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....