Two Months in Ecuador

After 23 hours between two back to back bus rides we made it to Lima, Peru, with two months and one country under our belts. Here is a brief wrap up of how we spent our last week and a half in Ecuador.

Emily left off our last entry just as we got to Cuenca. Cuenca ended up being a very nice place. There are a ton of universities in Cuenca which always gives a nice feel to a city and the cobblestone streets and plenty of colonial architecture make it a fun place to explore. Add to this a completely agreeable climate and plenty of pastoral countryside surrounding the city and you may have the reason that we found more ex-patriots here than anywhere else we have been. There are tons of retired gringos from all over...mostly the U.S. though. On our second night in Cuenca we met up with a couple of friends we met and planned our trip to the Parque Nacional Cajas.


Cajas is a huge, high, beautiful and not very popular park just outside of Cuenca. The next morning Emily, Maite, Colm and myself met up and set out for a day hike in the park. We had been told that conditions can get rough and altitude can be an issue so we were planning to do a 4 or 5 hour hike but once we got to the ranger station, the ranger was convinced that we needed to do the 8 mile, 7 hour hike. And when a ranger is pushing you to do one trail over another, it is hard to say no. Plus, besides a short climb which was shown on the map, the rest was all downhill in a nice valley.

Globitos

Emily appreciating the climb to above 12,000 ft.

Well the ranger was right of course, the trail he suggested was amazing. Despite the two hour climb which took us well over 13,000 ft. we enjoyed some amazing views of green peaks, mountain lakes and tons of wildflowers. It was yet another wonder to find in a country the size of Nevada but with the diversity of an entire continent. The weather even held out too! Right until about 15 minutes after our awesome lunch of avocado and potato chip sandwiches. We got about 5 minutes warning of light sprinkles and then all of a sudden it was hailing on us. Then came thunder, harder hail, then hard rain, all of which made walking on the smooth granite rocks a little precarious. ¨Resvaloso¨ is a word we have learned well after the jungle...it means slippery. Luckily, after 30 minutes or so the rain slowed and eventually became a constant drizzle again which was much nicer and allowed us to finish the hike in good spirits with taste of adventure. By the time we got to the bottom we were all soaked head to toe and cold to the point of our fingers not working so well at intricate tasks like zippers, shoelaces etc. After learning that we had to wait at least a half hour for a bus we almost despaired but soon spotted resturaunt pumping smoke out of two chimneys. While we waited for the bus we enjoyed some hot coffee and warmed our fingers by the fire.


The next day our friends were heading to Vilcabamba, a village in a valley south of Cuenca famous for residents that live to be well past 100 years old. We had heard so many things about Vilcabamba and its famous Izchcayluma hostel/resort. This post is getting kind of long and it would really be too easy to go on and on about how great it is there. So instead I´ll post some pictures of our trail ride, our epic hike and some views from our hostel which we expect will be the nicest places we will stay during the whole trip. It was so nice we failed in our attempt to leave not once but twice before we finally told ourselves we had to be moving on.

View from the hostel dining room

Epic Ridge Trail

Very Good

Howdy Partner

So we left Ecuador on a totally positive note. It is an awesome country where we were glad to spend double the time that we plan to spend in any other country on this trip. Someday we will almost certainly go back.

The Coast

It´s time to talk about the coast!

Kurt already mentioned that we took a long, hot, uncomfortable overnight bus from Baños to Canoa. I´ll just reiterate that- long, hot, uncomfortable, complete with a 2 a.m. police search of everyone on the bus. I don´t think we fully comprehend what we are in for yet- Ecuador is a small country and the bus rides we´ve taken so far are nothing compared to what we´ll have to do in Peru and the rest of the countries we plan on visiting. Also, bus drivers are maniacs. But I digress...

We arrived in beautiful Canoa at 6:00 a.m. and waited around our excellent hostel, Hotel Bambú, for about an hour and a half until someone arrived who could check us into a room. This hostel was basically a resort for backpackers. It was right on the beach, and they had a variety of rooms and prices, from campsites and dorms to private cabañas with balconies. It also had a very good restaurant and bar (with a great happy hour, perfectly timed to coincide with the sunset), they rented surfboards and boogie boards, there were hammocks aplenty, and a ping pong table. Canoa itself is a really small town, very quiet and tranquil. Most people there are either fishermen or surfers, I think.

So, as you might guess, we did a whole lot of nothing (but relax) during the four days we spent there. (Kurt did have a rather gruesome doctor´s visit in the nearby town of San Vincente to treat his anthrax infection. A lot of you have expressed concern about the anthrax, but I am happy to report that as of now it is almost completely healed.) We spent most of our time on the beautiful, clean, wide beach. Kurt went surfing one day (he caught like four waves! he looked really cool, I was impressed) and I rented a boogie board. We ate a lot of ceviche and drank a lot of tropical drinks.

But before we knew it, it was time to move on again. We headed south to Puerto Lopez, which is a larger town, with a lot more fisherman and which many tourists use as a base to explore the nearby Parque Nacional Machalilla, which is Ecuador´s only coastal national park. We stayed in a not-so-great hostel for our first two nights before moving to the Sol Inn, a great, cheap backpacker´s hostel.

We spent a day touring the Isla de la Plata (part of Machalilla national park), often referred to as the ¨poor man´s Galapagos¨ ( so named because you can see many of the same bird species there,
and it only costs $30 to get there instead of your life´s savings). And yeah, we saw some cool birds. My favorites were the blue-footed boobies who for some reason have almost no fear of humans. We took a nice long hike throughout the island before heading back to the boat for lunch and snorkeling (the ocean is warm here! hooray!) where we spotted some clown and parrot fish, and two giant sea turtles (from the boat). Since everyone likes pictures of boobies, here´s a few:

Blue-footed boobies

An Adolescent Nazca Booby

A boobie and its baby

The next day we headed to the mainland part of Machalilla- a beach and coastal area known as Los Frailes, with some new friends from the hostel. This area was really nice. It preserves a tropical dry forest ecosystem (since Ecuador apparently hasn´t had proper winter rains in the last 3 years, it was really, really dry). So we did a hike through the dry forest which led us past two smaller beaches to the pristine, nearly empty beach of Los Frailes.

Los Frailes

The food on the coast was really nice but also much more expensive. Obviously there is a lot of seafood. The ceviche is as good as we´d heard (this is raw seafood, usually fish, shrimp, octopus, clam, or mixed, cooked in lime juice and mixed with tomatoes and onions). It always came served with either patacones (green plantain fritters) or chifles (also fried plantains but much thinner, like potato chips). The other highlight was pescado encocado (fish cooked in coconut milk). Encebollados, or fish soups, are also popular but it was so hot I never wanted to try them.

The bus snacks (on most long distance busses there are lots of food vendors that come onto the bus at various stops along the way) improved a lot on the coast- we tried pan de yuca (bread made with yuca, and sometimes nuts or cheese), empanadas de queso (these are often covered with sugar- weird, but not bad), and slices of piña or watermelon. The pineapple on the coast was incredible. Just out of this world. Unfortunately I neglected to take any pictures of food whatsoever during this leg of the journey. But here´s a picture of some guys playing volleyball in Puerto Lopez:

Look at how high that net is (click to enlarge)!

After Puerto Lopez the plan was to go to Montañita, a surfing/ party town about an hour south. But of all the fellow travelers we met who had been there, nobody had anything good to say about it. So we decided instead to check out Cuenca, Loja, and Vilcabamba before heading into Peru (these are all cities and towns in the Southern highlands of Ecuador). So Cuenca is where we´re at now. We´re heading to Vilcabamba tomorrow and then, finally, on Monday... Peru!

Jungle (Part 3), Baños, Coast.

Here is a little photo journey to get us up to date:

Bugs:

Here is a Leaf Bug. It is actually a mantis so it has those cool front arms that look like they are praying for a mate to come along and get his head chopped off.

This was the most gnarly bug we saw. It is called and Amblipgid and it looks like a spider but it is actually more closely related to a scorpion. It is HUGE. The six small legs and pinchers make it easily as big as a softball while the long front legs are probably about 10" long each. Also, this thing doesn't crawl, it moves really quick. When I was taking this picture it jumped at me to scare me back. Evidently they don't really bother people at all, actually they hunt things like cockroaches which makes them good in my book.

Here is a some barney we found in the jungle. It's a pretty agressive environtment out there. I think I got about a 6th degree sunburn on my legs from rafting. I had a milky way quantity of mosquito bites and ultimately left the jungle with what looked like a big bite on my arm that ended up swelling up my fore-arm to look like Popeye. I went to the doctor to check it out and he said it was cutaneous Anthrax! Dang.

After the jungle we headed to Baños for a few days of biking and hiking in the mountains and bathing in the thermal baths at night. After Baños we took a 10 hour overnight bus to Canoa on the coast. The bus ride was lame but the coast is awesome.

The Jungle (Part 2)

Not bad for a front yard...

After a week of working at the main Jatun Sacha station, Kurt and I volunteered to trek over to the other side of the reserve where we stayed in the Cabaña Arajuno. This cabaña was built in 2007 in order to have a place for Guardebosques (forest guards) to live so that they may more effectively patrol and maintain the area. The other side of the reserve is bordered by the Rio Arajuno and there are several indigenous Quichua communities nearby. Before the cabaña was built, there was a large problem with people from these communities coming in and cutting down trees in the reserve to sell for money. Now, the Guardebosques walk through the forest daily in order to monitor any cutting that may occur and maintain the trails. They also talk to people in the communities, explaining the Jatun Sacha reserve and why it is important that it exists. Since at least one of the Guardebosques speaks Quichua and they are respected in the local communities, this has been largely effective (though as more and more forest is cleared around the reserve, it is under ever-increaing pressure).

Anyway, volunteers from Jatun Sacha often accompany the Guardebosques for week long stays at Arajuno. It sounded like a great opportunity to see another part of the reserve and learn about the forest, so early Monday morning we met up with the two Guardebosques, Don Gabriel and Gato. We packed up our bags with the food and clothes we´d need for the week and set off deep into the jungle. It took us about 4 hours to reach the other side of the reserve, including a couple of rests near tranquil streams that were thankfully somewhat cooler. Finally, we reached the cabaña, a two story structure in a clearing surrounded by a garden with some bananas, aji, pineapples, tabacco, yucca, and a watermelon-like plant which I think was called Bateda. The second story of the cabaña had bunk beds for around 12 people. On the first floor was the kitchen and a hammock area. There was an outhouse and the shower was either the river or a hose. No electricity- dinners by candlelight every night! But, the cabaña had everything you need for a very simple, tranquil existence.

For the rest of Monday, we relaxed- reading books, playing Uno, and enjoying the delicious food that Gato cooked for us. And the next day, Tuesday, it rained hard all day long, so we didn´t get a chance to walk through the forest. We more than made up for this on Wednesday and Thursday however. On Wednesday morning we left the cabaña around 830. We brought lunch with us- an egg and vegetable scramble with rice wrapped up in banana leaves and secured with palm fibers. We walked through the forest in the morning. I should mention that these forest walks were a great learning experience. Both of the Guardebosques have an immense knowledge of the jungle. Don Gabriel in particular knows just about everything about medicinal plants. He´s an impressive person- in his sixties, he would lead our hikes with a machete in one hand and a stick in the other to knock spider webs out of the way (and Gato would head up the rear, machete-ing anything that Gabriel missed). Gabriel would point out plants that had important medicinal or cultural uses. When he´d come across an orchid or bromeliad that had fallen from it´s treetop home, he would stop and gently place it on another tree so that it could grow once again- I found this very touching.

As the day went on we wound up visiting some of the neighboring communities. Kurt and I mostly stood around while Gabriel and Gato talked to them- the mix of Spanish and Quichua was nearly impossible to follow. Still I could tell that this was probably the most important aspect of the job. After a well-timed canoe ride, we ate our delicious lunch and started to loop around back home. But, before we did, we decided to stop at a store to buy something for dinner- a live chicken. Actually we bought the chicken and then sat around chatting with people at the store for around 45 minutes, all the while I was watching our dinner peck at the dirt and fend off bigger chickens. Then we carried the chicken through the jungle for the two hours it took us to get home. This task fell to Gato, who expertly wrapped it up in a palm leaf.

When we reached the cabin, Gabriel killed the chicken with one quick chop of the machete. We watched as Gato plucked it, cleaned it, and broke it down into edible and not-so-edible parts (there were very few of the latter). Gato made a delicious chicken noodle soup and everything went into it- feet, neck, and all. I have to say that the chicken had a very chicken-y flavor (due to it´s varied diet of jungle insects). We called this whole experience ¨proyecto chicken¨.

After more than 6 hours of jungle hiking on Wednesday, we did it all again on Thursday. Before we knew it, it was Friday and we hiked back to the main Jatun Sacha station. The whole week felt really worthwhile to both of us- not only for the education about the jungle ecology and the conservation issues facing this area of the world, but also for the warm hospitality of the Guardebosques, who were really wonderful, wise people.


On Friday night, we headed to the Laboratorio, which is pretty much the coolest bar I´ve ever been to. It´s just up the road from Jatun Sacha, and the volunteers are usually its only customers. It´s a giant thatched-roof hut with a disco ball that sells the local beer, Pilsener, by the case. On Saturday we headed back into Tena with some friends for a day of canyoning (climbing up waterfalls), hiking, and swimming in the rivers. We went with the same tour company that we rafted with the weekend before, and they were really excellent. River People Rafting- if you are ever in the neighborhood. Here are some pictures from the day...

So that´s it for today. Stay tuned for The Jungle Part 3- Food, Insects, and Anthrax!!

The Jungle (part 1)

Who wants to hear about the jungle? Well, after two weeks of limited internet access we now have the chance to tell you about it so here we go whether you like it or not.


On Monday April 5th we took the morning bus from Quito to the South East to a city called Tena. It was a winding ride through the mountains and down quite a bit in elevation. It took us from the Andes to the Amazon basin. Tena is a small town at the intersection of several rivers, the largest of which is the Napo and it feeds into the Amazon river. From Tena we took a bus about an hour to the east along the Napo to our volunteer site, the biological reserve called Jatun Sacha. When we got there we saw that we were definitely IN the jungle. Jatun Sacha was founded in 1985 and now has 2,200 hectares of preserved and protected rainforest. The volunteer quarters are set up on a small piece of this land where they have a kitchen and dining room, a few hamocks strung up and several cabañas sitting out in jungle. The rooms are basic, two single beds in each, mosquito nets included, chicken wire on the windows and one electric light. Really just a place to crash, down time mostly centers around the coveted hammocks or the dining room. The shared bathroom is a great place to find bugs and geckos at night, only cold water showers but its not bad considering the jungle is a pretty warm place. Included in our stay are three meals a day in the cafeteria.



On Tuesday we woke up for breakfast which is served daily between 6;30 and 7;00 and then we set out to one of Jatun Sacha's projects which is a botanical garden where there is a showcase of medicinal plants, a small organic garden etc. This first week we did some weeding in the garden, machete-ing, harvesting Yucca and harvesting Cacao both of which are excellent. Yucca is a tuber like a potato but a bit less starchy. Cacao is the origin of chocolate of course which makes it great right from the start but as if that weren't enough, the fruit itself is sweet and delicious despite tasting nothing like chocolate. The best part is you can pop the cacao fruit in your mouth, suck off the sweet outer part and then spit the seed in the bucket to be processed for chocolate, double the enjoyment! You can sell the cacao seeds in town for about $1 a pound. We tried roasting the seeds ourselves to make choolate and I'd say we had a near success. Here are some pics.














Driving the Yucca

Cacao makes Jungle Em Happy

Weekends at Jatun Sacha are free time so along with our new volunteer friends Cathy and Monica from Australia we decided to go white water rafting. Tena has become somewhat of a hot spot for rafting due to the abundance of rivers in the area. The previous week there had been a lot of rain which resulted in major flooding. There was a lot of property damage in Tena and other small communities but from what we heard there were few or no casualties. So, when we set out on the Jatun Yachu river it was much higher and much faster than normal. In fact, when we set out in the morning it was still raining, but as the day went on it just got nicer and nicer until it became so clear and sunny that we gave the tops of our legs enough UV radiation to last a lifetime. Today, two weeks after the fact, I still look like a lizard. Regardless, it was an awesome day. On one rapid we even lost everybody out of the raft except for Emily and the guide after nearly flipping over. How did Emily stay in? Easy, she came flying across the raft and was going to fall out but Kurt broke her fall and went overboard instead.

Jungle

Hey everyone.

We are in the Jungle outside a town called Tena. We got here last Monday the 5th and we have been at the biological reserve Jatun Sacha since then. There is not much access to internet near where we are staying which is why we are behind on the blog. However we are taking pictures and amassing stories and we will get them all down once we have time. We went white water rafting today and it was awesome. We are planning on staying here for about two more weeks at which time we will take off for Baños. There are so many bugs here!

The food blog- Quito

It´s the blog post you´ve been waiting for! (and by you, I mean Andrea)

So what´s the food like? Let´s start with the staples- corn and potatoes. That´s really what it´s all about here. The upside is that there´s a lot you can do with corn and potatoes. Other staples are platanos (bananas and plantains), yuca, rice, pork, chicken, and of course the meat Ecuador is most famous for, cuy (guinea pig). Note: I haven´t tried cuy, but Kurtis has, and he described it as ¨different, yet also not that different¨.

Fruits are also big here, mainly in jugo (juice) form. Highlights that we don´t have in the US are naranjilla, maracuya (passion fruit), guanabana (soursop), taxo, granadilla, and tomate de arbol.















Lunch seems to be the big deal here. Most typical restuarants offer almuerzos, or set lunches, that will set you back $1.50- $4.00. They usually include juice, soup, a main dish, and something sweet.

Some typical dishes here are:
Caldo de Pollo (chicken soup)
Caldo de Pata (calf´s foot soup)
Sopa de Quinoa (Yum!)
Seco de Chivo/Pollo (rice with goat/chicken)
Fritada (to be explained below)
Locro (cheese and potato soup with avocado- also yum)
llapingacho (fried potato and cheese patties- obviously yum)
empanadas
hornado (a whole roast pig- I saw this in the market, crazy!)

Our school offers a cooking class, and we attended one where we made fritada. It consists, first and foremost, of fried pork. I think you could say it is deep fried pork. Then you take some cooked potatoes, mix them with some cheese and achiote (a vegetable used to dye food red), form them into tortillas, and fry those. Then you take some ripe plaintains and fry those, too. This is all served with mote, which is white corn that´s cooked until it bursts, similar to hominy. (Our class also made a salad, but I´m pretty sure that was just for appearances sake)

Fritada

Aji
Most of the food here is not spicy, but every meal is served with aji. Aji is a salsa made with the aji pepper (a pepper that grows here in the andes) and the tomate de arbol fruit. Tomate de arbol (or tree tomato) tastes nothing like a tomato, apparently. It is a not-too-sweet fruit that you can eat raw, cooked, or in juice form (I´ve only had it in aji form).

Snacks! They have a great snack here- ceviche de chocho. Chocho is a legume that we don´t have in the US, and it´s delicious. This is served with deep fried corn kernels. If you go for the full on ceviche, it is mixed with tomato sauce, lime, red onions, and if you´re lucky, some homemade potato chips. Because the majority of it is chocho, it´s actually pretty healthy.

Another snack is cafe con humitas or quimbolito- ground corn steamed in a leaf wrapper, tamale-style, but sweet. Then they have yogurt and pan de yuca- your choice of exotic fruit-flavored, liquidy yogurt served with little pieces of bread made from yuca.

Also, popcorn is often served with soup- just throw it on in there!

Since this week is Holy Week, we got to try a Quiteño specialty- Fanesca. Fanesca is a crazy fish soup that is only made once a year. It contains, well, basically everything. It is made with twelve types of grains (to represent the twelve apostles) including a few types of beans, lentils, peas, chocho etc., and also fish, milk, potatoes, pumpkin. Then it is topped with queso, an empanada, bolitos (little fried balls of dough), fried banana, onion, and parsley. Fish is, thankfully, the only meat due to the fact that it is eaten during Lent. Ecuadorian families traditionally prepare this together, and Ecuadorian families are large, so it is made in batches meant to serve over 100 people. We helped to prepare it at our school and made 150 servings!

And finally- drinks. A traditional Ecuadorian drink is canelazo. It´s a hot alcoholic drink made with fruit juice (the place we went had either mora (blackberry) or naranjilla) and aguardiente (alcohol made from sugar cane). Really, really delicious. Other than that, they have two types of beer and one of them, Pilsener, is not half bad.

And that´s it for the food in Quito! The next report will be on Jungle food- stay tuned.

Almuerzo- Jugo, Sopa, Plato, Postre!