Otovalo

My mom and I headed to a smaller city outside of Quito called Otovalo for a few days this week.  I thought it would be nice for her to see something other than big city Ecuador because the rest of the country is actually quite different.  Otovalo is well known for its gigantic Saturday market, but there is plenty of shopping that can be done the rest of the week.  And its a neat city because a lot of the people still wear their traditional dress.  I haven´t been buying much during my travels because I couldn´t carry it, but now that I can send stuff home with my mom we went a little bit nuts.  Its hard not to when gorgeous woven hammocks cost only 15 dollars, so we got to try out our terrible bargaining techniques for an afternoon.  We also went to see a condor and other bird rehabilitation center some Dutch folks built on a hill above Otovalo.  I got to hold a little falcon bird on my arm which was pretty cool! Tomorrow I´m headed to the Galapagos for 10 days to get my fill of sea lions, turtles, iguanas and blue footed boobies!

The Bell Tower in Quito

Today I had another fun experience with things I have begun to refer to as “activities they only allow in 3rd world countries”.  My mom wanted to check out the old city in Quito and see all the churches and museums we could possible cram into one day of sightseeing, so off we went to the old city.  We attempted to get into 7 different churches but only succeeded at 3 of them.  Apparently Monday is not a good church day.  The ones we did see were good though, in one the entire inside was covered in gilded gold.  But my favorite was the neo-gothic church that has been under construction since 1896.  For only $2 you could take an elevator way up one of the church towers for incredible views all over the city.  Then you could walk through the church roof atop all the arches and climb even higher up sketchy wire metal staircases to the top of the tower in the back of the church.  At this point mom refused to keep climbing with me, but I intended to go as high as possible.  Finally you could crawl up a tiny spiral staircase, then 4 wire ladders up into the bell tower!  That was my favorite part, I even got to pull on the ropes that range the bells if I did it quietly.  Definitely one of those things they only let you do in places like Ecuador!

Bellavista Cloud Forest

My mom arrived in Ecaudor to travel with me for a couple of weeks (hooray for fancy food and hotels!) and we immediately set out the next day for the Bellavista Cloud Forest a couple of hours outside of Quito.  Bellavista is this lovely hotel in the middle of the cloud forest where you can go hiking, birding or just sit back and relax.  The place is gorgeous, the forest is full of cool trees and plants and seems very jungle-like, I even went swimming in a waterfall!  All the flowers and birds are incredibly bright coloured and there were tons of hummingbirds.  You could sit and watch the hummingbirds for an hour or more there were so many of them.  I was also introduced to an entirely new breed of tourist -  The Old British Birder.  Bellavista is a birders paradise and so there were tons of over 50 British couples there who were searching the world for exotic birds so they can tick them off their list of “birds I have seen”.  I thought they were pretty crazy, and I think they thought the same of me after I told them about my adventures travelling South America solo for the last 3 months!  It also managed to take my mom on a hike that involved hiking along a stream in the forest for quite awhile through mosquito infested undergrowth.  I´m going to need to adjust my levels of what are acceptable hiking conditions while she´s here, sketchy jungle streams not being included.

Cumbre o Muerte (Summit or Die)

(note: please excuse the terrible punctuation in this posting, I thought I had seen all weirdnesses with south american keyboards but the one Im currently on doesn’t allow most capital letters …)

cotopaxi volcano is one of the highest active volcanoes in the world and at 5897m is a challenging climb.  it’s also one of the few equatorial glaciers in the world starting at 5000m.  cotopaxi is technically not a hard climb, all you need is an ice ax and some crampons, but its still a VERY long day.  the climb began yesterday when we drove to 4500m and then hiked 300m to the refuge at 4800m on the volcano.  The refuge is just below where the glacier starts and provides a place to begin attempts on the cotopaxi summit.  we woke up at midnight, and began climbing at 1am in the pitch black!  I’ve decided that I’m not a fan of hiking in the dark, you can’t see any views or where you’re going so it’s kind of depressing.  you just keep going up and up and up with no sense of it ever being finished.  it has to be done this way though because by midday the sun has melted the snow and ice too much and it is no longer safe to climb.  I hadn’t realized beforehand exactly how ridiculously steep the climb would be.  most of it involved going straight up 45 degree slopes, with some up to 60 degrees, which quickly became really exhausting.  then you also have the altitude to add to the challenge.  at 4800m there is MUCH less oxygen then my body is used to, even after acclimatizing in quito for a couple of days.  but i really started to feel it after 5500m where i started to get dizzy and feel nausious.  there were quite a few times when i considered just calling it quits because feeling sick while climbing was really terrible, and it was also snowing.  but my partner and i pushed on until we made it to 5700m, just below the summit, where you can see the spectacular glacier and are way up above the clouds in the valley below.  it was pretty amazing to have climbed up so high, especially on a volcano!  However I don’t think I have the “cumbre o muerte” (summit or die, as my mountain guide put it) mentality of many mountaineers, I was pretty happy to have made it to just below the summit and back down safe and sound.

Cooking with an Italian in Ecuador

I left Banos and returned to Quito because I have really been wanting to climb one of the volcanoes in Ecuador.  One of the companies I contacted put me in touch with another single traveller also wanting to climb a volcano and so we decided to go together because it would be more fun, and less expensive.  We plan to climb Cotopaxi volcano, one of the easiest to ascend, but its still a tough trek.  Its necessary to acclimitize properly beforehand due to the lack of oxygen because Cotopaxi is over 5800m tall.  So I had to return to Quito a few days beforehand.  Then yesterday we did an acclimitization hike to a dead volcano above Quito called Pichincha which is at 4700m.  Hiking at an altitude you’re not acclimitized to is a bizarre sensation.  You think you shouldn’t feel tired, yet its hard to breathe and your body feels exhausted after only a couple of hours of easy walking.  Even walking around Quito at 3000m is more tiring then normal.  Im hoping that I can make the full ascent of the volcano, although only about 50% of people make it due mostly to problems with the altitude.

After our hike my trekking partner and I decided to go to the grocery store to make some dinner.  The guy Im doing the climb with is from Italy, and LOVES to cook (lucky for me).  Basically I wasnt allowed to help with dinner, and I recieved lessons on what makes good pasta, good olive oil and good wine while shopping.  Then he proceeded to cook what was probably one of the most delicious meals Ive had in all of my travels!  Who would’ve thought I would eat delicious Italian pasta while in Quito …

Nariz del Diablo Train Ride

I left sunny, warm Banos and travelled to cold, rainy Riobamba because I had heard that you could ride on top of a train for a day, and what backpacker doesn’t want the opportunity to ride on top of a sketchy 3rd world train all day long?  Actually the Nariz del Diablo is a somewhat famous piece of railroad is it descends down into a valley along the edge of a steep cliff.  Apparently its an engineering feat that they even managed to build the railway.  Nowadays its a fun tourist attraction, you show up at the station in Riobamba at 6am to get your seat on top of the train, latecomers have to sit below which isn’t nearly as much fun.  I ended up sitting next to an English girl who told me crazy stories about sneaking past porter protests on the Inca trail and having to run at the start of her trek to get across the bridge before they locked the gates to trekkers!  In comparison my Inca trail trek was kind of dull.

The train ride was lots of fun, it was a great way to see the Ecuadorian landscape and we were lucky with the weather.  The train only derailed twice, and nobody fell off the top (apparently that happens to some unlucky tourists).  Then we were lucky enough to get the last seats on the bus back to Banos afterwards, as the hords of tourists made a break for the bus station all at once.  Back in Banos I enjoyed another day of sun, and had some fun partying with the Ecuadorian rafting guides I’d made friends with in the week prior.

Canyoning, Rafting, Biking and Hiking in the Jungle

My first day in Banos I went canyoning on the edge of the Amazon jungle and it was AWESOME! We walked, crawled, swam, rapelled and jumped our way through a canyon that was overhung with tons of trees and vines and flowers. There were several waterfalls, some of which we just jumped down from, and others that we had to rapel down the side of, then would climb partway back up and jump off again. And the water in Ecuador is warm, so it wasn´t even cold at all. Even when it was absolutely pouring rain (there´s a reason its called the rainforest) it still wasnt cold at all.  One part even involved setting up a tyrolean to slide down to get past some cliffs and a huge waterfall.

The next day a guy working at my hotel convinced me to come rafting through the jungle.  Only in countries like Ecuador would rafting begin with drinking beer at 11in the morning while riding on a converted truck that is blasting reggae.  The rafting was great, it was class 3 and 4 rapids and part of it went through a National Park with jungle climbing up both sides of the valley we were going through.  Partway down the rapids we stopped at a small river on the side with a bridge over it where you could jump off the bridge into the river!  It was definitely some of the best rafting I´ve ever done, and you couldn´t have better scenery then Amazon jungle.

Day 3 in Banos I rented a bike for a few dollars and rode the ´Routa de Cascadas´ (route of the waterfalls) outside of Banos.  Basically the road that leads out of Banos is on the side of a beautiful valley that is full of waterfalls.  Bikeriding was a great way to enjoy the valley and scenery slowly.  There was also a cable car at one point that took you across the valley to view a waterfall on the other side.  And at one of them you hiked down, and then could go directly in behind this huge waterfall.

Ive now left Banos (but I might go back, its such a nice town) to take a ride down the Nariz del Diablo train.  Its a feat of engineering that is supposed to provide great views of volcanoes (weather permitting), apparently you get to ride on top of the train, which Im excited about for tomorrow.

Baths in Banos

Ive been in transit for a few days, first taking a night bus to Santiago.  In Santiago the most interesting thing that happened to me was a street performer decided to make me the butt of most of his jokes in his performance.  He seemed to enjoy picking on the foreigners in the crowd, it made me wish I understood more Spanish.  After spending one night in Santiago I flew to Quito, Ecuador yesterday.  Then the hostel didnt have my reservation and I had to leave today so I decided to get out of Quito since I had to switch hostels anyways.  Plus I really prefer smaller towns to big cities while travelling, and wanted to stop somewhere for a few days because constantly moving around is really tiring.  So I took the bus 3 hours to Banos. Unfortunately on the bus I had my first experience with things going wrong while travelling because my hiking boots were stolen from me.  Ive had tons of warnings about being careful with belongings while travelling in South America but I never figured somebody would just walk off the bus with my boots in hand.  I guess I got a bit complacent because I havent had any problems yet at all.  So that was kind of upsetting for me.  Things got a bit better though, I ended up meeting some locals here and hung out with them for the afternoon.  While I was sitting in the plaza a few guys asked me to take photos with them, they seemed to be entertained by taking photos with an obvious foreigner.  Then they were going swimming and invited me along so we went to a pool.  Banos is a spa town so there are a lot of swimming pools around.  I quickly realized though that I was the only girl in a pool full of Ecuadorian men.  Im definitely going to spend a few days here before making my way to the coast in search of a beach and surfing lessons.  Around Banos you can go canyoning and river rafting on the edges of the jungle, which Im excited to try!