Northern Ecuador
After our brief LA visit we ended up staying a month in
beautiful Ecuador, including
a visit to the spectacular Galapagos Islands.
This is quite a bit longer than we originally planned, but we could have easily
spent even more time in this fantastic country. (I do still smile when thinking
about Lars’ pre-trip Excel spreadsheet, where he had outlined our year long trip
day by day. I feel I was right in telling him to toss that thing in the bin as
soon as possible. Traveling never turns out as planned!)
We started in Quito,
which we really liked. This above is us straddling the equator – the ‘fake’ one with
the monument and the real one, measured with military GPS, some three hundred
meters from the original one. Here I managed to balance an egg on a nail –
pretty cool, huh! That's going on my CV, for sure.
Moving on swiftly; next stop was Latacunga, our base for
some volcano climbing. We first did a day trip to Quilotoa where we gazed down
upon a beautiful crater lake at some 3800 meters above sea level. On the way
back we stumbled upon a small village which had come alive with a proper colorful
fiesta – complete with some (rather amateurish) bull fighting. Anyone was
welcome to prove their manhood against the bulls, waving cloths or simply your
own jacket, so I naturally held on tight to Lars, shooting angry glares at
people trying to persuade ‘the gringo’ to give it a go. A boy is always going
to be better than a mashed up ‘real’ man in my book!
After our intro-day at high altitude we felt acclimatized
enough to try to climb Cotopaxi, an active volcano, a measly 5897
meters high. This was a bit stupid. The first day went well, and we got a bit
above 5000 meters, climbing the glacier tied to our mountain guide and each
other, and with cramp-ons on our shoes to keep us on the ice. Fun for me – not
the first time for Lars. At night I confidently smirked at people, including
Lars, who were complaining of feeling a bit light headed, as I didn’t feel a
thing. That didn’t last long though, as I was evacuated close to midnight due
to acute mountain sickness. Good thing we went up there with a guide who
recognized the signs.
We spent a few days recuperating in Latacunga - a very charming city – and eating all the
chocolates we had purchased for our climb, before we headed to the even more
laid back Banos, named after the hot pools you find there. We rested a few days
here as well, then rented bikes and went around admiring the surrounding
landscape with numerous waterfalls.
The Galapagos Islands
From Guayaquil
we boarded a plane to the Galapagos Islands. And oh my God was it astonishing!! We have swum
with sea wolfs, sharks, giant turtles, penguins, rays, and schools of
cool-looking fish, etc, etc. Lars did some cool diving too, seeing, amongst
other things, hammer head sharks.
This lovely Galapagos experience was however shadowed by a
tragic accident. In the very last minute Lars and I had opted for a four day
cruise on the yacht Rumba, instead of an eight day one - this turned out to be
our lucky break. The Rumba shipwrecked off the coast of Island
Isabela, due to a problem with the instruments, just after we had
gotten off. The friends we had made who were still onboard survived, thankfully,
but a passenger replacing us lost his life leaving a wife and two daughters,
and our hearts go out to them. It felt very strange and sad watching the
remains of the boat washed up on the beach outside our hostel. We were humbled
by witnessing this tragic event. We had never for one moment questioned our
safety onboard the ship. Hundreds of yachts cruise the Galapagos every day,
smack full of tourists. We were later told that there are about four accidents
a year here, not widely advertised. After this incident we decided that we were
done with the Galapagos, and flew back to the mainland.
South Ecuador
We continued to explore southern Ecuador
together with three friends from the Rumba; Guy from Israel, and Steve and Alison from dear ol’ London.
We first stayed a few days in charming Cuenca,
but spent most of our time playing cards to be perfectly honest – Guy got us
hooked on ‘Yaniv’… And watching some football, of course. Then we moved on to
picturesque Vilcabamba – Lars arrived a tad bit later as he had to return to
Cuenca to pick up our passports that he had forgotten there - a mere 10 hours extra on a bus. He thus spent
more than 16 hours on buses in those 24 hours. In the morning before Lars arrival
to Vilcabamba, the rest of us did some trekking up the mountains to a beautiful
waterfall where we drank some mate and – you guessed it – played Yaniv…
This was our last real stop in Ecuador. We are now all in Peru,
but the crew of five has diminished to only four as Guy has raced ahead for his
flight back home.
--(@
Louise
