Sunday, August 5, 2007

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. :)

1 comment:

Joanna Holzman said...

The bus sounds like fun! There was much discussion at supper club yesterday about what theme you might like for when you're home in October (and whether an evening or afternoon supper club would be more convenient). You'll have to let us know!