Hello Ev eryone, Thought we would update you on our last week. We are sitting here in an internet cafe. Karla is enjoying her 10th smoke for the day inside!
We love Equador! We arrived Monday afternono - nursing snakbite hangovers, hostel we are staying at is really cheap and peopel are friendly. We have been very bsuy see as much of Equador as we can. Have been to the Equator, it was very overated - will try to put up a photo.
Our first mishap for the trip occured when we realised we had set our clocks an hour ahead of time - we though we would have an early night going to bed at 830, it wasnt until the morning that we realised we actually went to bed at 730, and we were waiting for our tour an hour before it started wondering where our tour guide was!
We have climbed a glacier, it was teh hardest 300metres of our life - we werent sure we were going to make it, there is no oxygen up here, thats our excuse anyhow! The weather was appauling - the trou guide said it was one of the worst days to do it. We could hardly stand up, literally had to crawl up the mountain because of wind, had to stop every 3 steps to catch our breath. It was also freezing - we make make good use of our thermals. It was an amazing achievment to make it tothe top (we mean base camp!) The views would have been sensational were it not for all of the clouds and stone storms. Never the less it was a brilliant day.
After another early night, we went on another hike to the most amazing placwe in the world - quilotoa volcano. It was a massive volcano crater with a bright geen lake in the middle. It was a bright, warm sunny day and there were no tourists around - we got to blend in with the locals well. Not sure what they thought of us as we kept taking photos of them but we thought they were friendly and adorable. We catn describe how amaizign the view was - it was absolutely breathtaking! We walked down the steep volcano and the locals took us back up on horseback - cipriano and gonzalez worked hard and were our life savers after yesterdays efforts.
We have been trying the local delicacies - we love empanadas so far. We are finding the food fairly cheap too which is good for our budgets. We have had to brush up on our spanish as not too many people speak english here. We should be fluent soon! (heheheheh)
That brings us to today - we have given ourselves the day off today, catching up on washing etc, changing hostels and meeting our tour tonight.
We will try to put up photos now, hope everyone is well.
Caio til next time
Renay and Karla
