablo, Ecuador's largest lake, which is no bigger than our camp lake, Kabakwa!

We took a walk over to a nearby waterfall, which looked just like you'd imagine a tropical waterfall to look like. I would have jumped right in, if it wern't for the chilly weather and the fact that all around was grazing cattle and farmland.

Everywhere we walk around here in Ecuador, we always seem to run into barking dogs. Every single house has one or four random mutts that bark at anything that moves. A few of them even approach growling and in Canoa I had one bite my pant leg. We haven't tried it yet but apparently if you make the motion of picking up a rock they get scared and take off. Hostal La Luna, where we are staying, has a clan of large dogs that are really nice and enjoy the love we give them. They are great guard dogs and make sure everyone knows when someone is at the gate.

Yesterday we joined up with some Aussie friends we met in the Hostal and shared a taxi up a long cobblestone road to Los Lagunas Mojanda. They are some alpine lakes waaaaay up high in the Mountains. Very strange since there didn't seem to be any in or outflow to them. We were told there had been armed robberies up at the lakes, so we decided to leave the camera back at the hostal. But believe me the scenery was amazing! We walked around the lakes for awhile, and would have enjoyed hiking around all day, but had already arranged for the taxi to pick us up after awhile. There were roads leading up over ridges and now we'll never know where they go...

On Monday, we took a gander into Otavalo and some surrounding villages. The Indigenous here have been weavers for a very long time. We checked out a few places that still made traditional weavings and sweaters by hand using traditional methods. One place in particular was very cool. Tihuansuyo(?) Workshop, was run by this old couple and their family. They wove their stuff on this small "backstrap" loom that would take almost a minute to do each row. All the thread they used was carded, spun and dyed by themselves. Pretty impressive, considering most of the woolen goods you find in the markets down here now are made on machine looms, that do it all automatically. We didn't buy anything this time around, since it would be a huge hassle to carry it around, but since were heading back up this way we'll definitely be back.

We're back in Quito for a night, checking out some art in the morning, then south to Latacunga for some more Markets and hiking.

Updated the Map.

Cheers!

Canoa

We spent 3 full days in this more touristy beach town. The beach was beautiful, and the waves were pretty big. Our days were spent reading, swimming, and trying to catch the low tide so we could sneak into some bat caves at the north end of the island. Unfortunately, the tide was never low enough so we missed that chance. Instead we spent hours combing the beach for shells and sand dollars and watching the sea birds peck at shells.

Canoa is known as a surf town because of the bigger waves and so everyday there were several of the same people out with their boards. Colin was out there one day with a rented board and had several good runs down the waves (no photos unfortunately though).

We have quickly learned that it is incredibly hard to make change for anything larger than a five in most places. I spent a dollar at an internet cafe at one point, but only had a ten dollar bill. So I was running around town trying to find someone, anyone, that was going to give me change. No such luck. So I ended up having to buy more sunscreen just to get some smaller coins. (Good thing we were going through the sunscreen very fast). We try and pay for things with the biggest bills possible sometimes just to prepare for the upcoming day if we know we'll need small change. I think the banks should just stop giving out twenties here all together.

We tried boogieboarding one afternoon. The waves were really big! I felt like i was basically letting myself get beat up, but we had several really great runs and were exhausted afterwards. Lots of fun!

Our hostal was right on the beach and there were some beautiful sunsets that we saw as we were eating dinner or enjoying the free popcorn during happy-hour. Yes, happy-hour. Banana coladas are extreemely delicious when they're made fresh! And our hostal was also home to a few igwanas who we would see sunning themselves on the topmost branches during the day. Relaxing almost as much as we were.

We returned to Quito yesterday, on yet another long and crazy bus journey. Colin took some videos of the bus driver's daring moves on the curving highway up in the mountains. The views were just as beautiful as on the way out of Quito. We are stocking up on supplies at the market this morning and then we are going to travel two hours North to the area of Otovalo, a town which is famous for it's markets (we arn't going to shop YET though...we're waiting till the end). There are a few small villages and some hikes that we would like to check out.

Muisne

After about 9 hours of bus travel, we made it to the small run-down port town of Muisne. Their main industries are shrimp and tourism, and so we were ushered into a long motor boat and crossed to the main island for a little higher cost than the ´boat-taxi´costs. Lesson learned. We decided to save a little money and walk to our hostal rather than take one of the many eco-taxis (bicycle powered carts). Hector, a young boy, walked us down the kilometer long strip, giving us tips and directions as we went, we felt obligated to tip him for his help.

We stayed in a cabaña just behind our hostal, which was right off the beach. Tonnes of palm trees lined the tiny strip of restaurants and hostels and most of them were adorned with big comfy hammocks. The beach was huge. However, it was littered with garbage and debris from storms and there would often be eco-taxis and cars and motorbikes zipping by.

Our first full day in Muisne, we woke to find Colin´s arm covered in mosquito bites! Apparently he slept right against the mosquito netting. We then joined two American girls and two French guys, and went on a boat tour of the nearby mangroves. Because of shrimping, most of the mangroves in Ecuador have been cut down to make room for the large rectangular pools which are pumped full of salty ocean water to farm the shrimp. The mangroves are a really neat mass of trees that line the shores and the roots (or branches that seem to become roots) create homes for a lot of difference species of fish and birds and other ocean creatures. Muisne is one area along the cost which says it is trying to preserve the mangroves (but there always seems to be a shrimp farm in sight). Apparently it is against the law now to open a new shrimping farm though. Our tour went through many mangove areas and our guide explained the relationship between the shrimp farms and the mangroves. He took us to another beach and we all got out and walked along the shore, chasing crabs and collecting sand dollars.

We spent the afternoon swimming in the warm Pacific waves. The temperature must have gotten up to around 30 degrees! We built a sand castle and made some more friends, a group of Ecuadorian girls, who went diving for some starfish and shellfish to decorate our castle. For some reason we seem to attract kids. We swam some more and read in the hammocks and prettymuch just lazed around. Tough work!

Our second day was much the same. We found a breakfast of chocolate bread and a fruit smothie in town for 60 cents and ate mango and pineapple for lunch (the pineapple cut our tongues too!). We had pizza and the rest of our bad (sweet apple juice tasting wine, which we bought back in Quito for $2.50. This wine is so sweet that we have to water it down!) It was a bit more cloudy this day, so we recovered our sunburnt selves and devoted a day to hammocks, books and such.

We left Muisne this morning (after some delicious banana pancakes) and took one boat-taxi and four different buses to reach Canoa, a slightly larger beach-surf town. We never stopped for more than 10 minutes as we switched buses and caught transfers. Our hostal here is beautiful! Right on a gorgeous beach with cliffs at the North end and lots of restaurants and shops and hostals to support the larger surf community and crowd that come here for the 2 meter waves (we have yet to discover them ourselves though). We´ll let you know how the surfing and more sun and fun turn out.

Mindo

We left Quito early in the morning not getting a chance to have breakfast anywhere, but came prepared with oranges and bananas and avacadoes for the trip. The ´trip´was full of amzing scenery and great views of the pristine jungle hills, or mountains, or cloudforests... whatever you call it they were wicked, but we were so awestruck we forgot to take pictures of that stuff. The road wound down and down and down... out of Quito which is really high up (4000+ meters) down to Mindo which is around 2000 or so. The bus driver didn´t mind passing every single car or truck or bike we came to with little or no regard for the fact that it was a blind corner with a really big hill to roll down on the right. It only took two and a half hours, but Mindo was nice to get to alive to say the least.

The town was very small compared to the metropolis of Quito, and had one main street, with a few small dirt streets off of it. At he bottom is a little river, and at the top is a nice little overgrown park. Everything smelt like it had just rained, and we strolled up the street looking for ´Casa de Cecilia´which we had asked directions for, but never really quite understood them. We walked past a nice looking wooden building that said ´Hostal M...something´ so we checked it out. There was no one else staying there and for $5 a night we thought it was a steal! We dropped our bags gratefully and went for a walk around town and down a road that led to a bunch of touristy things like a Butterfly museum and a Tube down the river. The River was akin to the Gull River in size, just way way WAY rockier and tubing down it looked more painful than fun. Especially since the tubes were just rubber tire tubes, with the pokey air thingy sticking out.

We walked for awhile along the road and had lunch under a cable platform thing that crossed the river, just as it started to rain. ¨Let´s have lunch and wait out the rain¨we said. So we ate lunch and started walking back and got caught in a little more rain. It was nice and a perfect thing to do a day after walking up a friggin volcano (our legs were very achy).

That night we came home to a cat that was cooking it past our feet and out the door to the hostal. Thankfully our door was closed and it wasn´t in our room, but when your tired, and it´s pitch black, and a loud scratchy thumpy thing is running by your feet in a foreign country, you tend to let out a little scream. The rest of the night wasn´t much fun either, with dogs barking, Kareoke going on nearby, birds scratching, roosters crowing, and some old lady walking in on us, and someone hacking up a lung all night. Our first real hostal wasn´t much of a good experience.

The next morning we decided to move to Casa de Cecilia (which we had found on our walk the previous day) and for one dollar more we got hammocks, a river side view, shelves, a quiet and peaceful atmosphere, and some fun Ecuadorian kids to hangout with. We dropped our stuff off and headed out for breakfast and a 6km walk to a waterfall. The guy in the info centre either neglected to mention that the 6km was all uphill, or we neglected to understand... either way it took most of the morning to get up the road and the ´Tarabita´ (motor powered cable car) that crossed the valley and made the walk potentially shorter, was looking mighty nice. We presevered a little farther and made it to a pickup truck and a family that nicely asked for $3 each to go see the waterfall. We forked out the dough and started our descent to the falls. As we walked we slowly realized that for every step down we´d have to walk it back up after. Inside I wished there was a waterfall to swim in at the top too.

When we finally reached the bottom after the 10,000 steps or so and a stereotypical rickety wooden plank and wire bridge across a raging river, we came to a cool little river paradise. Someone had built up a little swimming pool, and diverted some of the flow into it. There was a ´Toboggan´ water slide into the river, and you could jump off a 12m cliff into the foamy water below the falls. It was pretty neat and we were the only people there for most of the time. It was very fun jumping off the cliff, but I made sure the guy showing us around did it first. There were no lifejackets, or helmets to be seen, but they did have a rope going across the river that you could grab onto so you didn´t float downstream over the next falls. It seemed very sketchy and my risk management buzzers were all going off, but after getting my feet wet and playing around everything was fine.

It started to get cool after about an hour of playing, so we packed it in and decided to head back before we would get caught in the afternoon rain. We dried off and hoofed it back just in time. We spent the rest of the afternoon lazing about in our new found tropical paradise, and even met some new friends. Carmilla and Shayla are two girls that live at the hostal, and we hungout and drew and juggled and they basically ruined our quiet time. But it was ok because we got to practice our spanish a bit and they drew us pictures.

The next morning we woke up really early and took off for the coast, we had a crazy fun three bus trip and even managed a stopover in Esmereldas, which made us a little nervous. It is not suppoesed to be a nice city.

The bus system here is nuts. Unless you get on at a bus station in a big city, you just stand at the side of the road and the bus will slow down and you hop on as it drives by. They blast music, everything from salsa, to columbian beats, to micheal jackson party mix ´89. The best was when the Ghostbuster theme song started playing today. I looked around the bus at everyone´s faces to see if they were as happy as me, ¨Who you gonna call¨? GHOSTBUSTERS!¨Our bus transfers ussually consisted of them yelling ¨Esmeraldas¨or wherever we were going on the next bus, and then us jumping off the bus, grabbing our luggage and running across the road to the other bus, throwing our stuff wherever we can and trying to find a seat or standing spot. It´s a lot of fun and chaotic but it works!

And we're off...

So we've now finished up our spanish lessons. Those five days were well worth it eventhough we still struggle through forming ideas and sentences in spanish. Margarita and Sandra were great teachers and started us out on the right path.

The past few days have been very busy. We finished our last class on monday and then took a long bus trip north of Quito to the "Mitad del Mundo" (the middle of the world). The equator runs through this place and so we were able to stand in different hemispheres at the same time! It was basically a huge tourist trap...and anything worth doing there (other than taking pictures) cost more money. The biggest adventure of that day was the bus trip to and from the hostal. Most tourists we think take a tour or taxi out there...but not us! We braved the city buses (which means we're too cheap).

Here in Quito we have revived the game of 'punch-buggy-no-punch-backs'! The old VW bugs are everywhere! With sore shoulders and arms, we both regret starting up this game that neither of us know how to end. More competition!

Today we slept in (finally) and then went up the "teleferico", which is like a ski-lift, right up into the mountains. Once at the top we, along with Jake a fellow 'hostaler', hiked three hours up to the top of Roco Pinchincha. It's the highest peak near Quito at 4630 meters! We could feel the differece in the thin air as we climbed. Our pace slowed incredibly near the top. But we made it! And there are pictures to prove it! Just as we were coming back from the peak, the clouds began rolling in, and unleashed lots and lots of rain! This is the first rain we've had since flying in last week, which is great considering this is Ecuador's rainy season.

Tomorrow we are getting up early to catch a bus to Mindo, a small town to the west of Quito. We'll stay there for a few days and then make our way up to the north coast to Esmerelldas and Muisne for beaches and surfing and lots of sun! We're not sure when we'll have internet access again, so don't hold your breath until the next update!
Chao! (Sarah)

El Ciudad!

The initial excitement and nervousness of arriving here has receeded, and now were are feeling much more capable. No longer do we have to point at the pictures on the menu to get what we want or flip frantically through the phrasebook to look up how to say "The Bill Please".

We've had three days of spanish lessons now and it's beginning to feel like grade 10

french immersion class, except for some reason I am trying to learn this. Perhaps out of pure necessity or a deep down fear of not being able to ask for the right food and ending up with a random meat infront of me.

After our morning classes we have the whole afternoon to explore or more often than
not, just nap. Aparently we should have taken our lessons in the afternoon and had the morning free to explore, since the weather is perfectly clear and sunny all morning and the clouds slowly roll in during the afternoon, making it slightly chilly.

We spent one afternoon and took the Trole Bus from where we are staying in 'La Mariscal' over to 'Old Town' which is the colonial part of Quito. It has lots of cool old buildings and some big plazas with lots of people and monuments. Most of the sidewalks are only two people wide and the cars zip along honking randomly all over the place. Seriously they honk at every opportunity, and some. We checked out 'El Basilica...' which is a big gothic church built in the 1920's for way too much money. It's just like lots of other big gothic churches, except because this is South America they let you climb the bell tower for $2. It's quite a long way up and you can cross a rickety old bridge that goes above the ceiling of the main gallery in the church to a series of ladders that take you up to a random tower. It's pretty cool and kinda sketchy. The view of the city was neat, and it seems to go on forever and ever. Around the Basilica they have instead of gargoyles, pairs of stone animals including: Iguanas, Giant Turtles, Condors, Tiger, Fish, and many more. Very strange choice of 'gothic' mascots.

Yesterday we met up with James, an Aussie bloke from fall camp whose on to his third month in SA. Nice to see a familiar face and share ideas about places to go and see. We braved a nearby market and managed to buy some bananas, avacados and a mango without getting ripped off! Only $1.50 for it all. The mango is by far the most incredibly amazing piece of fruit, mango or otherwise, I've ever eaten.

Today was really nice and warm so we walked over to a nearby park that had the coolest collection of playground equipment ever. None of it would be legal in Canada now because it's way too fun, heh. There was neat little cars that kids could rent that were kinda like go carts that you had to pedal. I resisted the urge to rent one. There was a interesting craft market with lots of indigenous jewelery and clothing and other assorted crafts. Not worth bying just yet, but since we fly home from Quito, we figure we'll hit it up again before we leave.

We've got a few more days left in quito, then we are planning on heading north to a little town of Mindo to see some cloud forests and much more!

Updated the map.

Buenos noches amigos!

Buenos Tardes

We are here!

After two flights, a fairly easy connection, and a taxi ride, we arrived at our hostel at about 11:30 last night. We discovered that we are in desparate need of some spanish lessons, and so set off this morning (after a continental breakfast across the street) to find a suitable school. We can see mountains from the hostel too. It has been a beautiful sunny, warm day and all the leaves are green again! But we didn't forget our sunscreen.

We went to 5 different spanish schools, and decided on one which is a short walk from the hostel. So we start tomorrow morning, and have 4 hour classes for the next 5 days (unless we decided that we still need help). We had lunch at a small restaurant, and with a lot of help from the waiter and chef, were able to point to a meal that looked (and tasted) good. It was called "Mote Mixto", so next time we'll be able to say that rather than point. heh heh

We came back to the hostel for a much-needed nap. And are going to now look for a place to eat dinner, and some activity to do tomorrow afternoon after our first spanish class.

Some new photos of the hostel we are staying in and the view from the plane

Hasta Luego!

So we leave tomorrow, the past few weeks have been a blur of family, work and sort of thinking about trip. Every conversation with everyone lately has been about the trip, so it is pretty surreal that we leave tomorrow after so much talk.

Hope everyone is doing well, and the holidays were great. Happy new years!

The next post will be from very very far away...

The Map

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