Back in Action

Well this week did not start out so great due to a sickness that came over me for a few days. It was nothing to bad, but I was definitely feeling too ill to kayak or do much outside. I spent a lot of time reading and watched a movie at friend's house. Yesterday I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to get outside again. Unfortunately it was not looking like I was going to be able to go kayaking due to excessive rain and lack of paddling partners, so I decided to take off for the day on my own, exploring the areas outside of Tena. I started out on a bus towards the town of Santa Rosa, with the plan to get off somewhere along the way. While looking through my guidebook I came across an animal refuge called Amazoonica, which looked pretty neat. I spent most of the bus ride trying out my spanish with the bus driver and his sidekick employee. They told me it was time to get off once we arrived at the ¨Amazoonica¨ sign. I walked around a little bit trying to figure out where this place was and had no luck. There was a little house nearby and I asked the guy to help me. He pointed down a little trail which I proceeded to follow for about 30 seconds until it dead-ended straight into a river! I was extremely confused at this point and went back up to the guy in the house for more help. I asked if I needed a boat to get there and he told me that he had a boat and would take me. After about a 10 min. boat ride downriver I arrived at the refuge. It was a really interesting place, and a nice woman volunteer from Canada took me on a tour of the place. She explained that it is a refuge created for animals who have been victim to black market trading. Majority of the animals were sold to someone who eventually realized that that cute, but wild monkey does not make a very good pet afterall. The refuge consisted of lots of animals running free throughout its large jungle campus, as well as some animals that for one reason or another are not able to be in the open and have to be caged. I saw lots of cool Ecuadorian animals including lots of different monkey species, parrots, jaguarundies and many others. My favorite animal was probably the coati named Tinka that followed us around the entire tour. A coati is a rodent like creature that I am not sure sure exactly how to describe. Unfortunately I was unable to get a good picture of her. There was also a monkey that followed us around and climbed all over my guide and a little on me most of the time. My guide also showed me about a very interesting tree that can actually walk! It grows and kills off its roots in such a way that enables it to move up to a meter a year. Hard to believe but very cool. After an afternoon exploring the park I decided it was time to head on my way. I decided that I was not yet ready to head back to Tena though, and instead decided I would stop off at another town along the way. I must admit I was sort of disoriented as to exactly what road I was on. I told the bus driver that I wanted to get off at the town of Mishualli, but I was thinking that I was on the road that passed right by the town. Turns out I wasnt. They told me I had to walk 2km down the this gravel path to get there. I decided I could use the excercise and started my walk. I ended up making a friend, Cesear, along the way and we walked together. It was a good chance to practice my spanish and learn a little bit about the area. Eventually I made it to Mishualli, which is the town I spoke of before that has been overtaken by monkeys. I spent about 45 minutes observing the monkeys and their interactions with another strange creature, the tourist. It was a pretty entertaining experience. Finally I decided that it was time to go, especially because the last bus back to Tena for the evening was about to leave. After a short bus ride I was back in Tena just in time to go out to dinner for Jake's 29th birthday. This morning I got up determined to go boating. I manged to motivate a few people and we headed to the upper Tena, a nearby river with a cheap shuttle cost. It was pretty continuous class 3-4 boogie, finishing up with a couple miles of class 1-2 water. It turned out to be a beautiful day and Keta and I took in as much of it as we could. We decided to stop at a little beach along the way and go for a dip and sunbathe a bit. Another great day on the river!

Hautaracu Overnighter

I am back in Tena today after spending the past two days doing an overnighter on the Hautaracu river. The Hautaracu is about 18 miles of creeky whitewater ranging from flatwater to class 5, winding its way through an extremely dense and beautiful jungle. Scout, Ryan and I all decided last minute on Wednesday night that this was something we all wanted to before they left and got on the 6:30am bus out of Tena Thursday morning. The bus ride took about 3 hours and around 9:30 in the morning we were dropped off at a little jungle town on the way to Coca. None of us really knew much about the river, or its exact location for that matter. However, after a couple quick conversations with some locals, we were on our way down to the river. The hike in was pretty hard on me and involved climbing up and down many hills, through mud and finally down into an extremely steep and slippery gorge. It took me just under two hours to finish up the hike and I was very excited to finally see the river. It had been raining on the bus ride over and we had no idea what the water level would be, so there was definitely a risk of hiking in and finding the river too high or too low too paddle. I honestly do not think I would have been physically capable of hiking my boat back out the trail, so it was definitely a relief to see the river was at a runnable level. The river started our pretty steep, with a decently sized class 4 rapid within the first few minutes. The first 4 miles or so included the steepest and most technical part of the river, with many class 4-5 rapids back to back. Since none of us had ever been on the river before, we were moving pretty slow through the first few miles, doing lots of boating scouting. Somewhere in those first few miles I had my second swim in Ecuador. Due to the fact that this is a family read blog, and they are nervous enough about me as it is, I am going to leave out the details of the swim. I would however like to give a special thanks to Scout for being there and doing what he had to do to get me out of the situation. I owe you one. After a while the river began to let up, and turned into nice class 3 boogie. Because of the large quantities of trees and undercuts in the river, we were still very careful making our way downstream. The greatest thing about this run though was the scenery. We were literally in the middle of dense jungle vegetation scaling the walls on all sides. There were multiple spots where the river gorged up really tight, giving the illusion that the tops of the walls were touching. As we paddled through the first gorge we saw a hawk-like bird flying around overhead. Then all of the sudden about 15 of these birds came out of the trees and began going crazy. We assumed that they must have had nests up there and quickly paddled through making sure to avoid having too much closer of an encounter with them. We stopped and had lunch at a beautiful cascading waterfall. That was another great thing about the river. Around just about every corner there was a huge waterfall dumping in. Because my boat spent about 15 minutes under the water during my swim, some water had gotten into my drybag and destroyed most of my food. Luckily Ryan and Scout brought extra and were kind enough to share. After paddling what I would guess to be about 13 miles of river , we found a nice spot to camp. It was a great location, with a wide beach, swimming area and some trees for Ryan and Scout to hang their hammocks. I set up my bivy sack partially under the Scout's tarp, keeping me head covered so that it would not get rained on. We then had a nice little dinner, mine consisting mostly of tuna, since that was one of the few things in my food bag that survived. We built a campfire and had a nice evening of sitting around the fire, reflecting on the day, and of course taking shots of the tequilla that Scout packed in. After a few hours of hanging out we finally all decided to retreat to our cozy ¨beds.¨ About an hour after laying down, and pretty violent rain storm came through and it poured on us for the next few hours. Around 1am I awoke to the sound of Ryan yelling on the beach. Scout and I both ran out there to see that the river had flooded and had come all the way up to our boats, which were sitting about 15 feet away from the rivers edge when we went to sleep. We quickly dragged the boats to higher ground, took a moment to take in the sight, then headed back to sleep, or at least I did. Ryan and Scout were not exactly as comfortable in their hammocks as I was in my nice bivy. Ryan had gotten soaked by the rain, since he had not hung his tarp, and they both complained of bugs and back aches from hammock sleeping. I had one of my best nights of sleep yet, dozing off to jungle sounds and falling rain. That bivy was definitely a nice purchase! Early the next morning we got up and began our paddle out. The rest of the river was mostly flatwater and easy class 2 stuff, so the extra flow from the previous night´s rain was definitely to our advantage. The whitewater was definitely easier, but the scenery was just as amazing. We saw lots of beautiful birds, including a flock of about 30 green parrots and and another flock of red, blue and green Macaws. After only about 2 hours of paddling we arrived at our take-out bridge. We waited about 30 minutes until a bus came along and quickly loaded our boats up on top and were off back to Tena. Overall it was definitely one of the coolest experiences and places I have seen since arriving in here. It was also my first overnighter, and has definitely got me excited to do more, hopefully a couple more here in Ecuador. Ryan and Scout both left Tena today back to Quito, and fly home to the States over the next few days. I decided to spend the day letting my body rest, considering tomorrow the plan is to knock out all 18 miles of the lower Jondachi.

Gone to Baeza

I just arrived back in Tena from a four day trip to Baeza, a small mountain town. It is a beautiful place and much cooler and quieter than Tena. For only five dollars I had a private room with a private bathroom and direct tv! There was however, no internet, hence my lack of posting. Last Wednesday afternoon, while we were all relaxing at the hostel, a man came by and dropped a sack off at the gate of the hostel. All the gringos laying around thought nothing of it until one of the employees called us all over. It was a bag of tiny kittens that had been dumped off there! Keta and I of course fell immediately in love, before coming to grips with the fact that they could not stay. When we came back later our friends told us that a group of school children came by and took them all to good homes. Keta and I are doing our best to try and believe that story. Later that afternoon Keta and I climbed to the top of an old, probably abandonded concrete building in the middle of town. It offered us a pretty impressive view of the entire city and its surrounding mountains. We spent a good majority of that evening watching the birds fly by and the sun set. The following day we all headed out for another day on the Jondachi. The day started out well, but a few bad swims from a few of my friends put a little damper on the day. Everyone was fine in the end and all in all it was still a good day. After a somewhat long and tiring day on the river Keta and I decided to treat overselves to probably the most expensive meal we'll have in Ecuador. We were told of this random fine dining resturant in Tena which was suppose to be good, and that it was. I had a steak and lobster and Keta had lobster alfredo. The best part by far though was the restuarant´s interesting pet sloth! It was one of the weirdest creatures I have ever seen, but also one of the coolest. The waitor gave us some stuff to feed it and it chilled and climbed around us all dinner. We were the only ones in the place all night so we got full access to the sloth. I did not have my camera on me but I will definitely be going back to get some pictures to post. Only in Ecuador would you walk into a super expensive fine dining resturant to find that a sloth would be joining you for dinner! The next morning, all of us besides Jeremy, who had an unfortunate boat crushing swim the previous day, headed to Baeza for the Quijos river festival. Jeremy said that this was suppose to be vacation, and decided to spend his final weeks in Ecuador on the beach. He will be missed. Upon our arrival in Baeza, most of the group decided to do an afternoon run of the Quijos river (bridge to bridge section). It had some nice class three plus boogie water with a cool ledge drop at the end. All of Saturday was spent at the river festival. The day was filled with good food, music and a little dancing. We watched a fairly entertaining raft race as well as played with the local children as they climbed all over our boats. On Sunday we all decided to paddle a section of the Quijos (the Cheesehouse) above where we put in on Friday. It was slightly harder and more creeky than the bridge to bridge section. The day started out with a bit of carnage when my friend Ryan had a pretty scary pin, involving him getting out of his boat only by slippling through the spray skirt tunnel. His boat remained pinned for about 15 minutes until we managed to pull it off. The carnage continued when I had my first real swim in three years! We were sort of bombing down and I was second in the group. The person that was leading forgot about the big nasty hole in the middle of the river and I ran straight down the meat of it! I boofed, got backendered into the hole and proceeded to get trashed. In the middle of my working, Keta boofed on top of me, but luckily managed to avoid getting sucked in there with me. Eventually my paddle was ripped from my hands and I was swimming. Thankfully I was able to swim out of the backwash and not get recirculated in the hole, which definitely would have ruined my day. My boat would not come out of the hole on its own, and Scout had to rope it out. Besides a few cuts and bruises, I am just fine. My friends rescued all of my gear, including my camera box. Glad I got that Ecuadorian swim out of the way! Monday was a day of rest from the river, which we all really needed. Keta, Scout and I took a pretty full on hike to a waterfall. It involved lots of mud, a little bushwacking and some hiking through the river. It was well worth it though. The waterfall was around 100 feet tall and in the middle of a pretty isolated place. A bus strike kept us in Baeza another night, and this morning we all headed back to Tena. I plan on spending the afternoon getting settled back into my room and getting aquainted with that good old hammock again... Below are some pictures from the Upper Misahualli last Tuesday. The first is a picture of Keta and the latter of me. Enjoy!

Relaxing in the Jungle

Well, the last fews days have been just as wonderful as the last few weeks. On Saturday we paddled the lower Rio Misahualli down to Puerto Misahualli for more festival activites. We put on the Tena river right in town and paddled down to the confluence with the Misahualli. It was a beautiful day with lots of big water and big waves. It felt like we were paddling out in the middle of the jungle (which we pretty much were) and saw lots of beautiful plants and birds, including some parrots. The town of Puerto Misahualli is interesting do to the fact that it is overrun by monkeys. The batteries on my camera died so I do not have any pictures, but I am sure to go back and get some later. While it was very exciting to see thousands of monkeys hanging in the trees, they also scared me a little because they were not at all afraid of people and liked to try and climb on you and steal your stuff! After a few hours of hanging out at the festival and dodging the monkeys, we headed back to Tena for the night.

Sunday was a day of relaxing and hanging out in the hammocks, followed by another day of boating on Monday. We all went back to Upper Misahualli, which is much more creeky than the lower. This time Keta and Jeremy were with us, making it an awesome day of boating. Everyone had great lines and while it was a little low, we still had decent water.

Yesterday some of us headed over to the Rio Jondachi, which is by far my favorite river I have paddled in Ecuador. It is continuous class 4 water, with a couple bigger rapids thrown in the mix as well. Big boulders and crystal clear water made it one of the most beautiful places I've seen since arriving in the country. Everyone was having pretty solid lines and we were moving at a decent pace. The highlight of the day was probably when we reached a group of French paddlers who had put on the river about 4 hours earlier than us! They were all portaging one of the big rapids that our entire group fired up and had great lines on. As we paddled on by, Freakystick could be heard chanting ¨USA, USA!¨ When we arrived at the take-out the cab driver who had been waiting for the past 8 hours for the French guys was not too happy...

Looks like today will be another day off, figuring out some plans for the future including heading to the coast, attending a language school, and maybe a little swimming and laying in hammocks...

Tena Life

We arrived in Tena yesterday afternoon. We got to the hostel to find all of our friends from the states, including Freakystick, Scout, Rob and Jay. On the bus we met a nice woman from Denmark who has been joining us at the hostel. We started the first night in Tena off right by doing a night rafting run on the Juetenyacu River. There was a full moon out and the weather was wonderful. It was a fairly mellow class 3 run, and an awesome time.

This morning we loaded up and headed to the Upper Misahualli River. Twelve gringos and one Ecuadorian all crammed themselves and their boats and gear into one truck and trailer and headed to the river. It was definitely a sight to see driving through the little town. Once at the put-in we all split into groups and headed down the river. It was a wonderful warm up for me, and a nice class 3-4 run.

Tonight starts off the Napo River Festival which should include lots of dancing and a little drinking... Gotta run...

My last day with my Mom....

Well, today my Mom left Quito and headed back to the states. I had an amazing time traveling Ecuador with her, and only wish she could´ve been able to stay longer.

We spent all morning, hours literally, searching the local market for last minute gifts and things she wanted to get. I think we made out with some great purchases. Following the market we got a cab and headed for the airport where I said goodbye to my mom. Immediately I headed over to the arrivals of the airport and picked up my friends Keta and Jeremy. They will both be traveling with me for most of my trip.

Tomorrow morning at 6:00am a cab is coming to pick us up and we're headed to the bus station to catch the 7:00am bus to Tena. I am very excited to head into the Jungle. There is a whitewater festival in Tena this weekend which should allow me to finally get back in my boat while also checking out the local culture.

More to come on all that, but now its time for dinner and a cerveza....

Cajas National Park

Today was the last day of the tour with my mom, and was another wondeful one! We spent the afternoon visiting the Cajas National Park, outside of Cuenca. Sometimes Ecuador has weird laws, and we found a new one today at the park. For whatever reason, they would not allow our guide to join us on the hike in the park. They told him he was not "certified" to lead us around the park, and so they made him stay with the car.

My mom and I headed off on our own, taking a hike around a lake. It was another very pleasent place, allowing for some more beautiful mountain and lake views.

After our visit to Cajas, we headed back to Cuenca and checked out of our hotel and loaded up our luggage. We were dropped off at the airport and said goodbye to our wonderful guide Diego.

Diego started his 10 hour drive back to Quito, while my mom and I took a 30 minute flight. It was not only extremely convenient, but also extremely beautiful. It was neat to see the mountains rising up above the clouds. We were flying level with many of Ecuadors tallest mountains!

From Pasachoa to Cuenca

It has been a few days since I have been able to get to a computer capable of posting on here, so I will be starting off from where I left off (i.e. this is gonna be long). On Thursday we visited the Pasachoa Reserve. It was definitely unlike anywhere my mom or I had ever seen. The great thing about it was that it was a mountain and a cloud forest all in one. So along with amazing scenic mountain views, you were also walking through a very green and lush rain forest. Our new guide, Diego, told us more about all of the flora and fauna along the way. We saw many beautiful flowers, along with an array of birds and some other small animals. The mountain had a bunch of different trail options, but we decided to just start hiking up and see how far we would go. We ended up going much higher than our guide expected and it got me excited about going back and climbing a few more hours all the way to the summit. More updates to come on that... Following the climb we headed south towards our next destination. We stayed the night at a little ranch style hacienda, ¨Cuello de Luna,¨ located next to the Cotopaxi National Park. The best part about it was its views. From the porch you could see Ecuador´s first and second highest mountains, Chimborazo and Cotopaxi, respectively. Friday morning we woke up and drove about an hour and a half over some mountains to get to Laguna de Quilotoa. The drive was long and curvy, but beautiful. Giving us some more impressive views of the country and its mountains. Laguna de Quilotoa is another volcanic crater, except this one has a natural lake at the bottom. It is a very steep hike down a mostly sand trail to the bottom, with the option of riding donkeys back up. My mom was not feeling so well and decided to opt out of the hike and instead just admire the amazing view from the top. I decided that I did not want to take the donkeys up and instead bust out the hike up with my own two feet. Upon hearing my plan, Diego decided to also hang out at the top. He says he only takes the donkeys back up.... Diego did walk down with me for a couple minutes to point out a couple plants, then off I went towards the bottom on my own. It was a really great experience, different from any hike I´ve ever been on. This was mainly because a lot of it included pretty much sliding down steep sand embankments. I finally made it down and the view was even more amazing than that from the top. There was a little man at the bottom who let me use his ¨bathroom¨ for only a quarter. What a bargain! After spending a few moments dumping the sand out of my shoes and relaxing my feet in the cool water, I started my grewling hike back to the top. I can honestly say that it was one of the hardest things I've done in a very long time. Not just because it was extremely steep, but those sand embankments I slid down, were almost impossible to get back up. I spent a decent amount of time climbing up and just sliding back down. Finally, a few hours later, I managed to make it back to the rim. My mom and Diego were waiting for me, and had been watching my progress from the top. While I am very glad I did the climb out myself, I can definitely see why Diego uses the donkeys! After another night in Cuello del Luna, we headed into the Cotopaxi National Park. The main highlight of the park is obviously Ecuador's second highest mountain, Cotopaxi, but the park has much more to offer than just that. We started off with a hike around a lake, located a little ways from the base of the mountain. Here we saw many more of Ecuador's plant and animal life. As we were walking around my mom and I were discussing what we felt is the most amazing thing about Ecuador, that being its diverse landscape. It has mountains, beaches, rain forests and just about every type of landscape you could imagine. After the walk around the lake we headed up Cotopaxi on an old worn out gravel road. We drove up to 4500 meters (over 15,000 feet)! As we stepped out of the car we noticed that it was snowing. We were standing about 10 feet away from where the snow starts on the mountain. This allowed for excellent views of the surrounding valleys. We were able to spot the lake we had been walking around earlier, which looked like a puddle from where we were standing. This parking area is where all of the climbers beginning thier ascent on Cotopaxi start. We walked a little ways up, played in the snow a bit then we were on our way to our hosteria Abraspungo in the town of Riobamba. Yesterday morning we had breakfast at 5:30am in order to catch our 7:00am ride on the ¨Narriz del Diablo¨(Devil´s Nose) train. This train goes from the town of Riobamba down and past Alausi towards the ¨Devil´s Nose.¨ This is a vertical wall of mountain which caused much complication in the development of this railway hundreds of years ago. To get down this wall, they built a series of zigzags down the mountain, which require the train to stop, change tracks and move in the opposite direction. It was a slightly nerve-racking experience, especially for my mom who is afraid of heights. The craziest part of the whole experience was that we were all riding on the tin roof top of the train! After the ride to the bottom of the wall, the train returns up it, and back to the town of Alausi. The total ride took about 6 hours and went through the mountains and countrysides of Ecuador. Along the way people were selling all kinds of things on the top of the train including fried bananas, beer and candy ¨for the poor children,¨as they put it. In every town we passed children would run out and wave to the train. At first we thought they were just smiling and waving because they liked the train. Eventually we realized they just wanted us to throw candy to them! As the gringos atop the train realized this, war broke out among the children for the candy. They were fighting each other and running along side the train as if it were a life or death issue! On the train we met a nice couple sitting next to us who we offered a ride in our van. They needed to get to Incapirca, which is where we were headed next. After a couple hours in the car we arrived in Incapirca, an ancient Incan ruin. The guard at the entrance explained that it was closed due to hostility over money between the police and the local indigenous people. I guess both groups felt that the ruins belonged to them and could not decide who should get the money. Their solution: close it down so no one gets money and no one gets to walk around the ruin. The guard told Diego that we could go up the gate for a couple minutes just to get a picture, but that it was not safe to stay longer because of the angry locals. Diego stayed with the van, and my mom and I, and Melle and Jeff, (the couple riding with us) nervously walked toward the ruin. It was a very impressive place, and I only wish we could have seen it closer. Because of the obvious reasons, Melle and Jeff decided not to stay in Incapirca and instead continued with us to the Ecuador's third largest city, Cuenca. Upon arriving in Cuenca last night, my mom and I, pleasantly surprised, found ourselves staying in Cuenca's most grand hotel, the Mansion Alcazar. It is a remolded mansion, and by far the nicest place we've stayed in so far. Our room overlooks a beautiful courtyard garden. This morning Diego showed us around Cuena, which is definitely my favorite city thus far. It is much cleaner and nicer than Quito and is still large enough to have anything that you could expect to find in a third world country. We saw all of their markets, including those for flowers, animals, clothes and vegetables. While I have yet to try it, a popular food here in Ecuador is that of Guinea Pig. It was weird seeing those furry animals my little brother had as a pet being sold in the same cage as chickens, ducks, rabbits and pigeons, all of which was being sold as meat. After our tour of the city, we left Diego and my mom and I did some serious shopping. We bought ponchos, sweaters, ceramics and of course some Panama hats. Panama hats are straw hats actually made in Ecuador, but were named because of their popularity in Panama. All of the walking and shopping we did in the city today made me almost as tired as that hike out of the lake crater! That brings me to now, which is me sitting in a little interet cafe in Cueca, Ecuador finishing up this hour long monolouge. I hope you all have enjoyed it. I am now going back to my luxurious and elegant hotel room to grab my mom and go get some dinner!

Mitad del Mundo - Pululahua

Today was our first day truly getting out of the city, and it was nice to leave the crowded streets and get into the mountains a bit more. Today also started our tour with Surtrek (the itinerary can be found in the links to the right). Our tour guide was very educated, spoke 5 languages and could name any plant or flower we pointed to. At first, we were not exactly sure what to make of him, because within the first 10 min. of the van ride he told us his plans on starting a revolution to overthrow the government. My mom's only comment on the subject was that maybe he could wait until after I was out of the country before getting this so called revolution started.

The day started out at a visit to "el Mitad del Mundo," translated literally as the "the middle of the world." It consists of a monument placed directly on the equator, with a line painted dividing the northern and the southern hemispheres. In the monument there is a museum where our guide walked us through exhibits displaying all of the different cultures living in Ecuador. It was very informative and allowed us to gain a much better understanding of just how many indigenous groups exist throughout the country.

After this we headed a little further away from the city and drove to the "Reserva Geobotanica Pululahua," which is situated in the crater of the extinct volcano of the same name. We hiked down into the crater, with our guide telling us all about all of the flora and fauna along the way.

The hike into the crater was not too bad, but the hike out was a different story. It was fairly steep and uphill most of the way, and it seemed to have no end. Our guide told us that we had probably descended about 600 vertical feet. I was very impressed with how well my mom did. While it may not have been the easiest thing in the world for her, she kept on moving at a pretty decent pace and we even made it back in less time than the guide told us we would. One interesting thing about it was that there was village at the bottom of this crater. We learned that this fairly demanding hike out, was, for the people of this town, a daily activity in order to get to the market. They were even required to carry their harvests and various supplies out with them. While my mom and I wore our nice hiking shoes and day packs, these people were wearing rubber boots and carrying a sack of potatoes on their backs. It made you appreciate not having to take an hour long uphill hike and 40 minute bus ride anytime you want to buy anything, but it also made you admire the simple life that these people were living.

After the hike we went and got our first true Ecuadorian meal. It was by far the best food I have eaten here, and probably up there with one of the best meals I have eaten ever. It had six courses, starting out with a plate of the various corn and beans from the area, and finishing with a shot of some kind of liqueur. I wish I had a picture of the meal to post. It was amazing!

Following our late lunch, our guide and driver took us back to our hostel, where my mom and I both took a much needed siesta. In the evening we went out to dinner with another friend of mine, Rob, who had just gotten into town. I will be traveling and kayaking with him for part of my trip.

This is my last night for a while staying in a hostel so conveniently having wireless internet, so it will probably be a few days before I post again....

Exploring the City

Today my mom and I set out to see all that the city of Quito had to offer. We started out the day visiting the Basilica del Voto Nacional. It was one of the more favorite things I have seen in the city. It is the tallest church in Quito, because of its two tall clock towers. You can take some stairs part of the way up the church and get a magnificent view of the city.

At this point we noticed a sketchy wooden bridge connecting where we were to another tower. At first sight my mom said "no way, who would ever want to do that," but with a little coaxing I had her crossing the bridge and climbing an equally scary ladder.

My mom was a trooper for the majority of the climbing, but I could not get her up the final set of stairs. The view from the top was well worth the slightly unnerving climb and offered a nice view of the two towers with the Penecillo hill in the distance.

After leaving the Basilica we checked out the Campania Church, which is known for its very graphic painting of Hell. It was a very beautiful church and as promised, the painting was very graphic. Next we took a cab up to the Penecillo hill, which is seen in the above picture. The weather was cloudy making the visibility not very good atop the hill. It still provided an excellent view of the entire city, and allowed us to really take in the huge size of the city and its mountainous surroundings.

Later that afternoon while wandering the streets near our hostel, we ran into a friend of mine and fellow kayaker from the states, Jason, aka "Freakystick," and his girlfriend Kara. We ended up joining them to visit the local market and found lots of good souvenoirs. We had a wonderful dinner with another friend of mine from the states, Jenna, who has been in Ecuador for the past month studying Spanish. All in all it was a great day and I felt it gave my mom and I a much better understanding of the Ecuadorian culture.

We Made It!

After a few long, early hours of traveling my mom and I finally arrived in Quito!

We spent the day doing a little bit of exploring in the part of town called "Old Quito," due to its history, old government buildings and churches. I struggled with my Spanish a little bit while speaking with cab drivers and waiters, but overall I feel I was able to communicate successfully. My mom even managed to pick up on a few words today, and I look forward to seeing how much she'll be able to understand by the time she leaves.

Our hostel is pretty basic and I have been trying to point out all of its good qualities to my mom, who has never stayed in a hostel before, much less one in a third world country. It does have a pretty decent view though. Below is a picture looking out the window of our room.