And on to Colombia....again

As we pulled out of San Augustin the other night, the bus came to a complete stop and I thought, oh no--here it is--maybe I shouldn´t have done the night bus after all! The southern part of Colombia is mostly controlled by guerillas and I know they do bus checks just like the military does. I thought for sure they were going to get on board and see what was going on, but alas, the stop I was feeling a bit fearful of? That´s right...the first traffic light I had seen in what felt like weeks. But anyway, on with our story.

So at this point, the real burning question is: What exactly is it that the Colombians have against the toilet seat? The chances of finding one in any given bathroom are roughly 50% and I have to say even Ecuador has better odds than that! And what is up with the fact that there is no toliet paper? Don´t you people use it?Strange the things that occupy my mind these days.

Anyway, I had a bunch of notes about things I wanted to post on here that of course I forgot in my hotel room--which has two fans blowing and that means the papers are probably all over the floor by now. I have traded in the cold Andean nights for a bit of hot and humid air (just to show solidarity with you folks who are sweating through the US summer) here in Cartegena on the coast of Colombia.

I returned to Colombia a little over a week ago when I found out I am going to be able to do the internship at the Black Sheep Inn in Ecuador. I was due to head to Peru, but needed to reschedule all that so I could return home and grace you folks with my presence for a couple of weeks and let you all take me out to dinner. So the best flight I could find was leaving out of Bogota and figured that since I missed most of Colombia last time, now was as good of a time as ever to return.

This time around I came in via the land border north of Quito by about 5 hours. Of course, with my great idea to try and not pay anymore ATM fees, I came in with about 5 US dollars, which is bad because there were no ATM´s to be found--well, working ATM´s that is. There are none at the border and I had just enough pesos to get myself into town via collectivo and then walk around the town (which is kind of shady) to try to find a working ATM. The Colombians are so great because they are always so friendly and telling you to take care. They will also drop whatever they are doing to accompany you somewhere if you are alone (like in a state park or something) just to walk and talk with you.

I was riding from Quito next to a guy from Peru and you people think my bus schedule is outrageous--check this out. He was going to be travelling for about 30-35 days. All by bus. He had left Lima and gone to northern Peru for a couple of days, then on to Guayaquil, the Ecuador coast and then to Quito. He was going up into Colombia and on to Cali that day (about 10 hours more than the 5 hours we had just done) and then over to Bogota, into Venuzuela, down to Brazil and back to Peru. Anyone that has logged any bus time with me here knows that he was probably looking to spend a good 2 weeks of his time (day and night) into the transport of it all because these distances are massive and for the most part, every one of these trips he was taking was between 12-20 hours just to get from place to place! I hope it was worth it for him, as I am thinking when he returns, all he will really have to tell his friends is what bus is better to go where, etc, than about what he may have seen! Yikes!

So enough of that and back to me. :)

Some of the great things I have seen so far in the last weeks....a bus that went, literally, 10 kilometers an hour from Popyan to San Augustin, with so many bumps in the road that I repeatedly smacked the side of my face against the support of the back window (this is my fault, I choose a really shit bus and my travel buddy says he gets to choose next time as I clearly cannot be trusted). More on him and his opinions of my decision making abilities later!

Other snipets from my memory: horse carts sharing the streets with cars, people go around mostly either barefoot or in those rockin rubber boots, chickens (all over south america!) roam free everywhere and I must say they are rather tasty for getting to live such a carefree life!, crazy geese, Manuel the coke cooker with the funny smile (more on him later as well), indications of bus times--If they tell you 5 hours, it will be 7-8, busses and cars only pass each other on curves in the road it seems, and of course, the 4 person family on the moped--along with dad´s briefcase on someone´s knee!

And the ever important--just like in Ecuador--need for small bills. Everything is done with cash, but there are no ATM´s anywhere, and everyone wants small bills, and no one has change for anything. And if you are lucky enough to get money from the bank or ATM, they will of course only give you 50´s. While in San Augustin, a few of us realized we were going to need money. Of course the only ATM in town wasn´t working, and another girl and myself were able to do a Visa cash advance (after about an hour or two of waiting in line), but the guy with us had to get a bus and go into Pitalito (about an hour) in order to get money from his mastercard and the whole ordeal for him took about 4 hours! So important now to think of wher I am going and when and then get money accordingly!

And the people are so sweet--feel like I was involved in a little bit of a soap opera in San Augustin with the tour guide, which I won´t get into now, but anytime I walked through town, local people that I met would always come up and say hi. My last day there, one of the vendors in the market gave my friend a banana to give to me as a gift--isn´t that sweet! Think I got more gifts in that town than anywhere else...but again, a story for a different time. For now, I think I am going to talk myself into going out into the heat and then tomorrow I am heading off to a beach town to put in a bit of time chilling before getting on another long ass bus back to Bogota and you people.

Coming in our next post: the dates and times I am available in NYC for you folks to take me out, and what my prefered food choices might be. Since there are choices, it will take me about 5 days to make any--so look for that info next time! And don´t forget that my birthday is coming up!

Saludos,
S

The state of Ecuador in our wake

Still standing of course, but not for lack of trying! Haha. So I here I sit guarding my newly washed laundry--half of what I have with me for only $2.60! The best deal yet! Good thing too as I am off to the Cotoapaxi area tomorrow to check out the Black Sheep Inn where I am hoping to do some volunteer work in the fall after my much needed rest in the states. I will then return to Quito for about a week as I signed up for some español lessons and then will be off to Peru. Quite possibly there is a flight in the future there too as it is 24 hours by bus just to the Peruvian border, and these aint no Argentine busses!

So we decided to suck it up and pay the $50 or so more to fly back to Quito from Cuenca, as we just couldn{t stomach another 10 hours on the bus. I have been on a bus an average of once every 4 days for the last 6 weeks and am looking to sign on for a bunch more in the next 6 and so a flight for about 35 minutes (including the fastest food service ever) was totally worth it!

Cuenca is a lovely old colonial town and we were both a bit under the weather, so it was a nice place to relax for a couple of days. We went to visit the largest site of Incan ruins in Ecuador (amazing how much is there since the Incas were only there for 4 years before the Spanish took over) on a private tour with our guide, Diego. He is a wealth of knowledge about Ecuador and we got a lot of info on not just the Incans and Cañar peoples, but also about local politics in Ecuador and things of that sort. Great fun to take the ride in a car too!

It was great fun to have my sister here and travel together as we have never done anything of the sort before. As I write this, she should be in the car on the way back to Spruce Pine and her family and the impending start of the school year! She was too chicken to do the bridge jumping (you know I couldn{t resist), but I did get her to ride a horse while we were in Otavalo! Oh I see as writing this that the apostrophe doesn{t work here either....they must not use them much in español. :)

We did and saw so much it is almost hard to remember what it all was. She probably needs a vacation to recover from her vacation. We started by staying for 2 nights in the old town of Quito, with all the churches and colonial architecture and visited the big theater in Quito that was mostly destroyed by fire some time ago and is being repaired--very interesting tour and the guide got to give her first tour in English. She did very well by the way.

We then went to Otavalo and checked out some local Andean music andalso shopped at the famous market, before moving on to spend a really expensive night in a hacidenda near Otavalo--this would be where the horseriding occured. We then did a roughly 10 hour day on the bus going back to Quito and transferring to the Tena bus. We stayed the night in Tena and I got to bore Mary to tears remeniscing about my time at Jatun Sacha and all the decent meals I got in Tena! Then we went out to the jungle lodge where we did a bosque tour and sweated our way through all the hills we had to climb. Also, I discovered a snake on the hike that our guide missed..much better than the last hike I did at Jatun Sacha! There were resident monkeys at the lodge and Mary has some great pictures of them visiting us on the porch. I am not sure if I have any of those pictures here, but if not will add them at a later date.

We visited a local Kichewa community and learned how they make the chicha (sans the spit), which is an indigineous drink. We did some swimming in the river and visited the animal rescue center at Amazoonico. Not a bad day taking the innertubes down the river back to the lodge either! We also stopped by to visit Jatun Sacha and wow is it damn hot there now!

Then we were off to Baños where we did a chiva tour of the waterfalls and the now infamous bridge jumping occured. We visited the hot springs where I met a very nice local guy and thankfully didnt subject Mary to my attempts to get to know him better.

I am feeling like a lot of this is probably redundant from the last post and apologize for that.....also coming up on the redundancy rader will be my pictures all our of order with those of Mary{s that I downloaded earlier. We returned to Quito on Wednesday afternoon and and stayed in the new town area this time so she could see the difference between the two. This is a funky little area with a lot of bars and restaurants, so some decent meals were had in the last couple of days.

Think that is probably all for now, so I will wrap this up and put the pictures on before I loose all will to do so...where is that waiter with another glass of wine?

Here are the photos, again and as usual in no particular order. I will try to be sure and label them so you know when you are seeing the same thing for the 15th time..

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Ecuador%20con%20Mary/


I wil now wrap this up and head back to my hotel where Mary will be pissed to hear I am now in a junior suite with two huge beds and no one to share either one with..but not for lack of trying. There is a story there for future reference when there is actually something to report. I am planning to louge with the cable Tv and perhaps get to see the Omen! Mary and i have seen all 6 of the Star Wars movies in recent days, so I am sure she will breathe a sigh of relief knowing I don{t have to wathc them again as this is probably the last time I will get TV in a long time. :) Horrifying how excited I am by TV these days....

Two sisters take on the world.......well, Ecuador anyway

Hello again armchair travellers! So here we are in Cuenca! It really is a lovely old city, and if all goes according to plan, there will eventually be pictures of it! Not today though, the only real goal for today is to write enough on this computer where the space bar doesn´t really work before I chuck it out the window. Ugh.

Anyway, Mary got here about a week and a half ago,and we have been damn busy in that time--mostly testing the Ecuadorian bus system and it´s obvious deficeincies. After logging roughly 25 hours on this great system of transport, we have seen of course Quito, (no bus required--so more on that later), Otavalo and the great Andean market, where we foolishly stuffed our backpacks to overflowing with things mostly for ourselves (sorry to the family, not much room left for gifts for you people) and have been having to cart all that stuff around for days and getting black and blue doing it!

We have done some time out in the amazon region and hung with monkeys fighting over our hammocks. I have also added most impressively to my collection of bug bites, while Mary has aquired about a total of 4. It was hot, damn hot, and cloudless in the amazon and at Jatun Sacha as well when we stopped by for a couple of hours--much cooler and rainier when I was there in June!

Then we were off to Baños where we chilled in the hot springs and rode the Chiva bus for a tour of the waterfalls and I tried my hand at swing jumping, which is basically jumping off a bridge over a river with the sincere hope that the bungee cord attached to your waist will work and keep you from plunging into the river. Obviously in this case it worked, huh?

There is a massive volcano roughly 10 kilometers from Baños which has apparently been erupting in some fashion for several years. We didn´t even see it, as it is behind some mountains we were going to climb one day, but when that day came the whole sky was covered in clouds......so we just have to take their word for it that it even exists.

Now we are here in Cuenca after a long and obnoxious day on the bus. I am very excited about the fact that we have a TV in our room!Mary,not surprisingly´, doesn´t really give a shit about the TV, but then she can see it any old time she wants to.
There are Incan ruins here that we are hoping to head off to in the next day or so by....you guessed it, the reliable bus system!

Stay tuned for further adventures as I have just about had it with this keyboard,and also want to be sure to be able to give you people a laundry update. :)