Buenos dias!
I hope everyone is well - I am fabulous!
I´ve spent the last couple of weeks in Ecuador and am having a ball. Mary and I arrived in Quito exhausted after an extremely long haul but luckily had no dramas along the way and settled into our hotel for some much needed horizontal time! We had a few days in Quito to see the sights and along the way managed to pick up a couple of our tour members who had also arrived a few days early and they certainly came in handy as they both spoke more Spanish than either Mary or I!
The most distressing thing is being starving and having no idea what the menu says and then just crossing your fingers and hoping for the best when the food arrives! But we survived our first meal out quite well, we all got what we thought we´d ordered and remembered to leave the lovely waiter a tip since he´d kindly been trying to practise his English to help us understand it all! We took the next couple of days to see the Old Town, La Virgen de Quito (big statue on a hill), and the New Town. Then we met up with the rest of our Budget Expeditions group....
There are 22 people in our group, 10 aussies, 8 brits, 2 canadians and 3 kiwis, plus our leader Julie, and driver Cam, and the most important member of the ensemble - Moose, our big yellow truck! So we all met up in Quito and then the next day headed up north to Otavalo, stopping on route at the Equator where we got to do all the water and egg tricks to prove we were actually on the equator, and also learnt a bit about Ecuadorian culture e.g. how to shrink a head! Very cool, nothing like how it is in the movie Beetlejuice, actually saw a real one which was even more freaky tho!
So it was on to Otavalo where we were supposed to go to the famous markets and supposed to be camping but got there in the dark because of bad traffic and it was raining really hard too so we ended up missing the markets and invading the local supermarket for beer and snacks instead (yep, learnt how to ask for beer quickly!) and then all wound up in together in a house that was under construction, in the dust, sleeping on the floor, but it was a great bonding experience for all.
After that it was onto Banos where we again got there in the dark after being stuck in two different political road blocks, and arrived to one of the local volcanoes erupting and showering the town in ash! Mixed together with the rain meant the ash was turning to concrete so there was no camping there either as concrete and canvas don´t mix, so we were into a hostal and comfy as anything, watching the ash fall outside. We had a couple of days in Banos where we saw the sights and went canyoning. For those who don´t know, canyoning is where you climb down into a canyon by jumping off waterfalls, and abseiling down the side of them when they´re too high to jump off. It was terrifying for the first jump and the first abseil but after that it was just good fun!
After Banos was Mishuali, where we ventured into the Amazon jungle for a couple of days trekking, was great, very muddy trekking but not too exhuasting, saw lots of very big creepy bugs and spiders, including a tarantula! It was hot and humid and I can´t understand it, but I was the only one actually enjoying the heat and stickyness! We did a bit of inner-tubing down the rapids in the river the next day and all got a bit sunburnt but a great time was had by all - well, we´re still debating whether the ones that tried the ´jungle juice´ still had a good time after they spent the whole night losing their insides one way or the other!
From the jungle it was back to Banos, after a stop on the side of the road due to a large car engine part on the road puncturing one of our tyres(!), for a night to do some much needed laundry and hot showers, and then onto Cuenca where we enjoyed the delights of cruising actual shops rather than markets, drinking ourselves silly on cheap cocktails (yes, learning how to order cocktails quickly too!) and visited a Panama hat factory! Now did anyone know that the Panama hat did not originate from Panama??? It actually originated from Cuenca in Ecuador and when the foreigners came in, they saw people wearing these hats and just assumed that they were from Panama (who knows why) and that´s how they got the name....just a little piece of pub quiz trivia for you...
We headed south again after Cuenca to the border of Ecuador and Peru and made it through eventually after a record quick time of 3 hours! But again, it was all pretty straight forward, as long as you just fill in whatever papers they hand to you - and its ok to guess what they want you to write when you can´t read spanish!
Now we´re in Mancora, camping on the northern coast of Peru, lapping up the sunshine and making the most of the beach, the sand and surf. I´m gradually getting there with my Spanish, I can now say whether I want chicken, fish, or meat (that would be anything that´s red, you never actually know what it is, I like to live dangerously!), and can order multiples of drinks, hooray!
So for now I´m going to sign off, I hope everyone is well, take care all,
Senorita Ronita xxx
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment