HugsHandShakeshi5s: June 2017

TW: Animal Miss-carriage THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS IMAGES SOME MAY FIND DISTURBING

Ecuador

Naturally, traveling south, Ecuador was the next country after Colombia. Ecuador is a beautiful country and all of its citizens will rave about how it is diverse and compact it is, you know just like California. Within a day you can find yourself in the jungle, next to the world’s highest active volcano, and on the beach enjoying a fresh juice and some mosquito bites. Ecuador uses the US dollar as its currency and they have free universal health care, yes even dental is included in this. And of course Ecuador is home to the world famous Galapagos Islands. i do believe due to all of these factors, Ecuador is a highly visited country and home to many ex-pats.

As loved as Ecuador is by many, I must say it was not my favorite. I think if Ecuador was the only country I went to, I would have loved it and raved about it, but it has the misfortune of being placed in-between Colombia and Peru; two countries with better food, cheaper prices, nicer people and more expanse nature. Don’t get me wrong, I met great people in Ecuador and enjoyed many of the places we visited and I would go there again. Plus I still need to visit the Galapagos, just when I have more money.

The chicas tranquilas started our journey in Equador in Otavalo, home to one of South America’s largest Artisian Markets. There were many beautiful items, however although it was large it was not diverse, most stands sold the same sweaters and jewelry as their neighbor. From there we went to Quito, the world’s highest Capital city. There we had a great couchsurfer that took us to the middle of the world. We also make an appearance in part of music video by Cocoa Roots, filmed in Quito while we were there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBERyBQ845Y (see if you can spot us, Chaquira makes the cut, look on the left, 3:35 is the best time )

From Quito we went to Mindo, a cloud forest, where we discovered a “virgin waterfall” with some locals, that was an adventure to say the least. We went improvisationally (with heavy packs and electronics) went with some locals to find a waterfall they could hear from their land. There was no path, steep hills, mud, wet rocks and rain. Chaquira ran away a couple of times because she didn’t like being passed up waterfalls and Katie and Brittany both broke their shoes. There were time we climbed up so steep we needed to use ropes to get up. We shared this adventure with 4 young adventurous guys and 2 other girls more out of place than us. They did the journey with rum and coke in hand and in jeans and boots. After lots of laughing and frustration and many other emotions, and a few hours later we emerged from the Selva! The journey felt long and it seemed we covered miles of land but in reality we only went about a half a mile, we just took so long becuase of the terrain, and Chaquira. From the road, one of the guys "houses" was just a hop skip and a jump away. supposedly. The two other girls and one guy were so done they just walked back towards town. We, however, ended by sharing lunch in our bathing suites outside a shack or house... while our cloths semi-dried near a fire, waiting the rain out to return to the city. In this same town we met a photographer that we almost flew to the amazon with in a private plane, but that didn't happen in the end. Would have been a good story though.

From there we headed to the coast. The coast was hot and there were plenty of mosquitos, however the water was so nice and the perfect temperature to stay inside forever. We first visited Canoa, where we spent sometime inland on finca verde in RioCanoa enjoying life and the company of a couple of argentian travelers and all the characters associated with the finca. One of my favorite moments was when we got to go visit the local artisian microbrewery producing the beer Beerkingo.

Next stop: Puerto Lopez; where we visited La Isla de Plata and made hundreds of cookies in an pizzaoven on a corner outside. Isla de la Plata -Silver Island-, so named for the silver appearance the island has when it is covered in bird poop, is known as the poor man’s Galapagos and will set you back about $35 opposed to $1000. There we saw frigates, blue-footed boobies, manta-rays, sea turtles and various fish. Later to try and ganar unos dolares para el viaje we decided to take advantage of the oven in our hostel and bake a bunch of cookies and sell them. Well then we go to the grocery store and the option that made the most economical sense to us at the time was to buy 1kl of flour and use it all to make cookies. That my friends is enough to fill a dishwashing bin with cookie dough, which is exactly what we did. In the middle of mixing everything together the owner tells me that we are not allowed to use the oven. So first plan we come up with- fry the dough. This created deepfried granola, on the the next plan. We freeze them... but then what. Ok what else could we do. Well next store is an Italian Pizzaria. I go over, the owner is Italian! Perfect, we talk in Italian for a bit and exchange our stories. He says I can use the ovem! Succuess! Almost, he is closing and going home, and the following day the resteraunt is closed so we can use the oven, but in two days. But we don't give up. I walk around the Corner and there is a Pizza stand with an outdoor oven selling pizza by the slice. I explain our situation and offer to exchange cookies for the use of the oven. He says don't even worry about it bring the dough over and we will cook them. I don't think he realized how much there was, he didn't seem too thrilled about that. However we got talkinging and had a great time. We got to cook most of the cookies, and we let him with a bunch. The cookies cooked in about 3 minutes and we had hundreds of cookies after about an hour.

They sold pretty well at first but we traveled with those cookies for forever.

Lastly on the coast we went to Olon. Here we stayed with some great Venezulans and spent time most of out time with their 13 year old venezualan neighbor Seba(stian). I must say I hope that Venezuela’s issues are short lived because I can not wait to visit. I think I will love it just as much as Colombia, their people are great and their food is delicious and I am sure the country is beautiful. Anyway, back to Ecuador…. From Olon, we also briefly visited the famous Montanita (Ecuador’s party town), its not all its cracked up to be.

Then we moved inland to Riobamba. Here we had a little hic-up and almost lost Chaquira on the bus, but luckily we found her again. This is also where we went rock climbing is some beautiful places, my favorite of which was Los Acantilados a beautiful playground in nature with a view of Cotopaxi (the world’s tallest active volcano).

Moving on, we went to Latacunga to visit Quilatoa, a lake at the top of a volcano. Absolutely stunning and Brittany’s favorite part of Ecuador. Here we stayed with some of our favorite Ecuadorians.

We then went to Banos, Ecuadors’s capital of adventure. This was my favorite place in Ecuador. We spent Katie’s 28^th birthday there and her and I went bike riding to various waterfalls, ate some amazing fruit ice cream, spent and evening with a great group of travelers we kept running into and we went puenting

(basically bungee jumping, but with a non- elastic rope). There we also went rafting (for free) and visited some hot-springs.

Unfortunately in the journey it turned out Quira (our dog) was pregnant the entire time. She gave birth to five still-borne puppies. They were not fully developed. She ate them all (which is apparently normal for animals to do) and later threw up several times. We gave her antibiotics from the vet to cure a uteral infection from the depature. Sorry if this is too graphic for you. In the end it was really sad but the reality is we have no idea what we would have done traveling with five puppies. Warning, pictures of this event follow.

Lastly we went to Cuenca where we stayed with a couchsurfer that owned a hostel that we painted a mural in.

From there we crossed into Peru.