AWOL! Em and Chris in South America

We enjoyed quite feast with our host family. Check out the cake! Our host family in Cuenca has been extremely hospitable and we´ve had a lot of spanish practice. Alicia (our Cuenca mom) is awesome in many ways, but above all her cooking is the best. It is a mix of Italian and Ecuatoriano and other things. Que riquicimo!

(Emily with ´hermana´ Gina)

The whole gang. Unfortunately my camera was acting up, the pictures are a little fuzy.

Note from Emily to her family back in Fairfield: I hope that you prepared and enjoyed my cake 🙂

More Pictures here: Photo Album – It´s a little cluttered but oh well.

When we first touched down in Quito, Em and I were both impressed with the size of the city. It sprawls North to South in the shadow of a group of tall mountains that stand to the east. The history surrounding Quito is pretty fascinating. It has a lot of history and historical sites as well as having a lot of modern and international influences that resulted after petroleum was discovered. The origin of the city is somewhat interesting. After the Incas defeated the indigenous people, they set up Quito as a second capitol. Quito had particular significance for the Incas because they believed they were setting up a city at the center of the world. Actually there is a mountain in Ecuador that technically is the highest place on earth. The logic is this, since the Earth is the widest at the equator and the mountain is the highest mountain on the equator, if you stand at the top of that mountain you will be standing on the top of the world. So they say.

Unfortunately, we did not get the chance to go either to the “Mitad del Mundo”, which is about 40 minutes north of Quito, or to the top of the world. Instead, we went to Otavalo which is regarded as the biggest market in South America. Saturday is the big day, so we hopped on a bus to see what we could see. The crafts were all quite beautiful (and we bought some of course): woven scarves, socks, blankets, dresses, sweaters, paintings, instruments, spices…..pigs, sheep or horses if you have the need or desire. Eventually it began to blur together as we went down street after street. So we called it a day and returned to the hotel to enjoy a vibrant sunset. On Sunday we strolled around the market, much smaller now, for a little while and then took the bus back to Quito and met our host family.

The rest of the week in Quito we were pretty much exhausted. I think it was the mix of the altitude (Quito is on average 9000 ft above sea level), Spanish classes and the fact that we were living with a host family. At the school we were attending, I think their curriculum and requirements are more geared towards students earning credit for universities. Which means a lot of homework. In addition to that, staying with a host family basically is an extension of school. It’s hard work to even try to get the most basic ideas across! They were very friendly and helpful, but it is fairly frustrating to have to concentrate so much just to talk about the weather or the food. Oy!

We did have a chance for one excursion. There is a group of mountains to the west that towers over Quito. There is a tram that goes way, way up to a vista point that overlooks most of Quito. We thought the air was thin in Quito! After walking just a few feet along the not-so-steep path, we were gasping for breath. The view, however, was amazing. We could see Cotopaxi and a couple other major mountains as well as the majority of Quito.

After finishing our week in classes we headed down towards Cuenca. We stopped over in Riobamba for a night in order to take a train to the “Devil’s Nose”. The train is pretty cool, you can sit on top of the train for the duration of the six hour train ride. It gets really dusty (we returned with basically a layer of dust on our clothes and our hair was totally filthy) and on the day we went it was pretty cold as well. But the elements are part of the experience, and I loved it. Em was freezing much of the time, but it wasn’t too bad for me. On the way back, however, it dumped down rain. Luckily during one of the stops, Em and I had gone inside the minute we felt raindrops because we had the laptop and didn’t want to take any risks. However the other passengers weren’t so lucky, The train did not make any more pauses and the rain started coming down really heavy. By the time we made the next stop there were a lot of drenched and bedraggled passengers.

For us, the rain wasn’t too much of a surprise. It was just one of those weekends. When we were in Riobamba none of the ATMs were working for us. Also, the school we had enrolled in for our stay in Cuenca said that they would be in touch about our host family but we did not get any information back. Normally this wouldn’t be too much of a stresser, but since our funds were running low we really just wanted to be able to stay with our host family and have some sort of home base while we figured out what was up with our bank cards. But…no word. We tried calling the director of the school, but he wasn’t home…we tried emailing to no avail. So come Sunday, we arrived in Cuenca, paid for a night’s stay at a cheap hostel and we were left with only $3 between the two of us. Luckily, food is cheap here, so we had a luxurious diner of three small rolls of bread which cost us all of 30 cents. However, at that point spending ANY money was stressful because we might need it for a phone call or for Internet access or whatever else might be needed to get us out of our predicament.

Thankfully, things worked themselves out and we are now staying with a wonderful host family and have ATM cards that work (we still don’t know what the deal was). There are people constantly coming in and out of the house so we get a lot of practice. A lot of good food as well. Our host mom, Alicia, is a really good cook. We are enjoying Cuenca a lot as well. It is a bit smaller than Quito, but it feels much safer and is much quieter. The cathedrals, churches and other buildings in the central part of town are also quite beautiful. It’s a nice change from the hustle and busyness of Quito.

In our experience so far in Ecuador, the points of interest are the cities, the people and the rich history of the country. In Costa Rica, it was the natural wonders of the country that are the main attraction, but so far there hasn’t been much to see here. From what we’ve seen of Ecuador, at these higher elevations it is a mix of high desert and some sparse, alpine(ish) forests. Things did seem to get a bit greener as we went south towards Cuenca. I’m not sure if that is due to the rainstorm, or if it is just greener in these parts. It is a big contrast having come from Costa Rica where everything is lush, green and vibrant. We have yet to see the jungle or the coast, however. And we have yet to see the Galapagos islands, which we’ve heard are one of most amazing things in the world. So while we are getting a lot of cultural experience, there is a lot we have been missing on the natural side of things. We’ll see how things pan out in the next couple weeks.

Costa Rica has now vanished behind us. Our plane has just pushed through the final bank of the clouds and we are on our way to Ecuador. It’s interesting how happenstance can change the face of things. Had the option to stop over in San Jose never existed in the first place, the Costa Rica “side trip” would have never even happened. I’m really glad we went. After two weeks of time here, we have only skimmed the surface of the country, but I think we experienced quite a bit in our brief time. The mix of attending language school plus visiting several of the ‘must-see’ places, was actually a really good combination. Since the Spanish instructors are ticos, we get to interact closely with them and learn more about Costa Rican culture and character. At the same time, we met a lot of fellow travelers who are going to the same places that we are and share a number of common interests. I’m hoping in Ecuador it will be the same because after just a week, there were already people that I thought it would have been fun to go hang out with, or take a weekend trip, or whatever. We shall see very soon how things pan out in Quito and Cuenca.

As for the last few days, they have been nice and fairly relaxing. On Monday Emily and I celebrated our belated anniversary by treating ourselves to the Tabacon Hot Springs near the Arenal volcano. It was well worth the wait. The whole spa is centered around a cascading creek of water that is heated by the Arenal volcano (I think). They have constructed natural looking conduits throughout the spa and people can take their pick of waterfalls, pools, even a water slide. It’s fantastic. As for the volcano itself, the Arenal volcano is the major thing that draws people to the area, but no-one ever sees it! We talked to one family who had seen the volcano in action, but everyone else we talked to said that it was obscured by the clouds and couldn’t be seen. I would have liked to see an active volcano spewing, minivan sized rocks. But it didn’t happen.

The next day I (Chris) woke up nauseous and feverish. We had a pass to the hot springs again that day but I had to stay in, bleh. Emily, however, did not stay in and care for her ailing husband. Nope. Instead she ditched me and got a massage whilst I got a shot in the butt. No fair.

The shot seemed to work though! We had to catch a bus later in the afternoon and by then I was feeling a bit better, I still had a mild fever but it wasn’t too bad. Fit enough for a bus ride anyway. We rode down to a little town called San Lorenzo where they run Canopy Tours through the cloud forest. We stayed at the “Lands in Love” hotel, which is just 1km away from the canopy tour. In fact, the tour goes through some of the hotel property. Through CRLA we had received a great package deal with the hotel which included the canopy tour and three meals, all at student price which was a pretty good discount. Of all the places we stayed in, this place we liked the best. The scenery around the hotel was breathtaking. The hotel is away from the road, and the area is somewhat remote anyway, so it is completely surrounded by the cloud forest. The staff themselves are a group of about twenty Israeli friends that joined together to buy the hotel and run it together. A lot of them had related businesses back home (catering, landscaping, etc) so they would contribute in their area of expertise. All except for one person anyway, she was a criminal lawyer back in Israel, but in Costa Rica? She does the laundry. While they all have specific responsibilities, it seems like a lot of the daily responsibilities are shared by everyone at one point or another. So the whole place has a different feel to it. Each one of the staff is personally invested in the business so a strong sense of community spills over into how they treat their guests. We felt very welcomed and well looked after. And the food was good too! We were so tired of chicken, rice and beans (plenty more to come too I’m sure) so it was a relief to eat something different. The entire menu is vegetarian, with a lot of variety. In Costa Rica, if you order a vegetarian something or other, it basically means rice and beans. Not so at this hotel. The Isreali food they had was particularly good, humus, falafel…mmmmm

Ok, so you get the picture. The hotel was really cool. You have to check out their menu too. Hah. Here you go.

The next morning we went on the canopy tour. The canopy tours are a tour of the cloud forest via a bunch of zip lines that are strung from treetops and platforms. It was really fun. Em and I both thought that the Tarzan swing was actually the best part. In the photo album, I’ve included some canopy footage so you can get a “first hand experience”. Our guides helped teach us the Spanish names for various parts of the forest, like vines, insects and other things. Unfortunately I just came away with lienas y ojas (vines and leaves). The rest I forgot. Oh and cable, which is cable in both Spanish and English. That one is easy. The tour we took boasts that it has the longest cable in the world, so we can add that to our list of accomplishments. It was a really long cable, and very high up too, at least a hundred feet in places, probably more. It was a blast.

After that we headed back to San Jose, stayed the night, hopped on a plane and now we’ve arrived in Quito, Ecuador. Our connecting flight was in Panama so we got to see an aerial view of the Panama Canal on the way over. So we´ve even seen Panama too – all 20 minutes of it. Ok, I’ve got to sign off now, time to get something to eat.

Pura Vida! Here´s the album with more pictures and movies of Em and I doing parts of the canopy tour. Again, they take a bit to load depending on your connection. Also, we added a link to the Tortuguero picture album as well (see the previous post). http://www.theprudhommes.net/photos/thumbnails.php?album=4