It Has To Rain Today

After over a month without a rainy day at the beginning of the rainy season here it pretty much had to rain today. Instead we were treated to another nice day AND Cotopaxi stuck her head out for us to see which happens less frequently than Mt. Rainier this time of year. Cotopaxi is 19,347 feet and looms over Quito, but usually in the clouds. Oddly, it is only the 3^rd highest active volcano in the world.

Along our route to the markets in Octavalo and Cotacachi we stopped at a Lago San Pablo at the base of another volcano and continued on to our first market in Otavalo.

They did NOT oversell this market in the guide books. Wow! The amount of products is tremendous and the market stretches for blocks and blocks in many directions.

The market in Cotacachi is lesser in size, but the leather  products there are great. Two jackets, 3 belts, and a pair of gloves for less than $150. Try that in the States – or Florence for that matter.

We’re back at the hotel and packed as I type this. We have a 4AM wake up call and a 4:30 transfer to the airport for our 6:25 flight to Miami – then LA – then home.

One last great, sunny day to bring this journey to an end.

Picture party to come…..

Quito - Not OK TO Miss City

What a beautiful city!  Along our travels we met a couple of groups that had been to Quito before we met up. Most told us that we wouldn’t be sad if we missed it. We will let the pictures from our afternoon walk through old town speak for themselves.

The rest of our tour today included a trip to a volcano where people farm in the crater (they are not allowed to overnight there though), a stop at the "Center of the World" (we can confirm water does twirl different directions depending on which side of the equator you are on), they also have a shrunken head or two as part of the stop, and a Funicular that takes you to a peak of  13, 400+ feet.  It's an beautiful park where you can hike and mountain bike ride too....if only we knew!



Buses and Other Stuff

About buses in South America:

Bus schedules are not so much schedules as a rough idea. You can take a 9.5 hour ride that is only 9 hours or a 4.5 hour ride that is 5 hours. Only a few people buy tickets at the station and ride to the next station. People literally get on 2 blocks from the station and all along the route. A guy we’ll call the second collects the money from people as they get on. The rest of the time he rides up front with the driver. Many of the drivers and seconds eat constantly from station to station. They eat fruit salads, doughnut holes, Chinese food, empanadas, chips, etc. Even when driving down hill through the mountains you will see the driver steering with his knee while scarfing food.

Some of the food they eat comes from vendors who jump on and off of the bus selling tons of things including, but not limited to:

Cures for everything from stomach problems to infertility

Potato, plantain, and other chips

Sandwiches

Pop, juice, and water

Candy bars

Empanadas

Tamales

Soy milk

Ice cream – both cones and bars

Pirated CDs with nearly 100 MP3s ($1.00)

There are many such forms of entertainment on the buses here.

Luckily, we took our last bus today. By all accounts the bus we were trying to catch came down the road between 10:30 and 11:15, had nice seats and was more direct from Banos to Quito. We were early. At 9:50 we were at the road. At 11:30 we gave up and took a bus we could have taken over an hour earlier. The trip was 3.5 hours and there were at least 12 separate vendors on and off of the bus in that time. Some of them are really like bad infomercials, but people actually buy the cure all crap.

Popcorn woes:

Since we crossed the border into Ecuador we have not been able to find our popcorn snacks. Corn Corn everywhere and not a bag of popped to buy.

Enough of that:

Tomorrow we are doing a Quito tour set up by Jorge here at our hotel in Quito. He arranged for a private tour in a little car for us.

Saturday we tour our way to the market town of Octavalo which is supposed to be the best market in South America. Get your orders in now!

We found an 85% cacao chocolate at the market here that is great. It is also a single source, organic, and sustainable product.

More tomorrow.....

Nice Horsey

Plus – a normal size horse. Minus – still saddle sore. Our 3 hour horseback tour was a gas.

There was no trekking through mud like we did in Costa Rica, but there was plenty of running and trotting. The first stop is a deep canyon with some raging rapids.

Our guide made sure to take our picture there. We then went up and up and up and finally made it to a volcanic spring that has the best tasting mineral water I have ever had. We dumped our bottled water from our nalgenes and filled them up with the stuff. The volcano was covered with a cloud so we didn’t get a chance to see it in all its glory, but a great trip anyway.

We had some lunch in town and hit the market for some stuff and as we went for the cabs our hotel owner was just grabbing one so we were able to share hers and save a whopping $.50 or so. We might have more luck with things like that than we deserve, but we’re not complaining.

We have another travel day tomorrow, but it is only 3.5 or 4 hours from here to Quito so it shouldn’t be bad. We’ll likely do a city tour on Friday and our market day in Otavalo is set for Saturday.  We fly out Sunday at 6:00 AM and will likely be home around midnight. Let us know if there are any special requests.  It’s weird to be down to our last stop on this journey and stranger still that we won’t see home at all in October, but cold or not it will be nice to be home and sleep in our own bed.

More in the next day or so....

Banos - Tranquilo Muy Tranquilo

Banos is just what the doctor ordered – except he wanted me to rest my broken foot and Pam’s doc said to rest her heel as well, but other than that…

We slept great and came down to a great breakfast of homemade granola, homemade yogurt, fresh fruit and fresh brewed coffee – exactly what I eat for breakfast at home every day.  Fuel in, we headed out for a waterfall hike that was only a 2.4 mile roundtrip.

It was a nice waterfall, but we needed more walking. Yesterday Rebecca – the hotel owner – told us about a trail in the hills that led into town and we took off with every intention of finding it and following it into town. We didn’t really remember the exact directions so we went the way we thought we should and sure enough found a trail. We asked a local Quechan lady in our best broken Spanish if the trail was private property and she told us to go ahead and go up – so we did. As it turns out, this steep trail was to her garden growing on the hillside where she had everything from corn to kiwis growing. Once we realized we were on the wrong trail we took a picture and headed down.

The little lady greeted us questioning whether we thought it was pretty or not – which of course we thought it was.

Adventure over we took the road into town for some lunch, provisions and to retrieve our laundry that we dropped off yesterday.  A pizza, some oranges, a bottle of wine and 5.7 kilos of laundry later we headed back to the lodge, changed and headed to the hot pools about ½ mile away for a good long soak.

Back at the lodge and totally refreshed we watched birds from little humming birds to some large hawks or maybe eagles from the deck. I’m guessing it’s 75 – 80 degrees and although there is a decent breeze blowing the deck is on the protested side of the building. I cannot emphasize enough how nice this lodge is. The rooms are large and common areas are fantastic.

Come to Ecuador,  travel to Banos, and stay at La Casa Verde. http://www.lacasaverde.com.ec/ I’d recommend this place more easily than I would recommend a wine – really.

Pam thinks we should horseback ride tomorrow, and although I’m still scarred mentally from our last horseback experience where I had to ride a Clydesdale because of my size I will go hoping that losing 60 pounds will get me back to a regular sized animal. I really don’t have any desire to be in a Budweiser commercial.

The next post will likely be written standing up because of saddle sores, but we’ll carry on.

Cuenca follow Up and Travel Day

Cuenca follow-up:  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the Gran Hotel in Cuenca is a nice quiet place that really does a great job – all for $30 a night including breakfast.

We met another interesting – but not like the crazy people- guy who was staying at the same hotel. His name is Mark and he is from Cambridge in England. He is 6’ 7” tall and is taking a year to bicycle all over the place. He began in Alaska and rode down to Vancouver before flying down to Quito and riding to Cuenca. We were able to pass on our Peru book to him as he is headed that way whenever his new bike tires clear customs in Ecuador. There must be some special reason why tires got their attention, but I’m sure an appropriate size bribe would free them up.

We walked over to a local bar/restaurant with him and had a couple bottles of wine which we had to drink from coffee cups as you can’t drink booze in bars in Ecuador on Sunday after 4 PM. He ended up getting directions from us to the pizza place where we met the crazies earlier. We can’t decide if he was hungry or looking for some spice for his own blog that his friends and family regularly critique.

The trip to Banos:  The bus rides today totaled just under 8 hours. Luckily Ecuador is a lot easier on the eyes than Peru was.

We are glad to be in Banos where we will get to do some hiking as we are surrounded by mountains and our hotel –La Casa Verde is right along a river. The New Zealanders that run the place really did a great job building and outfitting this place. If you come to Ecuador you will come to Banos and you must stay here. We finally found some local 80% dark chocolate – it is fabulous!   We’re looking forward to hanging out and relaxing.

More later....

Cuenca - Colorful City - Even More Colorful X-Pats

Cuance is a beautiful city with lots of colonial buildings, and little balcanies everywhere. 

Sundays in Latin America countries mean big market days and families out in droves.

Cuenca is no different. The great faces and hats and colorful outfits paint the streets with life. We needed to walk to the bus station to get our tickets for our voyage tomorrow to Banos, and our route led us right by the street market as it was being set up. Ladies walking in from all directions brought their wares to the market. Fruits and vegetables were quickly lining the sidewalks on both sides of the street. We walked past them to the station for our tickets.

Next to the station is the Homero Ortega Museum which is the Museum of the Panama hat which is actually from Ecuador and not Panama.

The museum has great displays and is very informative. They also have hats for sale at the end – imagine that- and I have to say that a couple of them looked pretty good on us. I guess we won’t completely wait until the market in Octalvo next Saturday to do our shopping.

We walked back through the now bustling market and the camera shutter was clicking away. The great faces and hats are too much for me. I have to shoot them.

After we got our purchases back safely we headed to the main square for a 1.75 hour open top bus tour of the city in Spanish. Cuenca is a very pretty place and it seems to be a manageable place as well. We have only been here for the weekend so it may be a little busier during the work week.

After the tour we made our way to Pizzaria Roma for lunch. We had a veggie pizza and homemade gnocchi in a marinara sauce that was world class stuff. The owner said he uses “yellow” potatoes so I’m thinking Yukon golds the next time I make gnocchi.

While we were there we were approached by 2 different x-pats, one from Hawaii and another from Arizona. Anyone who travels outside of the US - particularly in Mexico and other Latin America countries has met a crazy ex-patriot.  The first was urging us to get out of the US while the getting is good. He was a one man sales show for Ecuador and Cuenca in particular. He had a couple of pretty good conspiracy theories that we patiently listened to until he needed to go. The second guy was even worse than the first. Did you know that the new full body scanners they plan to employ at the airports are 6 times worse than an x-ray? If you didn’t know that then you are probably one of those “people who sit in front of the TV clueless to the fact that Homeland Security bought 5 or 6 truck mounted x-ray machines and they are x-raying people’s houses.” I know I didn’t know about either. It’s just lucky we ran into those guys. Whew!

Tomorrow we are off for Banos which is by an active volcano and has many hot springs and lots of hiking. We get 3 nights there and then off to Quito for our last 3 nights before returning home. Man time really does fly when you’re having fun…..

Bus, Kind Strangers, Bus, Bus

At 8:00 AM Friday we boarded our first bus for our travel into Ecuador. It was a little 3 hour number from Chiclayo to Puira. Pam tormented me with a bananita until I gave in and ate it. The picture is fuzzy, but you can see the crazy look in her eyes.

From all accounts and guide books Puira is not a tourist destination – merely a stopover on your way to or from Ecuador. We found no evidence to the contrary, though the weather was beautiful and there were several nice parks.

After our bus arrived from Chiclayo at 11 AM we walked up to the office of the bus that got great write ups for the border crossing at Macara and bought our tickets – for the 9 PM bus. 10 hours to burn in a stopover city – oh boy! We dropped our packs at the bus station and took a motorcycle cab to the Plaza de Armas. We were hungry so we hit a local joint where we had chicken soup, meat and rice, fruit salad, and pineapple juice for 10 soles - $3.65 total for both of us!

Now we only have 9 hours to burn. We walk to the big grocery store and provisioned up for our next bus rides and then to a little park to people watch until we are totally bored. Now we only have 8.5 hours to burn. We walk some more and find a casino with slot machines so we cash 30 soles –like $10, and lose it all over the next half hour. Now we only have 8 hours to burn.

Off we continue with no map and no really good idea of where we are going. We walk another half an hour looking for a pub to while away our time when our first piece of luck happens.

We find a great little restaurant called Embarcadero 41. They have a great patio area, clean bathrooms, and large bottles of the local lagers for sippage. They quickly hand us menus but we stall as long as we can. We have a total of 3 large bottles of beer and it’s now 3PM and we order a dish to split. The dish is called Tacu Tacu, and it is a Peruvian dish that starts with rice and some white beans mixed together and formed to a canoe shape. This particular Tacu Tacu had steak that was perfectly cooked and a demi glace reduction that would make any French chef proud.

While we nursed our food we started talking to the table next to us, and met a Danish guy named Michel and his lovely Peruvian wife Maria Teresa.

Michel was so excited to speak English with someone that they invited us to hang out with them and even go to their house to wait for our bus. Never lose belief in the kindness of strangers. We took them up on their kind offer, stopped at the grocery for a good bottle of wine and off we went. Maria Teresa doesn’t speak English, but she makes great popcorn and we had a great time.  The rest of the day passed quickly.

Bus 2 begins at 9PM Friday and travels to the border of Peru and Ecuador at a town called Macara. They stop the bus, you wake up and start hitting the immigrations booths. There are 2 for your enjoyment on the Peru side and one in Ecuador.  All under a bright full moon.

Why the Peru officials can’t do both stamps at one desk noone knows, but we were amoung the first through both sides and won the right to sit on the curb and wait for the others to stumble through their paperwork. Once everyone was done we boarded the bus and continued to the town of Loja in Ecuador. Loja has an equally good reputation as Puira so we were glad to see there was a 6 AM bus to Cuenca when we arrived at 5:45.

The sun began to rise as we got going towards Cuenca and we were thrilled to see green – trees and grass and plants! Peru is great but the drive from Arequipa all the way to Puira is a desert. Green is great. The advertised 4.5 hour trip took a full 5. Cuenca is worth the wait and the whole 27.5 hours it took us from Chiclayo to finally arrive at our hotel in Cuenca.

 As I write this Ms. Pam has sacked out for a nap after a great lunch.

We’ll explore Cuenca some more tomorrow and report back then…..

A day in and around Chiclaya

We just returned from an all day van tour to 2 archeological sites and 2 museums. Before heading out on a tour, we took a nice walk this morning and enjoyed the main square. 

The focus of the tour was Sipan culture sites. These are more of the adobe brick (mud) ruins. The first museum was very small and the only museum I have ever been to with cartoon depictions showing timelines. I guess maybe they get a lot of school tours there.  Of course there were two hairless dogs there to greet us…Pam counldn’t help but pet one.

The ruin located by the museum has the longest temple in South America – although, like I said, the ruin is of adobe and there isn’t much form left.  There was a nice little hill to climb so we went up for the big view.

 

After the first site we went on to a really nice museum with tons of artifacts from the last site we would visit during the tour. There was lots of gold, silver and copper work plus a ton of ceramics dating back to 1700 years ago. Most of the material is from tombs where the Senor Sipan’s tomb was found. They even had a little Disneyland in the show with a mannequin sing and dance that was silly, but strangely well done.

The last stop was at the tomb site where they have recreations of the tombs. It is an ongoing dig, but they lack the funds to do much digging so work progresses slowly. There were also some owls hanging out in the trees there, as well as a skeleton they discovered a week and a half ago that isn’t ready to move yet.

Tomorrow we’re looking forward to a border crossing into Ecuador so it will likely be late tomorrow night when we get settled! 

Provisioning in Peru and The Coffee Question

Did you know that Peru produces 2.7 million bags of coffee per year?  Coffee should be dripping off of eaves like icicles. This morning, like so many other Peruvian mornings, I had instant coffee. Except for once at Starbucks in Lima and another time at a proper coffee shop in Aguas Calientes it has been instant coffee. The coffee this morning wasn’t even Peruvian! It was Ecuadorian coffee processed in the Dominican Republic and then imported to Peru. That is not the small carbon footprint plan. We actually buy some fair traded Peruvian coffee through Café Britt in Costa Rica. It would be like only finding instant apple sauce powder in Washington that was processed in Canada, then imported back to the US.  

We travelled to Chiclayo this morning from Trujillo. It took about 3.5 hours and no cushy tourist bus this time. We took the regular old local bus with skinny seats. It’s a good thing we are both losing weight or it could have been much worse. As it was, the trip went by pretty quickly and we arrived to a little bit of drizzle in Chiclayo – that’s right – rain! We were actually missing the stuff.

We finally gave in and ate the Peruvian favorite – Chinese food.  I know what you’re thinking, but they love their Chifas here in Peru. It was good, but I think once will be enough. We have been seeking our fresh fruit like machines as we reach each new place. The tangerines here are great and Pam has a new love – the bananita. It is a third scale banana that I have to admit are pretty good. Our other regular searches are for vino, bread sticks, and the bagged popcorn we mentioned before. We have now officially given up on finding good dark chocolate here. Everything has too much sugar and isn’t dark enough.

Tomorrow we go for an all day tour of Sipan temples and museums. It should be fun and there ought to be some pictures to share. Friday morning we take our last Peru only bus ride to Piura which is where we will finally catch our bus to Ecuador on Saturday. It seems a little unbelievable that we are into our fourth week now and nearly done with the Peru part of the adventure. I know at least I am missing our knucklehead dog who has likely given up on our return and turned her attentions to turning Pam’s dad over to her side. He probably has her all trained up so we can wreck all his work on our return.

More tomorrow……

Ruining The Day Away

Huanchaco October 19th

Huanchaco is a beach town 15 minutes out of Trujillo. You want to be some minutes out of Trujillo. It is a big busy city. The fishermen in Huanchaco still use the traditional reed boats to fish from - IN THE OCEAN. I'm thinking garbageman, store owner, maid - anything but the open ocean in a reed boat.

There are ruins here that mostly fall under one city name Chan Chan . They are spread around the area a little. The largest site is the palace which has been reconstructed about 70% which means that what you see is not what they found, but what they found enhanced - usually by good science- but still altered and not just preserved as found. The rest of the local sites are largelely just preserved and not reconstructed.

There were 2 additional temple areas, a museum, and on the other side of town another ruin with a Temple of the Moon and Temple of the Sun that is a pretty cool ongoing dig that has been just excavated and preserved. It has a lot of color and is our kind of ruin. I forgot to mention that all of the sites are made from adobe bricks (mud). I think I mentioned that it doesn't rain much here. Can you imagine leaving mud bricks exposed in Washington? It would quickly be puddle of mud time.

It turns out that the Peruvian Hairless isn't just an oddity but a breed of it's own and a "national treasure." After seeing so many from the time we arrived, we saw this in our Moon book. You can't make this stuff up. They even think the ugly little bastards have medicinal qualities. I guess since you can get diseases touching dirty dogs, and there is no chance you'd want to touch one of them, they can be looked at as a kind of vaccine... It is also believe that kids with asthma and people with arthritis benefit from actually touching them. I can see where people with touching ugly dogs phobias might be helped but, Please!

We may continue up the coast to Chiclaya tomorrow...but may stay on the ocean one more day....yet  TBD.