Hola Amigos!
Yesterday we had decided to go to Otavalo just for the day so we could see the market. At breakfast we hummed and hawwed agian about whether we should take the hostel tour up or take the bus. See on the tour, we don't have to do anything, but it costs $25 a person, but on the bus it costs only $2 a person. We decided to remain with our original plan and take the bus. We grabbed a cab to the bus station. They must be cracking down on having too many people in one vehicle, becuase the cabbie didn't want to take all 5 of us. So we had to pay a little extra, then we were off. He dropped us off just outside the station, and we thought he was jipping us off by not going into the station, but the bus right in front of us was going to Otavalo, so we got on, and 5 minutes later we were on our way. The road was mountainous, and the tv was showing the shopping channel, which didn't have any good deals. About two hours later we arrived in Otavalo. We walked about four blocks and then bam, there we were in full on market. There was a large square filled completely with stalls and stalls spreading out on the streets leading to the square for several blocks in most directions. The main square was filled with tourist stalls, with the side streets having the local needs. The tourist stalls were filled with sweaters, weavings, wood stuff, etc, etc, the standard. The stall owners were polite and not really pushy at all. Sara and myself headed out, and picked up a number of things. The bargining was not aggressive either, it was pretty easy to get what you wanted, at a realitively good price. After a couple of hours it started to rain, which put a dampner on things, as many of the stalls cover there stuff up. We were getting hungry by this point and headed to a pizza place. I was still scared of pizza after food posioning in Tena, and so ordered the pasta, what a mistake as the pizza the others got was great. Sara says better than great, it was phenomenal, as it was cooked in a wood fired oven. The place was dutch owned, but they didn't skimp on flavor.
After lunch it continued to rain, but we strolled through the plaza again on the way to the bus depot. About 30 percent of the stalls were already packed up as 3pm. The buses to Quito were all lined up, and as soon as one was full, the next one started loading. We got on the second bus, and only waited 5-7 minutes for it to fill up. I napped on and off for the two hours back to Quito.
After reading for a while we went back to the place we had eaten at the night before for dinner. Red Hot Chilly Peppers, a Mexican place that served the best fajitas. You got the tortilla shells all warm with a plate of rice, guacamole, beans, and cheese, as well as a shizzlingly hot plate of beer and onions. It was very good. I had chocolate ice cream for dessert, everyone else was full, but they all were drooling over it.
Today we slept in. It was very nice to sleep in. After a late breakfast we started walking towards Old Town Quito. In the park on the way there was quite a number of vendors selling similar stuff to that which we saw yesterday in Otavalo. We found one original stall selling some nice silver jewelery, which Sara enjoyed, and purchased. Just as we got to the Grand Plaza we heard music which sounded live drifting out of a building. We entered to explore. In the inner courtyard there was a live band playing some good latin american music. We are not sure if they were from Ecuador or another country. After they played a couple of songs some dancers came out. It was very colorful and entertaining. I think from the sign they were performing part of a latin american opera. After the first set of dancing was complete, Sara got pulled up on stage to dance. She was out 'hipped' by the 10 year old dancer showing her the moves. But she held her own, and did get the moves down in the end. She ended up losing the fan voted favorite to an old Ecuadorian woman, but she placed 2/5. Sara: I think i didnt get first because Elders come first! The elder also seemed to already know the dance. Then the band came out for another set. We bought their CD. After that there was another round of dancing with some scary masked guys. It was very entertaining, we were all very happy we stumbled in on the performance.
After it was done we went into a shop and found for the first time in Ecuador, chocolate. Organic Ecuadorian chocolate, 75% coco at that. What a great find for Easter. We very much so enjoyed it.
We went back to lunch at the place we seem to always eat lunch at while in Old Quito. We finally got the soup that we wanted, and it was all that we had thought it was going to be, and maybe a little more. Probably my favorite soup so far, and that is saying alot. Sara enjoyed the cheese and potato empanada, I was getting full, and thought it was so so.
We were on a culture kick after seeing the great performance in the morning, so we were very excited to find a theater across the street from the restruant that had a performance on that afternoon. We bought our tickets at the flower shop (very cheap flowers here, a dozen roses for $1.90, if we lived here Sara would get more flowers) and went into the old theatre which was massive, but had fire damage. The upstairs had been badly damaged and the roof over the seating area was replaced. There was probably 20 people to watch the show, in a 250 person theatre. It was a clown comedy with street type acts. Juggling with errors, unicycle, and to finish off a ribbon act where they hang from the ceiling. It was all in spanish, and the actors were young and made mistakes. The performances were not as skilled as those you see in the street performance festivals in North America over the summer. However I didn't mind it. The best was the female clown who looked and acted very much like our good friend Jen Pebbles. Jen I think that we have found your Spanish speaking sister, because sometime I thought it may have been you up there. During the performance it poured outside, which made quite a drumming on the new metal roof, so much so that you couldn't hear the performance.
After the show had ended it was 4:30pm, so we jumped on the trolley and headed back to our hotel. Just after I started writing this a group of 30 young Quebec students arrived at the hotel. They are very loud. It will be interesting how much sleep we get tonight. Tomorrow in the evening we head home. I'm not sure if we are going to spend more time in Old Quito tomorrow or head to a tourist attraction on the Equator. Either way, I am having trouble thinking will all this loud french around me, so until later. Happy Easter.
Tyson and Sara
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
I'm a little moutain goat
On Tuesday morning we ate breakfast and got into our MASSIVE merceds benz van that you could play table tennis in. It was a 16 seat van for 5 people and a driver. So very roomy lol. Tyson was feeling somewhat better and we were driving most of the day anyways. We started on the Pan-american highway also called the "Volcano highway" because it is said on a clear day in Quito (I would like to see that ever happen!.. its always cloudy!) you can see 50 volcanoes (I say 10, Tyson says 50 i think he is making it up!) Anyways it was cloudy so we could only see a couple not the very big ones.
We drove through Latacunga and started up the south side of the Quilotoa loop and got out a places that we wanted to take photos and along the way there was this little village boy who asked us if we wanted to see his house and family. We knew he wanted money but we were interested anyways. So we got out and went to see his family and home. His family consisted of 3 younger sisters, an older brother and sister, and his mom and dad and his grandma who kept picking up the noisy rooster and petting it and telling it to shhhh.. like it was a family pet. There was a big sow (pig) at the back of the house and a dog who looked like Benji the dog all white and matted. There where also chickens kicking around. The house was made out of dirt cut into the side of the hill with a thatched roof. It was very small inside, Tyson says it was bigger than a Yurt but i disagree. Inside they cooked on a open fire and a propane stove. They slept on the floor with blankets and hay and there was some stuffed animals for the kids. They had a bunch of random stuff. But it looked like it would be a hard life to be a farmer as it gets cold in the Andes and no heat except a fire and there is no trees for firewood so there would not be a lot of fire happening.
After many photos we said we were only going to give them 3 dollars total, but we ended up giving them 3 dollars each as there hands were all over us. The children especially.
Once we left we could see they were sorting out who got what portion of the money most of it went to the dad. We continued driving all the way up until we got to this place that our Guide Carlos who was also our driver and the owner of our hostel in Quito said Tourists have said that this spot looks like Maccu Picchu (sp?). It will be neat to compare photos of Miriams travels to Peru to see how similar Ecuadors landscape is.
After driving for an hour or so more we stopped at Laguna Quilotoa where we had a sketchy lunch of cold rice and semi warm quina soup. All i could think about was stupid food safety class when they said you shouldnt eat cold rice. I had 2 bites just so i woulnt be starving when we started to hike. After lunch we decended down to the Laguna. It was cloudy as usual and it was a big active volcano crater with a lake at the bottom. It hasnt erupted anytime recently but it did have sulphour dioxide bubbling through the lake. There was also a man playing the trumpet and we could hear him as we were walking down which was cool. The walk down was easy peasy... but you know when you go down you gotta go back up! Leann tried the mans trumpet as he offered it to her... she was decent since she hasn't played the troumbone in 7 years or so. You could buy a donkey to ride back up but since we are a family of mountain goats and cheap we hiked the grueling way up to the top.
It was a hard hike up. Very steep and Tyson had no energy and he struggled, and Marilyn was so fast that I was determined to keep up to her! We both finished first (not that its a competition! ) but i had massive cold sweats after from being all sweaty and not getting a shower after, and i was shaky from not eating very much lunch. There were stalls selling village alpaca and wool toques, sweaters, and scraves and we walked around a bit before picking up a couple things.
We stopped at a smalls store that had very little to offer for snacks but we found crackers and cookies, and animal cookies that tasted better than we thought they would! We drove on a very bumpy dirt road that would have been better if we had a 4wheel drive vehicale and some of the drop offs were scary... shh mom were fine! We drove for about an hour and bit to a small town called Chugchilan where the town was a size of a pea. There was a main square that had 2 volleyball courts and a church. There were 3 hostals. We stayed at Cloud Forest I was freezing and so we chose a room with a fireplace in it. An old wooden stove one and it kept us toasty warm but the beds were gross and our light in our bathroom didnt work all that well, and we couldnt figure out how to get hot water. After resting for awhile we went back to watch some volleyball in the main square before dinner. While there we saw a bunch of girls getting all dressed up in what looked like costumes. We thought they were going to be rehearsing somewhere for a Easter dance/show. We joked about following them. The volleyball is played three on three with a soccer ball, and I think nets that are higher than normal. None of the players are tall enough to spike, and since they use such a heavy hard ball, they carry a lot. But they are amazing at one handed digs (as diving was a no-no on the cement court) and one handed sets.
We returned to our hotel at 7pm, and decided to wait in the common area before dinner at 7:30. Good for us, becuase that is where the little girls showed up to, and they put on a dance show. There was lots of problems with the CD boombox, but eventually they got going. They did three dances, the first just dancing around, the second with a pole which had fabric tied onto the top. They danced around and weaved the fabric around the pole in different ways as they danced around. What was more amazing was that after they had weaved all the fabic into a patten, they switched directions and undid the entire process. The third dance was an audiance participation. We all got up and danced along and were very tired by the end, as the CD kept stopping, so we'd start at the beginning again. We were all ready for dinner after the jumping dance.
Dinner was salty. Soup first as usual, I am getting sick of eating soup at every meal. Then the main course of cold rice, a sasauge type thing, and a plantane type thing. I don't know, I (tyson) still didn't have much of an appiete. The dessert was good, a chocolate filled pastry.
The next day the original plan was to walk all the way around the Laguna Quilotoa crater, but nobody was interested in walking around something we just walked down and back up. So we arranged for a local guide to take us to the cloud forest from Chugchilan. So we headed up from the village up the old Inca trail that was used to get to the coast. The guide would stop every once and a while to show some local medicinal plants or herbs. One was for stomach, the other for the back, the other for the nevous system, one for colds, and so on. To me (tyson) they either smelt like beans or mint. The others said they had distinct smells, but I don't know. We hiked up and up. It is crazy that as we reached 4000 meters above sea level there was still farms growing corn, beans, wheat, potatoes (not doing so well this year) and lot of onions. Nothing grows at that elevation in Canada. I guess that is the benefit of having no winter. The fields are not terraced at all, and sit at about at a 45 degree angle, and the soil is quite sandy. Not easy farming by any means, as most of it is worked by hand. We got to the top of the hill where it is said you can see the Pacific Ocean and the Coast but it was as usual cloudy! So we saw blue far ahead and the guide said the Ocean was only 100km away but we had our doubts. We pretended that the blue was the ocean. From the hill we descended into the Cloud Forest. Marilyn was itching to get into the National Park , I (Sara) was itching to be done the hike.
Cloud Forest has some pine trees, lichen, moss, a very moist place. Reminded Tyson of the West Coast forest but not so tall of trees. We only walked in the Park for like 10 minutes max and then we came back out. It was getting late and it was too late to go to the Cheese Factory and our guide Banardo had brought us some very stall buns to eat that he wanted to give to us at the cheese factory so we could have cheese on it. Oh well we just ate plain buns. We decided to make our way back so we wouldnt have to drive in the dark... which we ended up doing anyways.. more about that in a minute. We walked back, most of it down hill until we got to the road and then we had to climb the gravel road back up to the town. We were all tired and hungry and sweaty. We said thank you to Bernado as this is the third guide we have had on this journey that has been so knowledgable and kind. To me it just seems that people here are more connected to thier natural sourroundings then in Canada but maybe we just lucked out on really great guides. We gave him more tip than he asked for because he was so good. We had lunch of french fries and chicken and those tasty little pastry filled chocolate things. Lunch was actually pretty good, we had soup of course to begin with. For the record for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and the room and drinks, it came to 32 US dollars for 2 people.
After lunch we loaded up the benz and went back the same way we came our original plan was to stay the night in Latacunga but Carlos was worried where he would park his benz as I guess it would not have been safe there and he wanted to get us to Cotopaxi Volcano early in the morning hoping the views would be better. So we drove longer in the dark, we were all getting tired of driving we played many driving games. Such as, lets name all 50 states, lets name all European countries, "I am going on a camping trip and i am going to bring...." No you cant come! "My aunt Sally" and Tysons own version called "my aunt frank... " we were getting fed up with eachother when we couldnt figure out the pattern of the games we made up. At around 7:30 we got to this place that was 15 minutes from Latacunga called La Posada de Rey it was quite fancy we were all worried about how much the place would cost as Tysona and I ran out of money and had to borrow from mini bank Leann! The rooms were really nice with fireplaces (nicer than the Cloud Forest Hotel) and the comfiest beds in all of Ecuador and a hot shower (well we did, no one else did?) We all had pasta for dinner and it was massive and we had french fries too but didnt need them. Tyson and I also watched the ending of Americas next top model in Spanish while waiting for dinner. Tyra banks still sounds the same in Spanish.. just as annoying. We even knew which girl she was going to kick off by her facial expressions you dont even need to know what she is saying. Anyways!
Leann and us had our fire places lit and then we all went to bed as we had one more day of hiking left. The next morning we had a very thin breakfast of toast.. i was super excited for TOAST! But that was all we got... i was starving. I had to eat the crackers we bought the day before to supplement the lack of food. We then drove to a gas station where we switched our benz for a Mistibushi 4wheel SUV. It was sweet. I wanted it. There was two seats in the trunk and it had all sorts of gadgets and it would be a fun vehical to have. Tyson says if i was going off roading i could get it.. but i said it was style i was looking for. The guide we had for the park was Carlos as well we called him Carlos duex. We drove for like an hour and a half to the lagoon which was kind of boring.. not like the lagoons in Galapagos its not as fun when you cant be 2feet away from the wildlife. After walking for like 10 minutes we hopped back on the red SUV and continued our way up and up, and up to 4500meters and the parking lot. We got out and got ready for our climb first up to the Refuge and then up to the Glacier. The climb us was strenuous with the altitude and the steepness. It took us 30 minutes where as it usually takes people 45 minutes Carlos one said we were very strong fast hikers. There was snow on the ground and when we got to the Refuge at 4800meters I made a small snowman. We took a 10 minute break before we ascended up to the glacier. We were the first ones up that day as there was no trail broken for us. It took us about 15 minutes to get to the top where the altitude was 5019meters above sea level. We all had a tiny bit of headaches, Peter had the worse as he gets really bad migranes. We stayed at the top and cracked open a bag of Ripples Sour creme and onion chips. They tasted so good as we were all a little shaky. We took our photos and Tyson wanted to of course keep going up but we would need Crampons, ice axes, and ropes so it wasn't possible that day. (That is right Sara, we'll have to climb it someday, it is only 5 hours from there to the summit at 5897 meters the second highest volcano in Ecuador.
We descended down and it tooks us very little time. We wanted to hang out in the Refuge place for a bit but it was overtaken by a group of highschool kids who were loud and obnoxious as highschool students are. So we decided to keep going down after a 5 minute water and snack break. It took us no time to get down as it was soft sandy dirt so you could almost run down. We saw a fox on the way down.
After we were in the vehical I had a massive headache. It went away once we started going down though and once i drank more water. Peter however got worse. He wasnt feeling well the whole night. We were all quiet the ride back to Quito was about 2 hours or less. We asked Carlos to drop us off at a mall where this store called Marathon sports was located so we could find soccer jerseys. The mall was big and nice like any fancy mall. The prices were the same too as in Cananda, except the soccer jerseys were good prices. I couldnt find any small jerseys that were nicer fitting, so Tyson got one that he said i could borrow sometimes. We were all tired, and we couldnt get any money out of the banks as it seems only one bank in Quito will give us money. So we borrowed from mini bank Leann again. We had a small snack at the food court, Marilyn, Leann and I had cinnamon buns from Cinabon which tasted nothing like cinnamon more like chocolate bun, it was still good. Tyson had what he thought was a cheese bun but it turned out to be sweet in the middle with 2 raisons but cheese like on the outside.. wierd. He then had icecream. Carlos picked us up and we went back to the hostel to shower and check internet and get ready for dinner.
Peter didnt come to dinner as his head was that bad, so we went back to El Maples hoping for a good meal again. We were kind of disappointed as the spaghetti didnt taste as good as the last time, they were out of 3 things we tried to order. But the samosas were good and the avacado was good too. We tried to explain to the waiter we wanted nachos with no salsa just cheese and gucamole, but he didnt get it... the nachos turned to be soggy again. We then came back and went to bed.
Today we slept in a bit and got ready for the Good Friday Procession in Old Town Quito. We left the hostel at 9:30 and took the packed trolly down to the square. We arrived at about 10:15 and the procession started at 11. The parade route was already starting to fill up. At 11am the procession began. We got some spots on the sidewalk but our bums throught the procession got really sore and Marilyn is claustrophobic in large crowds so she wasnt enjoying it all that much. The procession was a little scary, men carrying huge wooden crosses like Jesus did, and dragging them through the street some men had big metal chains around thier ankles, and some even had barbwire wrapped around thier chest area, and others where whipping themselves with branches you could see the red marks on thier backs. There was alot of people dressed up in purple robes with pointy hoods that covered thier face and two holes for eyes it looked like the Kuklux Clan but it wasnt meant to be in that way we are sure, I think it was back to the Gothic age of Catholicism. But that was the whole parade, people dressed in purple robes, tons of men carrying crosses, people whipping themselves, marching bands, and 3 floats that had a virgin mary, 2 Jesus' at the end. The whole procession took 2 hours and the sun came out and it became hot.
Once it was over we decided to go out of the way to put some sunscreen on and then make our way to a lunch spot we had eaten the first day we were in Quito. However a terrible thing happened as we crossed the parade route through the MASSIVE crowd (probably about half a million people where there to watch) Leann was pickpocketed. She didnt realize it until we got out of the crowd and i could hear her swearing. We got some open space and she looked in all her pockets and backpack.. but nope her wallet was gone. It had her debit card, her visa and 100 bucks. My backpocket zipper was also open but i had nothing in my pants at all but I still felt violated that someone could have stolen something out of there. Leann was pretty shooken up as one would be. She was just happy that they didnt take anything out of her backpack which contained her camera, ipod and passport. I now have her passport in with mine in my money pouch which i wear on me under my clothes at all times. We decided after lunch that we would come back to the hostel so she could cancel all her cards to make sure no one could charge to them. But it was still shitty. At lunch we didnt get the soup we wanted as they said they were out so we got empanadas and a different soup which wasnt that good. Then as we were walking out I spotted some tourists eating the soup I wanted and I asked hey what kind of soup is that? To which they replied the first one on the board which is the one we wanted pototo and avacado i was so mad because they must have just made a new fresh batch and we didnt get any :(. NO SOUP FOR YOU! Sienfield...
On the way back to the hostel we found a bakery and we all got a little treat after going around in a circle twice on the trolly... we were confused but so where a lot of other people. Its been a relaxing day for the most part and tomorrow morning we are getting up early to take the bus to Otavalo for the morning/afternoon and then taking it back to Quito. We just want to go to the big Saturday Market that is supposed to be good for souviners, so hopefully it is because we dont really have anything for anyone or ourselves yet.
Well there you go all caught up.. we will spend Sunday in Quito around old town.
Monday night we leave Quito for Atlanta and arrive back in Edmonton on Tuesday afternoon.
Adios Amigos
Sara and Tyson
We drove through Latacunga and started up the south side of the Quilotoa loop and got out a places that we wanted to take photos and along the way there was this little village boy who asked us if we wanted to see his house and family. We knew he wanted money but we were interested anyways. So we got out and went to see his family and home. His family consisted of 3 younger sisters, an older brother and sister, and his mom and dad and his grandma who kept picking up the noisy rooster and petting it and telling it to shhhh.. like it was a family pet. There was a big sow (pig) at the back of the house and a dog who looked like Benji the dog all white and matted. There where also chickens kicking around. The house was made out of dirt cut into the side of the hill with a thatched roof. It was very small inside, Tyson says it was bigger than a Yurt but i disagree. Inside they cooked on a open fire and a propane stove. They slept on the floor with blankets and hay and there was some stuffed animals for the kids. They had a bunch of random stuff. But it looked like it would be a hard life to be a farmer as it gets cold in the Andes and no heat except a fire and there is no trees for firewood so there would not be a lot of fire happening.
After many photos we said we were only going to give them 3 dollars total, but we ended up giving them 3 dollars each as there hands were all over us. The children especially.
Once we left we could see they were sorting out who got what portion of the money most of it went to the dad. We continued driving all the way up until we got to this place that our Guide Carlos who was also our driver and the owner of our hostel in Quito said Tourists have said that this spot looks like Maccu Picchu (sp?). It will be neat to compare photos of Miriams travels to Peru to see how similar Ecuadors landscape is.
After driving for an hour or so more we stopped at Laguna Quilotoa where we had a sketchy lunch of cold rice and semi warm quina soup. All i could think about was stupid food safety class when they said you shouldnt eat cold rice. I had 2 bites just so i woulnt be starving when we started to hike. After lunch we decended down to the Laguna. It was cloudy as usual and it was a big active volcano crater with a lake at the bottom. It hasnt erupted anytime recently but it did have sulphour dioxide bubbling through the lake. There was also a man playing the trumpet and we could hear him as we were walking down which was cool. The walk down was easy peasy... but you know when you go down you gotta go back up! Leann tried the mans trumpet as he offered it to her... she was decent since she hasn't played the troumbone in 7 years or so. You could buy a donkey to ride back up but since we are a family of mountain goats and cheap we hiked the grueling way up to the top.
It was a hard hike up. Very steep and Tyson had no energy and he struggled, and Marilyn was so fast that I was determined to keep up to her! We both finished first (not that its a competition! ) but i had massive cold sweats after from being all sweaty and not getting a shower after, and i was shaky from not eating very much lunch. There were stalls selling village alpaca and wool toques, sweaters, and scraves and we walked around a bit before picking up a couple things.
We stopped at a smalls store that had very little to offer for snacks but we found crackers and cookies, and animal cookies that tasted better than we thought they would! We drove on a very bumpy dirt road that would have been better if we had a 4wheel drive vehicale and some of the drop offs were scary... shh mom were fine! We drove for about an hour and bit to a small town called Chugchilan where the town was a size of a pea. There was a main square that had 2 volleyball courts and a church. There were 3 hostals. We stayed at Cloud Forest I was freezing and so we chose a room with a fireplace in it. An old wooden stove one and it kept us toasty warm but the beds were gross and our light in our bathroom didnt work all that well, and we couldnt figure out how to get hot water. After resting for awhile we went back to watch some volleyball in the main square before dinner. While there we saw a bunch of girls getting all dressed up in what looked like costumes. We thought they were going to be rehearsing somewhere for a Easter dance/show. We joked about following them. The volleyball is played three on three with a soccer ball, and I think nets that are higher than normal. None of the players are tall enough to spike, and since they use such a heavy hard ball, they carry a lot. But they are amazing at one handed digs (as diving was a no-no on the cement court) and one handed sets.
We returned to our hotel at 7pm, and decided to wait in the common area before dinner at 7:30. Good for us, becuase that is where the little girls showed up to, and they put on a dance show. There was lots of problems with the CD boombox, but eventually they got going. They did three dances, the first just dancing around, the second with a pole which had fabric tied onto the top. They danced around and weaved the fabric around the pole in different ways as they danced around. What was more amazing was that after they had weaved all the fabic into a patten, they switched directions and undid the entire process. The third dance was an audiance participation. We all got up and danced along and were very tired by the end, as the CD kept stopping, so we'd start at the beginning again. We were all ready for dinner after the jumping dance.
Dinner was salty. Soup first as usual, I am getting sick of eating soup at every meal. Then the main course of cold rice, a sasauge type thing, and a plantane type thing. I don't know, I (tyson) still didn't have much of an appiete. The dessert was good, a chocolate filled pastry.
The next day the original plan was to walk all the way around the Laguna Quilotoa crater, but nobody was interested in walking around something we just walked down and back up. So we arranged for a local guide to take us to the cloud forest from Chugchilan. So we headed up from the village up the old Inca trail that was used to get to the coast. The guide would stop every once and a while to show some local medicinal plants or herbs. One was for stomach, the other for the back, the other for the nevous system, one for colds, and so on. To me (tyson) they either smelt like beans or mint. The others said they had distinct smells, but I don't know. We hiked up and up. It is crazy that as we reached 4000 meters above sea level there was still farms growing corn, beans, wheat, potatoes (not doing so well this year) and lot of onions. Nothing grows at that elevation in Canada. I guess that is the benefit of having no winter. The fields are not terraced at all, and sit at about at a 45 degree angle, and the soil is quite sandy. Not easy farming by any means, as most of it is worked by hand. We got to the top of the hill where it is said you can see the Pacific Ocean and the Coast but it was as usual cloudy! So we saw blue far ahead and the guide said the Ocean was only 100km away but we had our doubts. We pretended that the blue was the ocean. From the hill we descended into the Cloud Forest. Marilyn was itching to get into the National Park , I (Sara) was itching to be done the hike.
Cloud Forest has some pine trees, lichen, moss, a very moist place. Reminded Tyson of the West Coast forest but not so tall of trees. We only walked in the Park for like 10 minutes max and then we came back out. It was getting late and it was too late to go to the Cheese Factory and our guide Banardo had brought us some very stall buns to eat that he wanted to give to us at the cheese factory so we could have cheese on it. Oh well we just ate plain buns. We decided to make our way back so we wouldnt have to drive in the dark... which we ended up doing anyways.. more about that in a minute. We walked back, most of it down hill until we got to the road and then we had to climb the gravel road back up to the town. We were all tired and hungry and sweaty. We said thank you to Bernado as this is the third guide we have had on this journey that has been so knowledgable and kind. To me it just seems that people here are more connected to thier natural sourroundings then in Canada but maybe we just lucked out on really great guides. We gave him more tip than he asked for because he was so good. We had lunch of french fries and chicken and those tasty little pastry filled chocolate things. Lunch was actually pretty good, we had soup of course to begin with. For the record for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and the room and drinks, it came to 32 US dollars for 2 people.
After lunch we loaded up the benz and went back the same way we came our original plan was to stay the night in Latacunga but Carlos was worried where he would park his benz as I guess it would not have been safe there and he wanted to get us to Cotopaxi Volcano early in the morning hoping the views would be better. So we drove longer in the dark, we were all getting tired of driving we played many driving games. Such as, lets name all 50 states, lets name all European countries, "I am going on a camping trip and i am going to bring...." No you cant come! "My aunt Sally" and Tysons own version called "my aunt frank... " we were getting fed up with eachother when we couldnt figure out the pattern of the games we made up. At around 7:30 we got to this place that was 15 minutes from Latacunga called La Posada de Rey it was quite fancy we were all worried about how much the place would cost as Tysona and I ran out of money and had to borrow from mini bank Leann! The rooms were really nice with fireplaces (nicer than the Cloud Forest Hotel) and the comfiest beds in all of Ecuador and a hot shower (well we did, no one else did?) We all had pasta for dinner and it was massive and we had french fries too but didnt need them. Tyson and I also watched the ending of Americas next top model in Spanish while waiting for dinner. Tyra banks still sounds the same in Spanish.. just as annoying. We even knew which girl she was going to kick off by her facial expressions you dont even need to know what she is saying. Anyways!
Leann and us had our fire places lit and then we all went to bed as we had one more day of hiking left. The next morning we had a very thin breakfast of toast.. i was super excited for TOAST! But that was all we got... i was starving. I had to eat the crackers we bought the day before to supplement the lack of food. We then drove to a gas station where we switched our benz for a Mistibushi 4wheel SUV. It was sweet. I wanted it. There was two seats in the trunk and it had all sorts of gadgets and it would be a fun vehical to have. Tyson says if i was going off roading i could get it.. but i said it was style i was looking for. The guide we had for the park was Carlos as well we called him Carlos duex. We drove for like an hour and a half to the lagoon which was kind of boring.. not like the lagoons in Galapagos its not as fun when you cant be 2feet away from the wildlife. After walking for like 10 minutes we hopped back on the red SUV and continued our way up and up, and up to 4500meters and the parking lot. We got out and got ready for our climb first up to the Refuge and then up to the Glacier. The climb us was strenuous with the altitude and the steepness. It took us 30 minutes where as it usually takes people 45 minutes Carlos one said we were very strong fast hikers. There was snow on the ground and when we got to the Refuge at 4800meters I made a small snowman. We took a 10 minute break before we ascended up to the glacier. We were the first ones up that day as there was no trail broken for us. It took us about 15 minutes to get to the top where the altitude was 5019meters above sea level. We all had a tiny bit of headaches, Peter had the worse as he gets really bad migranes. We stayed at the top and cracked open a bag of Ripples Sour creme and onion chips. They tasted so good as we were all a little shaky. We took our photos and Tyson wanted to of course keep going up but we would need Crampons, ice axes, and ropes so it wasn't possible that day. (That is right Sara, we'll have to climb it someday, it is only 5 hours from there to the summit at 5897 meters the second highest volcano in Ecuador.
We descended down and it tooks us very little time. We wanted to hang out in the Refuge place for a bit but it was overtaken by a group of highschool kids who were loud and obnoxious as highschool students are. So we decided to keep going down after a 5 minute water and snack break. It took us no time to get down as it was soft sandy dirt so you could almost run down. We saw a fox on the way down.
After we were in the vehical I had a massive headache. It went away once we started going down though and once i drank more water. Peter however got worse. He wasnt feeling well the whole night. We were all quiet the ride back to Quito was about 2 hours or less. We asked Carlos to drop us off at a mall where this store called Marathon sports was located so we could find soccer jerseys. The mall was big and nice like any fancy mall. The prices were the same too as in Cananda, except the soccer jerseys were good prices. I couldnt find any small jerseys that were nicer fitting, so Tyson got one that he said i could borrow sometimes. We were all tired, and we couldnt get any money out of the banks as it seems only one bank in Quito will give us money. So we borrowed from mini bank Leann again. We had a small snack at the food court, Marilyn, Leann and I had cinnamon buns from Cinabon which tasted nothing like cinnamon more like chocolate bun, it was still good. Tyson had what he thought was a cheese bun but it turned out to be sweet in the middle with 2 raisons but cheese like on the outside.. wierd. He then had icecream. Carlos picked us up and we went back to the hostel to shower and check internet and get ready for dinner.
Peter didnt come to dinner as his head was that bad, so we went back to El Maples hoping for a good meal again. We were kind of disappointed as the spaghetti didnt taste as good as the last time, they were out of 3 things we tried to order. But the samosas were good and the avacado was good too. We tried to explain to the waiter we wanted nachos with no salsa just cheese and gucamole, but he didnt get it... the nachos turned to be soggy again. We then came back and went to bed.
Today we slept in a bit and got ready for the Good Friday Procession in Old Town Quito. We left the hostel at 9:30 and took the packed trolly down to the square. We arrived at about 10:15 and the procession started at 11. The parade route was already starting to fill up. At 11am the procession began. We got some spots on the sidewalk but our bums throught the procession got really sore and Marilyn is claustrophobic in large crowds so she wasnt enjoying it all that much. The procession was a little scary, men carrying huge wooden crosses like Jesus did, and dragging them through the street some men had big metal chains around thier ankles, and some even had barbwire wrapped around thier chest area, and others where whipping themselves with branches you could see the red marks on thier backs. There was alot of people dressed up in purple robes with pointy hoods that covered thier face and two holes for eyes it looked like the Kuklux Clan but it wasnt meant to be in that way we are sure, I think it was back to the Gothic age of Catholicism. But that was the whole parade, people dressed in purple robes, tons of men carrying crosses, people whipping themselves, marching bands, and 3 floats that had a virgin mary, 2 Jesus' at the end. The whole procession took 2 hours and the sun came out and it became hot.
Once it was over we decided to go out of the way to put some sunscreen on and then make our way to a lunch spot we had eaten the first day we were in Quito. However a terrible thing happened as we crossed the parade route through the MASSIVE crowd (probably about half a million people where there to watch) Leann was pickpocketed. She didnt realize it until we got out of the crowd and i could hear her swearing. We got some open space and she looked in all her pockets and backpack.. but nope her wallet was gone. It had her debit card, her visa and 100 bucks. My backpocket zipper was also open but i had nothing in my pants at all but I still felt violated that someone could have stolen something out of there. Leann was pretty shooken up as one would be. She was just happy that they didnt take anything out of her backpack which contained her camera, ipod and passport. I now have her passport in with mine in my money pouch which i wear on me under my clothes at all times. We decided after lunch that we would come back to the hostel so she could cancel all her cards to make sure no one could charge to them. But it was still shitty. At lunch we didnt get the soup we wanted as they said they were out so we got empanadas and a different soup which wasnt that good. Then as we were walking out I spotted some tourists eating the soup I wanted and I asked hey what kind of soup is that? To which they replied the first one on the board which is the one we wanted pototo and avacado i was so mad because they must have just made a new fresh batch and we didnt get any :(. NO SOUP FOR YOU! Sienfield...
On the way back to the hostel we found a bakery and we all got a little treat after going around in a circle twice on the trolly... we were confused but so where a lot of other people. Its been a relaxing day for the most part and tomorrow morning we are getting up early to take the bus to Otavalo for the morning/afternoon and then taking it back to Quito. We just want to go to the big Saturday Market that is supposed to be good for souviners, so hopefully it is because we dont really have anything for anyone or ourselves yet.
Well there you go all caught up.. we will spend Sunday in Quito around old town.
Monday night we leave Quito for Atlanta and arrive back in Edmonton on Tuesday afternoon.
Adios Amigos
Sara and Tyson
Monday, April 6, 2009
Miguel take me to your cabin!
I am crying inside, my heart is broken we are back in rainy Quito and I long for the morning when i was just waking up in my catamaran boat eating my breakfast looking at a beautiful island or checking the back of the boat to see if any sealions were sleeping there. Sigh... this may be a depressing blog as i am really quite sad to leave the Galapagos. This morning we left with our bags packed at 8:00am to where we went to the Interpretation muesum that explained how the islands where formed, the first settlers, etc, etc. It was kind of boring. Some what interested but all i could think of was wanting to be back in the catamaran getting my bathing suit on and my snorkling gear ready.
Where did we leave off? It might pain me to remember those last few days as i sit in Rainy Quito wearing layers upon layers watching my tan fade away.
Day 6 : North Seamore
Bare with me as I try to remember all of this. We went snorkling in the afternoon and in the morning we did some sort of hike, I think maybe with lots of boobies and frigate birds. I remember the snorkeling not being very good because the visibility was not good. It was a little quiet on the boat after 9 of the passangers left. A little sad too, just didnt feel the same. But lets get to what I remember and jump to day 7. Oh one more note Leann and I played some sort of card game called 40 where your on teams of 2 and she was on the bartendars team his name is William and I was on the cabin boys team his name is Peter. Now at first we were just playing for fun trying to understand the game and then we started betting on beers. Lets just say I think william the bartender was scamming us so he could get some buisness haha i love that guy though he was soo funny! Peter and I ended up losing 3 times so i had to buy leann 3 beers! Not cheap either! HAHA.
Silly Sara, she forgot all about Dragon Hill. In the morning on day 6 we woke up on the north east side of Santa Cruz, and we were all by ourselves. We went to shore, and did a walk around Dragon Hill, which doesn't actually have dragons, but they are pretty close. We first walked by another lagoon with a flamingo, saw a bunch of other shore birds before heading inland. The dragons are actually land ignunas that don't go into the ocean to feed, and because it is just after breeding season they were still a magnificant yellow and red in color. Then we sailed to North Seamore where we did a walk and a snorkle. On the walk we saw tons of nesting frigate birds and boobies. And I agree with Sara that the snorkelling wasn't the best due to the cloudiness of the water.
Day 7: Barthalamew and Rabidid (SP??)
These days were awesome. A very full day. In the morning we got up uber early 6:00am no breakfast to go climb the volcanoe of Barthalamew before the other huge cruise ship of 100 people got to it. It was nice there was on smaller ship about the same size of ours who started before us but it gave us plenty of time to do the hike with the sunrising. It was specatcular, very scenic with the other volcanoes in the distance and the ocean. We stayed at the top for about 20 minutes but we were all getting a little hungry from not having eaten breakfast yet. We had breakfast and then we went snorkeling. It was pretty scary as there was a shark that was very close to my feet in very shallow water and i was really scared, but apparently these reef sharks don't bite and all the other tourists where swarming around the 3 of them as they were circling them, crazy tourists!! Those where the cruise ship tourists. The beach was kind of packed and we were all a little disappointed that the cruise ship where there! But we snorkled anyways and we saw reef sharks, tropical fish, and PENGUINS swam with us but they are extremely fast. The best part was after we went snorkeling and we were on the dingy (small raft) there where dolphins near by, so our dingy driver took us there and we got to snorkel or attempt to snorkel with the dolphins! It was hard to keep up to them and both Tyson and I saw 2 right underneath us when we jumped in but they were off in as second, and Marliyn said she had 5 around her for a brief second! SO awesome. The only thing we have not snorkled with is sea turtles but we have seen a dozen of them.
We then sailed to Rabidad where it was BLAZING hot, the guide said it was pushing 37 degrees celisus. None of us wanted to walk as there was no wildlife at this island the flamingos where not in the salty lagoon so we walked really fast only to take off our clothes very fast and jump into the water. We snorkled for about an hour and a half and it was awesome! Saw more sharks, sealions where playing with us for a bit, lots of neat starfish, and fish in general. It was a really good snorkel and we were all very tired when we got back on the boat. Also sad because we knew tomorrow we were leaving. We began sailing back to San Cristobal where we left to go back to Quito.
So now we are here at the Travellers Inn our base Hostel here in Quito. I feel like i am still on the boat and mixed with the altitude since being at sealevel i feel very light headed and like i am rocking back and forth its like being drunk for free. Our plan was to go to Latatunga right from the airport and hop on a bus but it was late when we got into Quito (445pm) later than we had wanted to go. So we are just trying to decide what our plan will be for Tuesday-Thursday, where we will come back to Quito Thursday to see the Good Friday Procession in Quito and then try to get to Otavalo for Saturday-Sunday and fly home Monday night back to Edmonton. Hopefully my tan is still there or no one will believe me that i was in a hot destination! Which is ooo so important!
I should explain the title of the blog because it won't make sense unless I do. Miguel was our captain on the Archipell 2 catamaran boat. Think of Miguel like a Ecuadorian George Cloony, or a Mc.Dreamy if you can put an Ecuadorian twist to that, the point is that he was a hot older man. So Leann and I kept cracking jokes such as "El Capitan take me to your cabin" or "Miguel show me the ways of the sea", etc, etc. It was a fun week to say the least.
But I should go Tyson isn't feeling well still, has a fever i guess, and I am getting hungry.
I think Tyson slept 18 hours yesterday. He still has a bit of a headace, but his fever is less than it was. Hopefully I can get better soon. Off to the Andes today.
Talk to you later!!!
Sara and Tyson
Missing the Galapagos already!
Where did we leave off? It might pain me to remember those last few days as i sit in Rainy Quito wearing layers upon layers watching my tan fade away.
Day 6 : North Seamore
Bare with me as I try to remember all of this. We went snorkling in the afternoon and in the morning we did some sort of hike, I think maybe with lots of boobies and frigate birds. I remember the snorkeling not being very good because the visibility was not good. It was a little quiet on the boat after 9 of the passangers left. A little sad too, just didnt feel the same. But lets get to what I remember and jump to day 7. Oh one more note Leann and I played some sort of card game called 40 where your on teams of 2 and she was on the bartendars team his name is William and I was on the cabin boys team his name is Peter. Now at first we were just playing for fun trying to understand the game and then we started betting on beers. Lets just say I think william the bartender was scamming us so he could get some buisness haha i love that guy though he was soo funny! Peter and I ended up losing 3 times so i had to buy leann 3 beers! Not cheap either! HAHA.
Silly Sara, she forgot all about Dragon Hill. In the morning on day 6 we woke up on the north east side of Santa Cruz, and we were all by ourselves. We went to shore, and did a walk around Dragon Hill, which doesn't actually have dragons, but they are pretty close. We first walked by another lagoon with a flamingo, saw a bunch of other shore birds before heading inland. The dragons are actually land ignunas that don't go into the ocean to feed, and because it is just after breeding season they were still a magnificant yellow and red in color. Then we sailed to North Seamore where we did a walk and a snorkle. On the walk we saw tons of nesting frigate birds and boobies. And I agree with Sara that the snorkelling wasn't the best due to the cloudiness of the water.
Day 7: Barthalamew and Rabidid (SP??)
These days were awesome. A very full day. In the morning we got up uber early 6:00am no breakfast to go climb the volcanoe of Barthalamew before the other huge cruise ship of 100 people got to it. It was nice there was on smaller ship about the same size of ours who started before us but it gave us plenty of time to do the hike with the sunrising. It was specatcular, very scenic with the other volcanoes in the distance and the ocean. We stayed at the top for about 20 minutes but we were all getting a little hungry from not having eaten breakfast yet. We had breakfast and then we went snorkeling. It was pretty scary as there was a shark that was very close to my feet in very shallow water and i was really scared, but apparently these reef sharks don't bite and all the other tourists where swarming around the 3 of them as they were circling them, crazy tourists!! Those where the cruise ship tourists. The beach was kind of packed and we were all a little disappointed that the cruise ship where there! But we snorkled anyways and we saw reef sharks, tropical fish, and PENGUINS swam with us but they are extremely fast. The best part was after we went snorkeling and we were on the dingy (small raft) there where dolphins near by, so our dingy driver took us there and we got to snorkel or attempt to snorkel with the dolphins! It was hard to keep up to them and both Tyson and I saw 2 right underneath us when we jumped in but they were off in as second, and Marliyn said she had 5 around her for a brief second! SO awesome. The only thing we have not snorkled with is sea turtles but we have seen a dozen of them.
We then sailed to Rabidad where it was BLAZING hot, the guide said it was pushing 37 degrees celisus. None of us wanted to walk as there was no wildlife at this island the flamingos where not in the salty lagoon so we walked really fast only to take off our clothes very fast and jump into the water. We snorkled for about an hour and a half and it was awesome! Saw more sharks, sealions where playing with us for a bit, lots of neat starfish, and fish in general. It was a really good snorkel and we were all very tired when we got back on the boat. Also sad because we knew tomorrow we were leaving. We began sailing back to San Cristobal where we left to go back to Quito.
So now we are here at the Travellers Inn our base Hostel here in Quito. I feel like i am still on the boat and mixed with the altitude since being at sealevel i feel very light headed and like i am rocking back and forth its like being drunk for free. Our plan was to go to Latatunga right from the airport and hop on a bus but it was late when we got into Quito (445pm) later than we had wanted to go. So we are just trying to decide what our plan will be for Tuesday-Thursday, where we will come back to Quito Thursday to see the Good Friday Procession in Quito and then try to get to Otavalo for Saturday-Sunday and fly home Monday night back to Edmonton. Hopefully my tan is still there or no one will believe me that i was in a hot destination! Which is ooo so important!
I should explain the title of the blog because it won't make sense unless I do. Miguel was our captain on the Archipell 2 catamaran boat. Think of Miguel like a Ecuadorian George Cloony, or a Mc.Dreamy if you can put an Ecuadorian twist to that, the point is that he was a hot older man. So Leann and I kept cracking jokes such as "El Capitan take me to your cabin" or "Miguel show me the ways of the sea", etc, etc. It was a fun week to say the least.
But I should go Tyson isn't feeling well still, has a fever i guess, and I am getting hungry.
I think Tyson slept 18 hours yesterday. He still has a bit of a headace, but his fever is less than it was. Hopefully I can get better soon. Off to the Andes today.
Talk to you later!!!
Sara and Tyson
Missing the Galapagos already!
Friday, April 3, 2009
Swimming with the sharks and seeing lots of Boobies.. hehe boobies
If you read the last post you would have probably guessed that those tummy cramps would turn into something... and did they ever. Tyson woke up around 1am shivering, and by 1:30 was running to the washroom, where in the span of 1.5 minutes had emptied his entire digestive track via both ends. He slept somewhat better after that.
I also got sick but only from the bottom end and was up every hour or so! Not a super duper great way to be excited to fly to the Galapagos Islands the next day. We woke up early as we had to be at the airport 2 hours in advance for our flight to San Cristabol Island, Galagapagos. Both Tyson and I drank some gatorade and had no breakfast as we were scared it wouldnt settle down. At the airport we had to get our tourist card for the islands, which we then used to check our bags. It also worked as a piece of ID to get onto the plane. We sat in the departure lounge for a while, and it was past our boarding time, but the gate on our ticket had not been called yet. Luckily Peter went and checked, and they were boarding our plane, just via another gate. We got on, no problem and we were off, via Gualiquial (something sorta like that) to San Cristabol. We arrived and were completely overdressed. We instantly took off our sweater and socks as it was approximately 30´C outside. As we stood in a very slow line to pay our park fees we saw what we thought was a celebrity in the Ecaudor line. We thought this because there was paporazzi all around this girl, one with a camera and another with a camera. The reason the line was taking so long was that the girl that entering the information into the computer was having about a dozen MSN conversations as she was suppose to be doing her job. I don´t think many other people noticed, or else one of the sweaty overweight tourists having to stand in a hot sticky line may have said something.
The funny thing was that after we picked up our bags we found out that we were on the same boat as the celebrity girl and the paporazzi. (Sara) I thought the girl was like miss. Ecuador or something as they paparazzi were all over her like drooling! It wasn´t until later that night when we met our boat crew and our bartender made us this really alcholic drink that the paparazzi was actually not a paparrazi but they were doing a promotional video of our boat Archipell 2 to get more tourists to come over to the islands. So really these last 5 days they have been mostly interested in the Ecuadorian Girl who we later found out last night was actually a teenager and not a model but her mother knew the person who owned the boat. Both her mother and her did not speak english.. maybe a couple of words and the girl was quite a snob! She was like a princess when we went on our Island walks all scared of the non existent bugs.. there were maybe a couple of flies. When we got to the dock we saw our first wildlife, sea lions lazying around on the dock and rocks, and birds sitting on the boats in the Harbor. It was already the closest I´ve been to a sea lion. Peter didn´t see one behind a bench, and also put his bag down on top of it. Tyson and I got our room which was the penguin room and Peter and Marilyn got the turtle room and poor Leann was stuck with one of the paparazi guys and they were in the blue footed boobie room.. hehe boobie.
When we got our rooms it was lunch time... the eating times are very schedualed. Breakfast at 7, lunch at noon, dinner at 7. The food has been awesome except Tyson and I can eat very little mostly rice and fruit pretty sad... everyone else is gaining weigth while our shorts are falling off. I guess its a great weight loss management for wearing my bikini. Not really a fun one though. After lunch we sailed up the coast to a little island called Las Lobos or something of that sort. We did a short walk where we saw baby sea lions, crabs, blue footed boobies .. hehe boobies, iguanas, lava lizards, and the red breasted frigate bird. Already we were in awe! You can get so close to the wildlife.. like 50 cm but you are not allowed to touch that is the number one park rule! So hard to not want to pet a sealion! After we did our walk, we went snorkling with the baby sea lions. It was AMAZING! The sealions come right up to your face and sometimes they hit you like one hit me in the head... there so friendly, and the school of fish! Tyson was cold... clearly he needs more body fat, i was just amazed at snorkeling i had not done it since i was a kid in the Atlantic Ocean. You really dont need to dive here, as you will see when we talk about the Devils Crown Arrrr. We snorkeled for about an hour and then we returned to our boat to have a nice warm shower and read our books. Then we ate dinner at 7pm and then stayed int he San Cristabol harbour till midnight to where we sailed. Tyson wasn´t feeling well so i gave him some gravol and he was out like a light. I was feeling alright but only because i hardly ate all day. I woke up once we sailed as we hit some pretty big waves and i had to convince myself that we were just on a train and i was dreamin we were on a boat and then i fell back asleep.
Day 2. Esponala Island
We ate breakfast at 7 and then we headed off to Gardner bay! MAGNIFICIENT!!! SPECTACULAR!! WHITE CRISP SAND so fine that it felt like Velvet between your toes and a million sealions lazin around on the beach. WOW! This is what i wanted my Greece to be like.. but this is better! We had a free walk for an hour and a half on the beach, where you could walk to the end of the beach, or snorkle, or swim, or lay around with the sealions. I did all three! Leann and I made a Sand Castle that Tyson critized but hey we didnt have buckets or anything! The sealions are a highlight to this trip they are so friendly like dogs really, i kept asking Tyson if we could take one home! HE keeps telling me no..
After our free walk we swam-snorkeled to a rocky outcrop where we saw schools of fish, and some tropical fish. The water is crystal clear tourquoise blue it is just gorgeous! We snorkeled again for an hour and then headed back to the dingy... thats the little boat that we take from our big boat. We were going to lie on the beach for another 20 min but it started to rain. We have had bits of rain but not too bad we are still getting tanned and putting SPF 30 on like 3 times a day! After lunch and a siesta ( we always eat lunch and then have about 2 hours of free boat time). At 2pm we headed to the cliffs of Espanola. Where we saw more blue footed boobies as it was thier nesting time and we saw Albatroses on land which was amazing, and pelicans, other boobies, more crabs, sealions, lizards, iguanas, etc. As you can tell wildlife is everywhere. The cliffs where amazing if we can use that word enough. Its so hard to explain without having pictures to show you. There was a big blow hole and the clif was probably about 50 feetdown. There was tons of seabirds in the sky and on the cliffs. They would fly right over our head. So breathtaking, it was like i was on another planet. It is worth the millions of dollars to get here!
Day 3 Florena Island and the Devils Crown ARRRRR
Woke up ate breakfast, still feeling only so so, it wasnt until the next day where we realized to take gravol 30 min before boat takes off! We went to Post Office bay where there is a barrel where you can put postcards in and the you supposed to look at all the other postcards there and if you find one that is where you are from like Edmonton Canada or Alberta you take it home and deliver it! We put our 2 in, in hope that it gets to us one day! There was nothing from Alberta, lots of Quebec and Toronto but that is too far away, Marilyn and Peter found one from North Vancouver so they took it and will deliver it to those people in the summertime when they go to Victoria.
We then went into a Lava Tube underground. It was alright the caves in Laos were better, but it was a really big cave. reallly high ceiling. From there we went back to the boat to get our snorkeling gear and sailed to the Devils Crown ARRRR. Ok I can´t even explain how awesome the snorkeling there was. Lets just start with this, we saw 4 Reef Sharks!!! I was scared but they were pretty far down below, we say a massive sting ray or 2, tons of colourful fish, some puffer fish but they weren´t puffed up, beautiful star fish, Tyson saw a lobster that had some wierd colours, and we saw massive schools of fish. It was a little wavy and rough and there was a bit of a current and i actually cut my leg on some coral and decided to go back to the Dingy boat as i was getting tired anyways and i didnt want the shark to smell my blood from my cut! It was so crazy that when you first jumped in the water and looked down you couldn´t see the bottom, not because it was murky or too deep, but because of all the fish. That was how many there was. Hopefully our underwater camera pictures turn out! After snorkeling for an hour and a half we went back to the boat for lunch and siesta. Then we went to Turtle Bay and a salty lagoon where we saw 3 flamingos for a brief second then they hid, and at Turtle bay we didnt see any sting rays or turtles but we saw lots of turtles nests. We did see Turtles in the ocean though, swimming. There was one frigate bird that went back and forth over all the turtle nests just hoping that one little turtle would come out early and make for a lunch. He didn´t eat while we were there. The sand was really fine there and beautiful as well. Paradise!
Day 4 Isabella Island
We went to the breeding center for the Isabella Tortises and saw little baby tortises and big torties. It was mating morning because we saw 4 turtles mating... lol there were a lot of jokes to be had. From porn stars, to I have a headache get off of me, to long and steady wins the race, etc. They were not the biggest tortises int he Galapagos but i decided there not that fun to observe compared to Sealions. They dont do a whole lot.
We also went to another salty lagoon and saw 2 other flamingos. Then we went snorkeling. It wasnt very good, that was the first snorkel that actually sucked. The water wasn´t clear and there wasn´t many fish or anything, a sealion did appear out of no where and went under my legs and there was some shrimp but thats about it. Everyone was kind of bummed out and i dont even think we used our full hour. The boat is great though after every outing we come back to some sort of snack always juice and we have had banana timbits as i call them, chips, fresh bread, and so on and so forth. They put toffees out and I think we ate them all, Peter ate half of them in 2 minutes.
In the afternoon we did the super hot death walk on Lava rocks. It was probably pushign 35 degrees with the heat raidating on the rocks. We went to see if any sharks were resting in a lava tube.. but we only saw one and i spotted it! We did see a couple turtles but it was so hot even the wildlife was hiding! We saw a bunch of Marine Iguanas swimming.
Day 5 Santa Cruz Island
Today was the last day for Princess Ecuador and her mother, as well as our Israel family, and the paparazzi. So we are now down to 7 people left on the boat with 11 crew and we expect one more person to join our boat this afternoon. This morning we had a early awakening because those peoples fligth got changed to early morning flight and they still had to go see the tortises in the wild. So we ate breakfast at 6am and then were were off to the port. We saw about 5 tortises in the wild, they were much bigger than the ones in the breeding center because they are a different species. I got bored, they didnt move they didnt do anything. We walked for like an hour and then it was time to say goodbye to our friends. They left by bus to the airport while we stayed and put ourselves into old tortise shells and got great humour out of it. We when played ping pong. For the record Tyson and Peter are tied 1-1 and I beat Marilyn but loss to Tyson. We then took 2 trucks back to the port where we came to the internet place to update this long ass blog!
We have 3 days left on the boat including today. We fly back to Quito on Monday lunch time and then our plan is to go straight to the bus depot and hop on a bus to Latatugna in the Andes and do the Quiolata loop for 3 days. We will return to Quito for Good Friday to see the festivities before going up to Otavalo for the Saturday Market and maybe spend the night there and come back to Quito on Sunday where we will hav 2 days in Quito before we leave on Monday night at 11pm to fly back to Atlanta and I hope we have time for the waffle house!
Thats all for now!
Dont worry we took LOTS OF pictures!
Sara and Tyson
I also got sick but only from the bottom end and was up every hour or so! Not a super duper great way to be excited to fly to the Galapagos Islands the next day. We woke up early as we had to be at the airport 2 hours in advance for our flight to San Cristabol Island, Galagapagos. Both Tyson and I drank some gatorade and had no breakfast as we were scared it wouldnt settle down. At the airport we had to get our tourist card for the islands, which we then used to check our bags. It also worked as a piece of ID to get onto the plane. We sat in the departure lounge for a while, and it was past our boarding time, but the gate on our ticket had not been called yet. Luckily Peter went and checked, and they were boarding our plane, just via another gate. We got on, no problem and we were off, via Gualiquial (something sorta like that) to San Cristabol. We arrived and were completely overdressed. We instantly took off our sweater and socks as it was approximately 30´C outside. As we stood in a very slow line to pay our park fees we saw what we thought was a celebrity in the Ecaudor line. We thought this because there was paporazzi all around this girl, one with a camera and another with a camera. The reason the line was taking so long was that the girl that entering the information into the computer was having about a dozen MSN conversations as she was suppose to be doing her job. I don´t think many other people noticed, or else one of the sweaty overweight tourists having to stand in a hot sticky line may have said something.
The funny thing was that after we picked up our bags we found out that we were on the same boat as the celebrity girl and the paporazzi. (Sara) I thought the girl was like miss. Ecuador or something as they paparazzi were all over her like drooling! It wasn´t until later that night when we met our boat crew and our bartender made us this really alcholic drink that the paparazzi was actually not a paparrazi but they were doing a promotional video of our boat Archipell 2 to get more tourists to come over to the islands. So really these last 5 days they have been mostly interested in the Ecuadorian Girl who we later found out last night was actually a teenager and not a model but her mother knew the person who owned the boat. Both her mother and her did not speak english.. maybe a couple of words and the girl was quite a snob! She was like a princess when we went on our Island walks all scared of the non existent bugs.. there were maybe a couple of flies. When we got to the dock we saw our first wildlife, sea lions lazying around on the dock and rocks, and birds sitting on the boats in the Harbor. It was already the closest I´ve been to a sea lion. Peter didn´t see one behind a bench, and also put his bag down on top of it. Tyson and I got our room which was the penguin room and Peter and Marilyn got the turtle room and poor Leann was stuck with one of the paparazi guys and they were in the blue footed boobie room.. hehe boobie.
When we got our rooms it was lunch time... the eating times are very schedualed. Breakfast at 7, lunch at noon, dinner at 7. The food has been awesome except Tyson and I can eat very little mostly rice and fruit pretty sad... everyone else is gaining weigth while our shorts are falling off. I guess its a great weight loss management for wearing my bikini. Not really a fun one though. After lunch we sailed up the coast to a little island called Las Lobos or something of that sort. We did a short walk where we saw baby sea lions, crabs, blue footed boobies .. hehe boobies, iguanas, lava lizards, and the red breasted frigate bird. Already we were in awe! You can get so close to the wildlife.. like 50 cm but you are not allowed to touch that is the number one park rule! So hard to not want to pet a sealion! After we did our walk, we went snorkling with the baby sea lions. It was AMAZING! The sealions come right up to your face and sometimes they hit you like one hit me in the head... there so friendly, and the school of fish! Tyson was cold... clearly he needs more body fat, i was just amazed at snorkeling i had not done it since i was a kid in the Atlantic Ocean. You really dont need to dive here, as you will see when we talk about the Devils Crown Arrrr. We snorkeled for about an hour and then we returned to our boat to have a nice warm shower and read our books. Then we ate dinner at 7pm and then stayed int he San Cristabol harbour till midnight to where we sailed. Tyson wasn´t feeling well so i gave him some gravol and he was out like a light. I was feeling alright but only because i hardly ate all day. I woke up once we sailed as we hit some pretty big waves and i had to convince myself that we were just on a train and i was dreamin we were on a boat and then i fell back asleep.
Day 2. Esponala Island
We ate breakfast at 7 and then we headed off to Gardner bay! MAGNIFICIENT!!! SPECTACULAR!! WHITE CRISP SAND so fine that it felt like Velvet between your toes and a million sealions lazin around on the beach. WOW! This is what i wanted my Greece to be like.. but this is better! We had a free walk for an hour and a half on the beach, where you could walk to the end of the beach, or snorkle, or swim, or lay around with the sealions. I did all three! Leann and I made a Sand Castle that Tyson critized but hey we didnt have buckets or anything! The sealions are a highlight to this trip they are so friendly like dogs really, i kept asking Tyson if we could take one home! HE keeps telling me no..
After our free walk we swam-snorkeled to a rocky outcrop where we saw schools of fish, and some tropical fish. The water is crystal clear tourquoise blue it is just gorgeous! We snorkeled again for an hour and then headed back to the dingy... thats the little boat that we take from our big boat. We were going to lie on the beach for another 20 min but it started to rain. We have had bits of rain but not too bad we are still getting tanned and putting SPF 30 on like 3 times a day! After lunch and a siesta ( we always eat lunch and then have about 2 hours of free boat time). At 2pm we headed to the cliffs of Espanola. Where we saw more blue footed boobies as it was thier nesting time and we saw Albatroses on land which was amazing, and pelicans, other boobies, more crabs, sealions, lizards, iguanas, etc. As you can tell wildlife is everywhere. The cliffs where amazing if we can use that word enough. Its so hard to explain without having pictures to show you. There was a big blow hole and the clif was probably about 50 feetdown. There was tons of seabirds in the sky and on the cliffs. They would fly right over our head. So breathtaking, it was like i was on another planet. It is worth the millions of dollars to get here!
Day 3 Florena Island and the Devils Crown ARRRRR
Woke up ate breakfast, still feeling only so so, it wasnt until the next day where we realized to take gravol 30 min before boat takes off! We went to Post Office bay where there is a barrel where you can put postcards in and the you supposed to look at all the other postcards there and if you find one that is where you are from like Edmonton Canada or Alberta you take it home and deliver it! We put our 2 in, in hope that it gets to us one day! There was nothing from Alberta, lots of Quebec and Toronto but that is too far away, Marilyn and Peter found one from North Vancouver so they took it and will deliver it to those people in the summertime when they go to Victoria.
We then went into a Lava Tube underground. It was alright the caves in Laos were better, but it was a really big cave. reallly high ceiling. From there we went back to the boat to get our snorkeling gear and sailed to the Devils Crown ARRRR. Ok I can´t even explain how awesome the snorkeling there was. Lets just start with this, we saw 4 Reef Sharks!!! I was scared but they were pretty far down below, we say a massive sting ray or 2, tons of colourful fish, some puffer fish but they weren´t puffed up, beautiful star fish, Tyson saw a lobster that had some wierd colours, and we saw massive schools of fish. It was a little wavy and rough and there was a bit of a current and i actually cut my leg on some coral and decided to go back to the Dingy boat as i was getting tired anyways and i didnt want the shark to smell my blood from my cut! It was so crazy that when you first jumped in the water and looked down you couldn´t see the bottom, not because it was murky or too deep, but because of all the fish. That was how many there was. Hopefully our underwater camera pictures turn out! After snorkeling for an hour and a half we went back to the boat for lunch and siesta. Then we went to Turtle Bay and a salty lagoon where we saw 3 flamingos for a brief second then they hid, and at Turtle bay we didnt see any sting rays or turtles but we saw lots of turtles nests. We did see Turtles in the ocean though, swimming. There was one frigate bird that went back and forth over all the turtle nests just hoping that one little turtle would come out early and make for a lunch. He didn´t eat while we were there. The sand was really fine there and beautiful as well. Paradise!
Day 4 Isabella Island
We went to the breeding center for the Isabella Tortises and saw little baby tortises and big torties. It was mating morning because we saw 4 turtles mating... lol there were a lot of jokes to be had. From porn stars, to I have a headache get off of me, to long and steady wins the race, etc. They were not the biggest tortises int he Galapagos but i decided there not that fun to observe compared to Sealions. They dont do a whole lot.
We also went to another salty lagoon and saw 2 other flamingos. Then we went snorkeling. It wasnt very good, that was the first snorkel that actually sucked. The water wasn´t clear and there wasn´t many fish or anything, a sealion did appear out of no where and went under my legs and there was some shrimp but thats about it. Everyone was kind of bummed out and i dont even think we used our full hour. The boat is great though after every outing we come back to some sort of snack always juice and we have had banana timbits as i call them, chips, fresh bread, and so on and so forth. They put toffees out and I think we ate them all, Peter ate half of them in 2 minutes.
In the afternoon we did the super hot death walk on Lava rocks. It was probably pushign 35 degrees with the heat raidating on the rocks. We went to see if any sharks were resting in a lava tube.. but we only saw one and i spotted it! We did see a couple turtles but it was so hot even the wildlife was hiding! We saw a bunch of Marine Iguanas swimming.
Day 5 Santa Cruz Island
Today was the last day for Princess Ecuador and her mother, as well as our Israel family, and the paparazzi. So we are now down to 7 people left on the boat with 11 crew and we expect one more person to join our boat this afternoon. This morning we had a early awakening because those peoples fligth got changed to early morning flight and they still had to go see the tortises in the wild. So we ate breakfast at 6am and then were were off to the port. We saw about 5 tortises in the wild, they were much bigger than the ones in the breeding center because they are a different species. I got bored, they didnt move they didnt do anything. We walked for like an hour and then it was time to say goodbye to our friends. They left by bus to the airport while we stayed and put ourselves into old tortise shells and got great humour out of it. We when played ping pong. For the record Tyson and Peter are tied 1-1 and I beat Marilyn but loss to Tyson. We then took 2 trucks back to the port where we came to the internet place to update this long ass blog!
We have 3 days left on the boat including today. We fly back to Quito on Monday lunch time and then our plan is to go straight to the bus depot and hop on a bus to Latatugna in the Andes and do the Quiolata loop for 3 days. We will return to Quito for Good Friday to see the festivities before going up to Otavalo for the Saturday Market and maybe spend the night there and come back to Quito on Sunday where we will hav 2 days in Quito before we leave on Monday night at 11pm to fly back to Atlanta and I hope we have time for the waffle house!
Thats all for now!
Dont worry we took LOTS OF pictures!
Sara and Tyson
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