Since Ace last wrote, we´ve finally managed to get ourselves to leave Ecuador.
From Cuenca we made the 7 hour bus ride south to our lovely little Vilcabamba. We stayed there for two nights, stocking up on good books at the excellent book exchange and getting in a brief visit with Norie and Richard at Garden of Paradise. From there, we took an 8 hour bus ride south to the little-known border crossing at La Balsa, Peru. Every hour on the bus brought us into more humidity and higher temperatures. You could tell they don´t get many foreigners in those parts from the flocks of kids following us around and staring during the breaks the bus took! From the southernmost part of Ecuador I knew we would take a camioneta trip (a sort of shuttle bus) over the border. I apparently hadn´t read the info very well, as what I was expecting to be a 5 minute shuttle turned out to be an hour and a half on a wooden bench jolting over an extremely remote, extremely bumpy dirt road! My butt suffered grievously, but we eventually made it to the little bridge that led over the river that formed that section of the border. We found the crossing pretty hilarious- there was absolutely no security, and when we wandered into the little shack before the bridge looking for our stamps, the border guards seemed a little surprised to be disturbed from their dirty magazines and computer games. My first impressions of Peru were that it´s really hot, friendly, cheaper lodging and food, more expensive buses, more burros, more people littering. It´s hard to really compare though, as we didn´t go into the jungle at all in Ecuador, and that´s all that we´ve seen in Peru so far. Just for the kicks, I estimated our bus hours in Ecuador- 73 hours!
It had been a long day, but we still had a ways to go. No buses ran through that area, but we were lucky enough to find a driver that was going home to the next town for the night anyways and therefore didn´t brutally rip us off. Two and a half hours later we arrived in the first decent sized town, where we caught yet another car into Jaen. We got dropped off at a cheap hotel ($8 for the night) and collapsed.
The next day was a very long bus ride east (10 hours), but fortunately the bus was much comfier than any we´d ridden in Ecuador. We stayed in Tarapoto and prepped ourselves for one more long day of travelling by bus (7 hours over a bad dirt road) when we had a glorious surprise. We picked up a rather outdated copy of Lonely Planet at a book exchange, and apparently since the time they printed that nasty dirt road had been paved, cutting our trip down to a windy 2 and a half hours! Probably the first and only time that anything has ever taken less time than expected in Peru.
We arrived in Yurimaguas, quickly bought hammocks, water, and fruit, and rushed down to the dock, hoping to catch a boat bound for Iquitos that day. Unfortunately we discovered that the only boat leaving that day was so full of livestock that there was no room for people. However, a nice large boat was leaving the next day, so we reserved a cabin on the boat and settled into a hostel for the evening. When checking out the boat we got stuck in the first of many torrential downpours and impressive displays of lightning and thunder!
The next morning we went to the boat first thing, even though it wasn´t scheduled to leave until 2 (it actually left about 4). Good thing we did, as pretty much all the good hammock spaces were filled by 10. We staked out a good spot and got settled in with our books and snacks. The next two nights and three days were spent mostly swinging in our hammocks, reading our books, and making trips up to the top deck to watch the sunsets and enjoy the breeze. We met some other travelers on the boat and were very happy to have some friends to play cards with. The trip was much more comfortable than expected- there were showers, the food provided didn´t make us sick, and our little cabin was actually cool enough to sleep in comfortably at night. We were really glad we´d sprung the extra cash for the cabin, as the boat was really packed (absolutely zero personal space in the hammock area) and it would have been quite stressful to try to keep an eye on our stuff 24 hours a day.
We were thrilled that we arrived in Iquitos in the morning on Christmas Eve- the boat was pleasant, but I definitely didn´t want to celebrate Christmas on it. We found a hostel, took a nap, and explored the muggy, noisy jungle city that is Iquitos. We found a nice steak house restaurant and splurged on a nice Christmas Eve dinner with our friend from the boat, Benedict, then met up with the two British girls from the boat for drinks. The central square was absolutely packed with people buying snacks and fireworks, listening to music, and taking rides on the mototaxis rigged up to look like Santa´s sleigh. You couldn´t help but pity the poor Santas sweating through their red coats in the crazy humidity. The main celebration here is Christmas Eve- families hit the streets to party and count down the minutes until midnight, when they light off fireworks, New Year´s Eve- Style. On Christmas Day we booked a budget jungle tour, then took a boat to the nearby Butterfly Farm where we got to see gorgeous butterflies, a jaguar, an ocelot, monkeys, and the world´s most adorable baby sloth.
Sunday was the start of our jungle tour. We got up early and met our guide, Adrian, and our absolutely adorable fellow traveler, Noa. We road towards Nauta for about 2.5 hours, where we caught a boat for another 2.5 up the Amazon and to our remote little camp. We got settled into our room in a traditional little building built on stilts with a thatched roof. There was no electricity, but it had hammocks, mosquito nets over comfy beds, pit toilets and the river to bathe in- all we really need. We went on a short walk just outside of the house and saw birds, monkeys, and leaf-cutter ants in just a few minutes. After lunch and a nap in our hammocks, we hopped into the canoe and Adrian took us to a nearby area where the dolphins like to hang out. Lucky for us, they were there, and we got to watch pink and grey dolphins swim around us. We all hopped in the water for a swim, then headed back for dinner followed by a night walk in the jungle, where we spotted tree mice, tarantulas, snakes, and more. It was a bit spooky, but quite fun. While getting ready for bed, we heard a racket down by the dock, so Noa, Ace and I walked down to check it out. We found a poor little sardine who had jumped INTO the canoe and was flopping around unhappily. Ace put him back in the river and we felt proud of ourselves for saving the dumb little fish, until the next morning when Adrian told us they had filled half a bucket earlier that morning with more fish who had hopped into the boat. Yeah…there´s a lot of fish in that river. We spent Monday morning on a long walk through the jungle, where we spotted sloths, monkeys, iguanas, and lots more. The afternoon and evening were spent piranha fishing (using the unfortunate fish from that morning as bait). It was really fun, as we were getting bites every 30 seconds or so on our little branch-and fishing line fishing poles. We probably caught about 25 piranhas and 5 catfish between the 3 tourists and two guides. Night fell, and we headed back towards the camp to fry up our piranhas for dinner. About halfway back, I heard Noa scream and everyone turned around to see what had happened. By the light of our headlamps we saw a new piranha flopping around in the bottom of the canoe- it had hurled itself into the moving boat! By the time we made it back to camp, Ace had been pegged by another piranha and I by a catfish. I never knew fishing could be so easy!
Our last day, we went on one last jungle walk and saw some porcupines, among other things. On the long trip home the sky opened up and we got another good tropical thunderstorm show. We spent the rest of our day catching up our journals, itching our mosquito bites, and washing our disgustingly sweaty clothes.
Today we´ve been getting ready to head out to the Amazon Rainbow community. We´ll head out tomorrow and stay for two weeks. It should be exciting, as we don´t really have any idea what we´ll be doing. All I know is it´s a hippy community in the middle of the jungle where everyone cooks, gardens, and works together and lives off the land. We also found time today to visit a manatee rescue center, where I got to fulfill my lifelong dream of getting to hang out with manatees! I got to feed them and scratch their bristly little noses. Amazing. After that, we headed a little further up the highway to Cuistococha, a nature reserve where you can check out the zoo and swim in the lake. It was a lot of fun.
That´s it for now- stay tuned for what it´s like to live on a commune in the middle of the Amazon jungle! Lots of love!
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Christmas in the jungle
Since Ace last wrote, we´ve finally managed to get ourselves to leave Ecuador.
From Cuenca we made the 7 hour bus ride south to our lovely little Vilcabamba. We stayed there for two nights, stocking up on good books at the excellent book exchange and getting in a brief visit with Norie and Richard at Garden of Paradise. From there, we took an 8 hour bus ride south to the little-known border crossing at La Balsa, Peru. Every hour on the bus brought us into more humidity and higher temperatures. You could tell they don´t get many foreigners in those parts from the flocks of kids following us around and staring during the breaks the bus took! From the southernmost part of Ecuador I knew we would take a camioneta trip (a sort of shuttle bus) over the border. I apparently hadn´t read the info very well, as what I was expecting to be a 5 minute shuttle turned out to be an hour and a half on a wooden bench jolting over an extremely remote, extremely bumpy dirt road! My butt suffered grievously, but we eventually made it to the little bridge that led over the river that formed that section of the border. We found the crossing pretty hilarious- there was absolutely no security, and when we wandered into the little shack before the bridge looking for our stamps, the border guards seemed a little surprised to be disturbed from their dirty magazines and computer games. My first impressions of Peru were that it´s really hot, friendly, cheaper lodging and food, more expensive buses, more burros, more people littering. It´s hard to really compare though, as we didn´t go into the jungle at all in Ecuador, and that´s all that we´ve seen in Peru so far. Just for the kicks, I estimated our bus hours in Ecuador- 73 hours!
It had been a long day, but we still had a ways to go. No buses ran through that area, but we were lucky enough to find a driver that was going home to the next town for the night anyways and therefore didn´t brutally rip us off. Two and a half hours later we arrived in the first decent sized town, where we caught yet another car into Jaen. We got dropped off at a cheap hotel ($8 for the night) and collapsed.
The next day was a very long bus ride east (10 hours), but fortunately the bus was much comfier than any we´d ridden in Ecuador. We stayed in Tarapoto and prepped ourselves for one more long day of travelling by bus (7 hours over a bad dirt road) when we had a glorious surprise. We picked up a rather outdated copy of Lonely Planet at a book exchange, and apparently since the time they printed that nasty dirt road had been paved, cutting our trip down to a windy 2 and a half hours! Probably the first and only time that anything has ever taken less time than expected in Peru.
We arrived in Yurimaguas, quickly bought hammocks, water, and fruit, and rushed down to the dock, hoping to catch a boat bound for Iquitos that day. Unfortunately we discovered that the only boat leaving that day was so full of livestock that there was no room for people. However, a nice large boat was leaving the next day, so we reserved a cabin on the boat and settled into a hostel for the evening. When checking out the boat we got stuck in the first of many torrential downpours and impressive displays of lightning and thunder!
The next morning we went to the boat first thing, even though it wasn´t scheduled to leave until 2 (it actually left about 4). Good thing we did, as pretty much all the good hammock spaces were filled by 10. We staked out a good spot and got settled in with our books and snacks. The next two nights and three days were spent mostly swinging in our hammocks, reading our books, and making trips up to the top deck to watch the sunsets and enjoy the breeze. We met some other travelers on the boat and were very happy to have some friends to play cards with. The trip was much more comfortable than expected- there were showers, the food provided didn´t make us sick, and our little cabin was actually cool enough to sleep in comfortably at night. We were really glad we´d sprung the extra cash for the cabin, as the boat was really packed (absolutely zero personal space in the hammock area) and it would have been quite stressful to try to keep an eye on our stuff 24 hours a day.
We were thrilled that we arrived in Iquitos in the morning on Christmas Eve- the boat was pleasant, but I definitely didn´t want to celebrate Christmas on it. We found a hostel, took a nap, and explored the muggy, noisy jungle city that is Iquitos. We found a nice steak house restaurant and splurged on a nice Christmas Eve dinner with our friend from the boat, Benedict, then met up with the two British girls from the boat for drinks. The central square was absolutely packed with people buying snacks and fireworks, listening to music, and taking rides on the mototaxis rigged up to look like Santa´s sleigh. You couldn´t help but pity the poor Santas sweating through their red coats in the crazy humidity. The main celebration here is Christmas Eve- families hit the streets to party and count down the minutes until midnight, when they light off fireworks, New Year´s Eve- Style. On Christmas Day we booked a budget jungle tour, then took a boat to the nearby Butterfly Farm where we got to see gorgeous butterflies, a jaguar, an ocelot, monkeys, and the world´s most adorable baby sloth.
Sunday was the start of our jungle tour. We got up early and met our guide, Adrian, and our absolutely adorable fellow traveler, Noa. We road towards Nauta for about 2.5 hours, where we caught a boat for another 2.5 up the Amazon and to our remote little camp. We got settled into our room in a traditional little building built on stilts with a thatched roof. There was no electricity, but it had hammocks, mosquito nets over comfy beds, pit toilets and the river to bathe in- all we really need. We went on a short walk just outside of the house and saw birds, monkeys, and leaf-cutter ants in just a few minutes. After lunch and a nap in our hammocks, we hopped into the canoe and Adrian took us to a nearby area where the dolphins like to hang out. Lucky for us, they were there, and we got to watch pink and grey dolphins swim around us. We all hopped in the water for a swim, then headed back for dinner followed by a night walk in the jungle, where we spotted tree mice, tarantulas, snakes, and more. It was a bit spooky, but quite fun. While getting ready for bed, we heard a racket down by the dock, so Noa, Ace and I walked down to check it out. We found a poor little sardine who had jumped INTO the canoe and was flopping around unhappily. Ace put him back in the river and we felt proud of ourselves for saving the dumb little fish, until the next morning when Adrian told us they had filled half a bucket earlier that morning with more fish who had hopped into the boat. Yeah…there´s a lot of fish in that river. We spent Monday morning on a long walk through the jungle, where we spotted sloths, monkeys, iguanas, and lots more. The afternoon and evening were spent piranha fishing (using the unfortunate fish from that morning as bait). It was really fun, as we were getting bites every 30 seconds or so on our little branch-and fishing line fishing poles. We probably caught about 25 piranhas and 5 catfish between the 3 tourists and two guides. Night fell, and we headed back towards the camp to fry up our piranhas for dinner. About halfway back, I heard Noa scream and everyone turned around to see what had happened. By the light of our headlamps we saw a new piranha flopping around in the bottom of the canoe- it had hurled itself into the moving boat! By the time we made it back to camp, Ace had been pegged by another piranha and I by a catfish. I never knew fishing could be so easy!
Our last day, we went on one last jungle walk and saw some porcupines, among other things. On the long trip home the sky opened up and we got another good tropical thunderstorm show. We spent the rest of our day catching up our journals, itching our mosquito bites, and washing our disgustingly sweaty clothes.
Today we´ve been getting ready to head out to the Amazon Rainbow community. We´ll head out tomorrow and stay for two weeks. It should be exciting, as we don´t really have any idea what we´ll be doing. All I know is it´s a hippy community in the middle of the jungle where everyone cooks, gardens, and works together and lives off the land. We also found time today to visit a manatee rescue center, where I got to fulfill my lifelong dream of getting to hang out with manatees! I got to feed them and scratch there bristly little noses. Amazing. After that, we headed a little further up the highway to Cuistococha, a nature reserve where you can check out the zoo and swim in the lake. It was a lot of fun.
That´s it for now- stay tuned for what it´s like to live on a commune in the middle of the Amazon jungle! Lots of love!
From Cuenca we made the 7 hour bus ride south to our lovely little Vilcabamba. We stayed there for two nights, stocking up on good books at the excellent book exchange and getting in a brief visit with Norie and Richard at Garden of Paradise. From there, we took an 8 hour bus ride south to the little-known border crossing at La Balsa, Peru. Every hour on the bus brought us into more humidity and higher temperatures. You could tell they don´t get many foreigners in those parts from the flocks of kids following us around and staring during the breaks the bus took! From the southernmost part of Ecuador I knew we would take a camioneta trip (a sort of shuttle bus) over the border. I apparently hadn´t read the info very well, as what I was expecting to be a 5 minute shuttle turned out to be an hour and a half on a wooden bench jolting over an extremely remote, extremely bumpy dirt road! My butt suffered grievously, but we eventually made it to the little bridge that led over the river that formed that section of the border. We found the crossing pretty hilarious- there was absolutely no security, and when we wandered into the little shack before the bridge looking for our stamps, the border guards seemed a little surprised to be disturbed from their dirty magazines and computer games. My first impressions of Peru were that it´s really hot, friendly, cheaper lodging and food, more expensive buses, more burros, more people littering. It´s hard to really compare though, as we didn´t go into the jungle at all in Ecuador, and that´s all that we´ve seen in Peru so far. Just for the kicks, I estimated our bus hours in Ecuador- 73 hours!
It had been a long day, but we still had a ways to go. No buses ran through that area, but we were lucky enough to find a driver that was going home to the next town for the night anyways and therefore didn´t brutally rip us off. Two and a half hours later we arrived in the first decent sized town, where we caught yet another car into Jaen. We got dropped off at a cheap hotel ($8 for the night) and collapsed.
The next day was a very long bus ride east (10 hours), but fortunately the bus was much comfier than any we´d ridden in Ecuador. We stayed in Tarapoto and prepped ourselves for one more long day of travelling by bus (7 hours over a bad dirt road) when we had a glorious surprise. We picked up a rather outdated copy of Lonely Planet at a book exchange, and apparently since the time they printed that nasty dirt road had been paved, cutting our trip down to a windy 2 and a half hours! Probably the first and only time that anything has ever taken less time than expected in Peru.
We arrived in Yurimaguas, quickly bought hammocks, water, and fruit, and rushed down to the dock, hoping to catch a boat bound for Iquitos that day. Unfortunately we discovered that the only boat leaving that day was so full of livestock that there was no room for people. However, a nice large boat was leaving the next day, so we reserved a cabin on the boat and settled into a hostel for the evening. When checking out the boat we got stuck in the first of many torrential downpours and impressive displays of lightning and thunder!
The next morning we went to the boat first thing, even though it wasn´t scheduled to leave until 2 (it actually left about 4). Good thing we did, as pretty much all the good hammock spaces were filled by 10. We staked out a good spot and got settled in with our books and snacks. The next two nights and three days were spent mostly swinging in our hammocks, reading our books, and making trips up to the top deck to watch the sunsets and enjoy the breeze. We met some other travelers on the boat and were very happy to have some friends to play cards with. The trip was much more comfortable than expected- there were showers, the food provided didn´t make us sick, and our little cabin was actually cool enough to sleep in comfortably at night. We were really glad we´d sprung the extra cash for the cabin, as the boat was really packed (absolutely zero personal space in the hammock area) and it would have been quite stressful to try to keep an eye on our stuff 24 hours a day.
We were thrilled that we arrived in Iquitos in the morning on Christmas Eve- the boat was pleasant, but I definitely didn´t want to celebrate Christmas on it. We found a hostel, took a nap, and explored the muggy, noisy jungle city that is Iquitos. We found a nice steak house restaurant and splurged on a nice Christmas Eve dinner with our friend from the boat, Benedict, then met up with the two British girls from the boat for drinks. The central square was absolutely packed with people buying snacks and fireworks, listening to music, and taking rides on the mototaxis rigged up to look like Santa´s sleigh. You couldn´t help but pity the poor Santas sweating through their red coats in the crazy humidity. The main celebration here is Christmas Eve- families hit the streets to party and count down the minutes until midnight, when they light off fireworks, New Year´s Eve- Style. On Christmas Day we booked a budget jungle tour, then took a boat to the nearby Butterfly Farm where we got to see gorgeous butterflies, a jaguar, an ocelot, monkeys, and the world´s most adorable baby sloth.
Sunday was the start of our jungle tour. We got up early and met our guide, Adrian, and our absolutely adorable fellow traveler, Noa. We road towards Nauta for about 2.5 hours, where we caught a boat for another 2.5 up the Amazon and to our remote little camp. We got settled into our room in a traditional little building built on stilts with a thatched roof. There was no electricity, but it had hammocks, mosquito nets over comfy beds, pit toilets and the river to bathe in- all we really need. We went on a short walk just outside of the house and saw birds, monkeys, and leaf-cutter ants in just a few minutes. After lunch and a nap in our hammocks, we hopped into the canoe and Adrian took us to a nearby area where the dolphins like to hang out. Lucky for us, they were there, and we got to watch pink and grey dolphins swim around us. We all hopped in the water for a swim, then headed back for dinner followed by a night walk in the jungle, where we spotted tree mice, tarantulas, snakes, and more. It was a bit spooky, but quite fun. While getting ready for bed, we heard a racket down by the dock, so Noa, Ace and I walked down to check it out. We found a poor little sardine who had jumped INTO the canoe and was flopping around unhappily. Ace put him back in the river and we felt proud of ourselves for saving the dumb little fish, until the next morning when Adrian told us they had filled half a bucket earlier that morning with more fish who had hopped into the boat. Yeah…there´s a lot of fish in that river. We spent Monday morning on a long walk through the jungle, where we spotted sloths, monkeys, iguanas, and lots more. The afternoon and evening were spent piranha fishing (using the unfortunate fish from that morning as bait). It was really fun, as we were getting bites every 30 seconds or so on our little branch-and fishing line fishing poles. We probably caught about 25 piranhas and 5 catfish between the 3 tourists and two guides. Night fell, and we headed back towards the camp to fry up our piranhas for dinner. About halfway back, I heard Noa scream and everyone turned around to see what had happened. By the light of our headlamps we saw a new piranha flopping around in the bottom of the canoe- it had hurled itself into the moving boat! By the time we made it back to camp, Ace had been pegged by another piranha and I by a catfish. I never knew fishing could be so easy!
Our last day, we went on one last jungle walk and saw some porcupines, among other things. On the long trip home the sky opened up and we got another good tropical thunderstorm show. We spent the rest of our day catching up our journals, itching our mosquito bites, and washing our disgustingly sweaty clothes.
Today we´ve been getting ready to head out to the Amazon Rainbow community. We´ll head out tomorrow and stay for two weeks. It should be exciting, as we don´t really have any idea what we´ll be doing. All I know is it´s a hippy community in the middle of the jungle where everyone cooks, gardens, and works together and lives off the land. We also found time today to visit a manatee rescue center, where I got to fulfill my lifelong dream of getting to hang out with manatees! I got to feed them and scratch there bristly little noses. Amazing. After that, we headed a little further up the highway to Cuistococha, a nature reserve where you can check out the zoo and swim in the lake. It was a lot of fun.
That´s it for now- stay tuned for what it´s like to live on a commune in the middle of the Amazon jungle! Lots of love!
Monday, December 13, 2010
Cotopaxi and Beyond
I will preface this entry by saying that it is very long, and possibly full of errors since I am currently on a word processor that lacks correctional functions in English, so my apologies in advance. However, the bulk of it is about climbing Cotopaxi, a popular Ecuadorian volcano, so I thought that was worth the space. Happy Reading!
Since leaving Cuenca, we have had quite the adventure: Cotopaxi! To start with, we took a beautiful trip up to Las Cajas, a national park outside of Cuenca. The point of this was to acclimatize our bodies to higher altitude as much as we could. After climbing a peak in Las Cajas, we had to come to Quito in order to arrange a guide for our trip up the mountain, so we took the eight-hour trip from Cuenca to Quito, and once everything was all booked, we climbed Pichincha, a mountain just outside of Quito. (You have to take a cable car from the city in order to start the hike.) Not having any food, however, we decided to turn back just a little before we reached 4,700 meters. Through this process, we didn’t feel light-headed or dizzy, signs of altitude sickness, so we figured we were generally ready for Cotopaxi.
Next we left Quito. We could have stayed in the city and gotten a free ride (saving us two dollars) to Cotopaxi National Park, but we wanted to try to acclimatize ourselves further. So we hopped on a bus and found the cheaper of two hotels near Cotopaxi, which was just off of the highway. Not being at a high altitude, however, we wanted to go to a nearby lake to hike around a bit in order to be sure we were acclimatized. Just after checking in to “Hotel El Turista,” we hired a driver to take us up to the lake. However, this 25-minute drive cost us about 30 dollars! Plus, the lake was actually much lower than any of the mountains we had previously climbed, and to make matters worse, we were only there for about 45 minutes before we walked the entirety of the lake. We wanted to stay a little longer, but I was getting pretty tired, and it was just starting to rain. Feeling a bit frustrated at the high cost of the driver, the low-ish altitude, and the short amount of time we were there, we begrudgingly told our driver that we would like to head back.
For the remainder of the day, we read, wrote in journals, and listened to podcasts, and had a chance to talk with our hostess for a while. At first we really liked her. She seemed to relate with us about how other businesses tend to rip foreigners off during their travels in Ecuador, and we were glad that we didn’t stay at the other hotel that was twice the price. Before long, we realized that we wouldn’t have enough food for breakfast in the morning, so we let her know that we would like her to cook some for us. Having talked with her a bit, we trusted that the price wouldn’t be too extravagant. (She mentioned that the price for a meal should be no more than three dollars per person in a previous conversation.) Little did we know that this breakfast would cost us 5 dollars each.
All this aside, we were still excited to get up the mountain. Our guides picked us up at the hotel and drove us up to the Cotopaxi restaurant where we would put on all of our cold-weather gear and eat some lunch (cookies, chips, and soup). At this point, getting to know our group was really fun. There was Michael, a Korean-American working as a lawyer in Korea; Greg, a well-traveled consultant of multiple talents working for the pharmeceutical industry; and a Swiss guy (whose name I obviously forgot) working in Quito with a Swiss engineering firm. After we get geared up, we drive to the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain and start to make our ascent up to the refuge (just over 4800m). The weather up the mountain wasn´t great. In fact, it was snowing fairly hard on us. Our guide, wanting to get us out of the weather as soon as possible, kept us at a steady pace up the mountain. By the time we got to the top, we were sufficiently out of breath and ready to set down our heavy packs.
Once at the refuge – a building large enough to house maybe 70 people or so – we claimed our beds and sat down for hot tea and dinner. We got to know our group even better, and it was here that an adjascent group of two Americans started talking to Kait; they let her know that they were working at a school in Quito that had just lost a literature teacher and were looking for another. After some discussion, Kait and I decided that I should pursue this opportunity, but more on that later.
At about 6:30 or 7pm, we crawled into bed (after I snuck out to take some night shots of the refuge and of nearby city lights). I, well aware that 7pm was REALLY early to try to get some sleep, just lay there sleepless for a very long time. Before long, I noticed that my left nostril had decided to close, exactly the opposite of what anyone would want in a high-altitude, air-thin environment like that. Naturally, I developed a small headache that grew into a very large headache which further prevented me from sleeping. For hours and hours, it went like this. After a while, people started stirring, and I asked Greg what time it was. He told me that it was almost midnight, the time we were supposed to get up to start getting ready for the ascent to the summit. I decided that there was no point in trying to lay there the extra 10 minutes, so I started to get up.
Almost immediately, I felt abnormally hot and a bit dizzy. It was here that I was almost certain that I had altitude sickness. Fighting this feeling, I made my way downstairs, first to the doorway where I could get some fresh air, and then eventually to the table where I could feebly attempt to eat something in order to have some energy. One of the symptoms of altitude sickness – if not the tell-tale symptom – is a lack of appetite, and despite my best efforts, I could hardly eat anything. Once Kait joined me downstairs after a long absence from the table, she alerted me that she didn´t feel too well either. At this point, I was still feeling dizzy and my head was pounding, but I knew I had to put on my gear. Against my body´s will, I managed to rig myself up, and before long – and after some help from the guide with our clampons (spikey clamps that fit to the bottom of the boots) – we were outside and ready to go.
Being a bit behind the other groups out of the door, we told our guide that we would be happy to take it nice and slow. Greg, an experienced climber (who, anecdotally, had just come from the Galapagos, a very low elevation) told me that he had overcome these symptoms before just be being in the fresh air. Heartened, I hoped this would be true. I let Kait be ahead of me and behind the guide on the way up because she had been having problems breathing the night before, and this was instantly what she started feeling as she started up.Also, I was suffering from a bad stomach ache as well as unusual overheating, the kind associated generally with nausea, so it was clear to me that my body wanted to throw up, but I just couldn´t get it to. Other groups passed us until I was sure that we were the last of the people who had decided to leave the refuge. Our guide, the most kind, encouraging human being alive, was saddened by our agreement that after only 30 minutes, we were ready to throw in the towel. The decisión was originally Kait´s, but I knew that I wouldn´t likely make it much further – or that at least I wouldn´t feel very good at all if I did. Kait suggested maybe that I tag along with another group, which I could have done, but I knew I would have slowed them down and that I essentially wouldn´t be able to turn back if I needed to without making the whole group turn back. So we headed back to the refuge.
Once there, I started to strip my shell clothes, and get ready for the sweet embrace of sleep, but before I could so much as hit my head to the non-existant pillow, I felt the urge to do what my body had been waiting for. So I urged Kait to hand me my boots, and I headed downstairs and out the door. I remembered thinking how amazing it was that the human body seems to somehow know when it is okay to throw up and when not to because it took maybe two full minutes to get my boots on and out the door. Then it wasn´t even five seconds later that I was re-tasting the cookies and soup that I had had for lunch. After doing this three times, I left the freezing (literally) cold air and crawled into bed. After ensuring we would be warm enough, Kait and I fell asleep for a few hours. We were later awakened at what must have been four or five in the morning by people returning from the trip; these were the ones who did not get sick.
I knew that they had returned way too early, and I began to wonder why. After a few minutes of much motion, shedding of gear, and settling into beds, I overheard a non-sick climber tell a sick one near us that since so much fresh snow had fallen on the mountain, the guides decided that nobody should traverse the more dangerous parts that started about 800 meters from the summit. Although I felt bad that no one could make it, I somehow felt a little better that since I and Kait couldn´t make it, there was some kind of universal justice in the fact that no one else could either.
Kait and I soon woke up, and I went outside to take some pictures of the rising sun over the landscape. (I guess the same view I was photographing had been shown in the film Baraka). A little later, the sun was well up, and it was a beautifully clear day, a large change from the previous day, so we were glad that at least we were able to get some clear shots of the surrounding landscape before we left.
Before long, we were down the mountain, and then in Quito…again. We actually wanted to go to Latacunga for the night, but we decided that it would be better to try to apply at the school with a missing teacher. So I emailed the school promptly upon arrival on Sunday, and I got an interview at the school even though the position had already been filled. (I was applying for 2011-2012. The interview went very well, and I have high hopes for working in the school. With an International Baccalaureate program, it would be excellent learning experience for me. So far nothing is for sure, but the interviewer seemed very positive, so we´ll see.
Now, Kait and I are back in Cuenca. Since I had to call schools (that I have recently applied to), we decided to stay in a place that could at least guarantee decent internet access. We actually wanted to be in Vilcabamba by now, but it does not have decent internet (it is very rural), so we will make it there tomorrow. After that, we will be able to start traveling to Iquitos, Peru, the largest city in the world that is inaccessible by road. We will travel a few days into Peru, and then we will take a boat up the Amazon river for about 3-6 days (but hopefully only 3!)
Since leaving Cuenca, we have had quite the adventure: Cotopaxi! To start with, we took a beautiful trip up to Las Cajas, a national park outside of Cuenca. The point of this was to acclimatize our bodies to higher altitude as much as we could. After climbing a peak in Las Cajas, we had to come to Quito in order to arrange a guide for our trip up the mountain, so we took the eight-hour trip from Cuenca to Quito, and once everything was all booked, we climbed Pichincha, a mountain just outside of Quito. (You have to take a cable car from the city in order to start the hike.) Not having any food, however, we decided to turn back just a little before we reached 4,700 meters. Through this process, we didn’t feel light-headed or dizzy, signs of altitude sickness, so we figured we were generally ready for Cotopaxi.
Next we left Quito. We could have stayed in the city and gotten a free ride (saving us two dollars) to Cotopaxi National Park, but we wanted to try to acclimatize ourselves further. So we hopped on a bus and found the cheaper of two hotels near Cotopaxi, which was just off of the highway. Not being at a high altitude, however, we wanted to go to a nearby lake to hike around a bit in order to be sure we were acclimatized. Just after checking in to “Hotel El Turista,” we hired a driver to take us up to the lake. However, this 25-minute drive cost us about 30 dollars! Plus, the lake was actually much lower than any of the mountains we had previously climbed, and to make matters worse, we were only there for about 45 minutes before we walked the entirety of the lake. We wanted to stay a little longer, but I was getting pretty tired, and it was just starting to rain. Feeling a bit frustrated at the high cost of the driver, the low-ish altitude, and the short amount of time we were there, we begrudgingly told our driver that we would like to head back.
For the remainder of the day, we read, wrote in journals, and listened to podcasts, and had a chance to talk with our hostess for a while. At first we really liked her. She seemed to relate with us about how other businesses tend to rip foreigners off during their travels in Ecuador, and we were glad that we didn’t stay at the other hotel that was twice the price. Before long, we realized that we wouldn’t have enough food for breakfast in the morning, so we let her know that we would like her to cook some for us. Having talked with her a bit, we trusted that the price wouldn’t be too extravagant. (She mentioned that the price for a meal should be no more than three dollars per person in a previous conversation.) Little did we know that this breakfast would cost us 5 dollars each.
All this aside, we were still excited to get up the mountain. Our guides picked us up at the hotel and drove us up to the Cotopaxi restaurant where we would put on all of our cold-weather gear and eat some lunch (cookies, chips, and soup). At this point, getting to know our group was really fun. There was Michael, a Korean-American working as a lawyer in Korea; Greg, a well-traveled consultant of multiple talents working for the pharmeceutical industry; and a Swiss guy (whose name I obviously forgot) working in Quito with a Swiss engineering firm. After we get geared up, we drive to the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain and start to make our ascent up to the refuge (just over 4800m). The weather up the mountain wasn´t great. In fact, it was snowing fairly hard on us. Our guide, wanting to get us out of the weather as soon as possible, kept us at a steady pace up the mountain. By the time we got to the top, we were sufficiently out of breath and ready to set down our heavy packs.
Once at the refuge – a building large enough to house maybe 70 people or so – we claimed our beds and sat down for hot tea and dinner. We got to know our group even better, and it was here that an adjascent group of two Americans started talking to Kait; they let her know that they were working at a school in Quito that had just lost a literature teacher and were looking for another. After some discussion, Kait and I decided that I should pursue this opportunity, but more on that later.
At about 6:30 or 7pm, we crawled into bed (after I snuck out to take some night shots of the refuge and of nearby city lights). I, well aware that 7pm was REALLY early to try to get some sleep, just lay there sleepless for a very long time. Before long, I noticed that my left nostril had decided to close, exactly the opposite of what anyone would want in a high-altitude, air-thin environment like that. Naturally, I developed a small headache that grew into a very large headache which further prevented me from sleeping. For hours and hours, it went like this. After a while, people started stirring, and I asked Greg what time it was. He told me that it was almost midnight, the time we were supposed to get up to start getting ready for the ascent to the summit. I decided that there was no point in trying to lay there the extra 10 minutes, so I started to get up.
Almost immediately, I felt abnormally hot and a bit dizzy. It was here that I was almost certain that I had altitude sickness. Fighting this feeling, I made my way downstairs, first to the doorway where I could get some fresh air, and then eventually to the table where I could feebly attempt to eat something in order to have some energy. One of the symptoms of altitude sickness – if not the tell-tale symptom – is a lack of appetite, and despite my best efforts, I could hardly eat anything. Once Kait joined me downstairs after a long absence from the table, she alerted me that she didn´t feel too well either. At this point, I was still feeling dizzy and my head was pounding, but I knew I had to put on my gear. Against my body´s will, I managed to rig myself up, and before long – and after some help from the guide with our clampons (spikey clamps that fit to the bottom of the boots) – we were outside and ready to go.
Being a bit behind the other groups out of the door, we told our guide that we would be happy to take it nice and slow. Greg, an experienced climber (who, anecdotally, had just come from the Galapagos, a very low elevation) told me that he had overcome these symptoms before just be being in the fresh air. Heartened, I hoped this would be true. I let Kait be ahead of me and behind the guide on the way up because she had been having problems breathing the night before, and this was instantly what she started feeling as she started up.Also, I was suffering from a bad stomach ache as well as unusual overheating, the kind associated generally with nausea, so it was clear to me that my body wanted to throw up, but I just couldn´t get it to. Other groups passed us until I was sure that we were the last of the people who had decided to leave the refuge. Our guide, the most kind, encouraging human being alive, was saddened by our agreement that after only 30 minutes, we were ready to throw in the towel. The decisión was originally Kait´s, but I knew that I wouldn´t likely make it much further – or that at least I wouldn´t feel very good at all if I did. Kait suggested maybe that I tag along with another group, which I could have done, but I knew I would have slowed them down and that I essentially wouldn´t be able to turn back if I needed to without making the whole group turn back. So we headed back to the refuge.
Once there, I started to strip my shell clothes, and get ready for the sweet embrace of sleep, but before I could so much as hit my head to the non-existant pillow, I felt the urge to do what my body had been waiting for. So I urged Kait to hand me my boots, and I headed downstairs and out the door. I remembered thinking how amazing it was that the human body seems to somehow know when it is okay to throw up and when not to because it took maybe two full minutes to get my boots on and out the door. Then it wasn´t even five seconds later that I was re-tasting the cookies and soup that I had had for lunch. After doing this three times, I left the freezing (literally) cold air and crawled into bed. After ensuring we would be warm enough, Kait and I fell asleep for a few hours. We were later awakened at what must have been four or five in the morning by people returning from the trip; these were the ones who did not get sick.
I knew that they had returned way too early, and I began to wonder why. After a few minutes of much motion, shedding of gear, and settling into beds, I overheard a non-sick climber tell a sick one near us that since so much fresh snow had fallen on the mountain, the guides decided that nobody should traverse the more dangerous parts that started about 800 meters from the summit. Although I felt bad that no one could make it, I somehow felt a little better that since I and Kait couldn´t make it, there was some kind of universal justice in the fact that no one else could either.
Kait and I soon woke up, and I went outside to take some pictures of the rising sun over the landscape. (I guess the same view I was photographing had been shown in the film Baraka). A little later, the sun was well up, and it was a beautifully clear day, a large change from the previous day, so we were glad that at least we were able to get some clear shots of the surrounding landscape before we left.
Before long, we were down the mountain, and then in Quito…again. We actually wanted to go to Latacunga for the night, but we decided that it would be better to try to apply at the school with a missing teacher. So I emailed the school promptly upon arrival on Sunday, and I got an interview at the school even though the position had already been filled. (I was applying for 2011-2012. The interview went very well, and I have high hopes for working in the school. With an International Baccalaureate program, it would be excellent learning experience for me. So far nothing is for sure, but the interviewer seemed very positive, so we´ll see.
Now, Kait and I are back in Cuenca. Since I had to call schools (that I have recently applied to), we decided to stay in a place that could at least guarantee decent internet access. We actually wanted to be in Vilcabamba by now, but it does not have decent internet (it is very rural), so we will make it there tomorrow. After that, we will be able to start traveling to Iquitos, Peru, the largest city in the world that is inaccessible by road. We will travel a few days into Peru, and then we will take a boat up the Amazon river for about 3-6 days (but hopefully only 3!)
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
A farewell to Cuenca
It´s almost time for us to say goodbe to Cuenca- it´s hard to believe almost a month has gone by already. It´s been a good one- Ace´s Spanish has improved a ton (mine too, I hope), I loved my volunteer work, and we´ve met a lot of really lovely people.
Ace has plowed through ALL the Spanish tenses in four weeks- something that took me, oh, I don´t know, about five years. I’ve been taking a few hours of classes a week, too, and have done some good reviewing of all the grammar I’ve forgotten.
My schedule of wild animal refuge two days a week, street dog rescue shelter/vet clinic two days a week has been great, too. Some highlights of the wild animal refuge were getting to hang out in cages with monkeys (and hold little baby Jacobo) and hand feed baby deer and ostriches. And, of course, watching Ace get charged by an enraged llama! As hard as he tried, Felipe (the llama) wasn’t all that threatening. The clinic was amazing, too. On my first day, I went with one of the vets to pick up a dog that had been called in by a neighbor. It was a tiny little puppy living in a home where he had been horribly abused. I have never seen anything as wild or as angry as that tiny little abused puppy- we had to tie his mouth shut to keep him from biting us, and I was still afraid to pick him up. For the past three weeks, he’s continued to be extremely aggressive, but yesterday when I visited the shelter I saw him snuggling other dogs, and he was even jumping up on my legs wanting to play! It makes me want to cry just thinking about it. I’ve also been able to observe surgeries and lots of other vet stuff. I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’m thining seriously about trying to get into vet school when we return home, which is pretty huge for me! I’ve pretty much spent my whole life wondering what I should do as a career without any leads whatsoever. Yay for direction! Thank you Cuenca!
Since we were staying here for a while, I decided to contact some of the people living in Cuenca on Couchsurfing and see if anyone wanted to hang out. I sent out a ton of messages, since I hadn’t gotten a lot of replies in the past. Surprise! Pretty much everyone wrote back. People are so warm here. We had 10 or so Couchsurfers over to our hostel for a Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, which was really fun. Ace and I spent the whole day cooking as close to a traditional feast as we could- two whole chickens (they have turkey here, but it’s really expensive), mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, apple cider, empanadas (a little touch of Ecuador), Mom’s yummy candied walnut salad, and an apple berry cobbler. The gravy was the only thing that totally bombed, which I was ok with. Plus, our guests were all from different countries (five Ecuadorians, two Spaniards, two Belgians,and a Brazilian), so they didn’t know what they were missing ! We’ve gotten to hang out with Roos and Kathleen, the two lovely Belgian girls, quite a bit. We went to Baños (a nearby village with really nice hot springs) two weekends ago, and on a waterfall hike last weekend. We also have gotten to hang out with Claire-Marie and Pepo a few times. Claire-Marie is a French girl working in a charitable foundation here, and Pepo is a rad Ecuadorian guy who is working on making Ace a thumb harp Lots of good people here.
We´re looking to keep pretty busy our last week- going salsa dancing with Kathleen , Pepo, and Claire-Marie tonight, going to Pepo´s family´s property to help with the house-building effort on Friday, going to my Spanish teacher´s family barbecue on Saturday, and going to Cajas national park on Sunday. Enshallah-ojala. Oh yeah, and studying and working too :)
We haven´t really plotted out exactly what´s next, but after seeing Roos´photos of climbing Cotopaxi, we decided we can´t leave Ecuador without doing it. So after here it´s back north to prepare and acclimatize to the elevation, hiking a rad glacier-covered volcano (with professional guides and good gear, no worries!), then baaackkk south (again) towards Vilcabamba and on to Peru. We´re thinking we should be in Iquitos, Peru by Christmas so we can either enjoy a magical hippy Christmas on the Rainbow Community farm or be out in the jungle spearing pirahnas and cooking them over the fire for our Christmas dinner. Or something like that.
Lots of love to all of you back home. We love and miss you, as always.
Ace has plowed through ALL the Spanish tenses in four weeks- something that took me, oh, I don´t know, about five years. I’ve been taking a few hours of classes a week, too, and have done some good reviewing of all the grammar I’ve forgotten.
My schedule of wild animal refuge two days a week, street dog rescue shelter/vet clinic two days a week has been great, too. Some highlights of the wild animal refuge were getting to hang out in cages with monkeys (and hold little baby Jacobo) and hand feed baby deer and ostriches. And, of course, watching Ace get charged by an enraged llama! As hard as he tried, Felipe (the llama) wasn’t all that threatening. The clinic was amazing, too. On my first day, I went with one of the vets to pick up a dog that had been called in by a neighbor. It was a tiny little puppy living in a home where he had been horribly abused. I have never seen anything as wild or as angry as that tiny little abused puppy- we had to tie his mouth shut to keep him from biting us, and I was still afraid to pick him up. For the past three weeks, he’s continued to be extremely aggressive, but yesterday when I visited the shelter I saw him snuggling other dogs, and he was even jumping up on my legs wanting to play! It makes me want to cry just thinking about it. I’ve also been able to observe surgeries and lots of other vet stuff. I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’m thining seriously about trying to get into vet school when we return home, which is pretty huge for me! I’ve pretty much spent my whole life wondering what I should do as a career without any leads whatsoever. Yay for direction! Thank you Cuenca!
Since we were staying here for a while, I decided to contact some of the people living in Cuenca on Couchsurfing and see if anyone wanted to hang out. I sent out a ton of messages, since I hadn’t gotten a lot of replies in the past. Surprise! Pretty much everyone wrote back. People are so warm here. We had 10 or so Couchsurfers over to our hostel for a Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, which was really fun. Ace and I spent the whole day cooking as close to a traditional feast as we could- two whole chickens (they have turkey here, but it’s really expensive), mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, apple cider, empanadas (a little touch of Ecuador), Mom’s yummy candied walnut salad, and an apple berry cobbler. The gravy was the only thing that totally bombed, which I was ok with. Plus, our guests were all from different countries (five Ecuadorians, two Spaniards, two Belgians,and a Brazilian), so they didn’t know what they were missing ! We’ve gotten to hang out with Roos and Kathleen, the two lovely Belgian girls, quite a bit. We went to Baños (a nearby village with really nice hot springs) two weekends ago, and on a waterfall hike last weekend. We also have gotten to hang out with Claire-Marie and Pepo a few times. Claire-Marie is a French girl working in a charitable foundation here, and Pepo is a rad Ecuadorian guy who is working on making Ace a thumb harp Lots of good people here.
We´re looking to keep pretty busy our last week- going salsa dancing with Kathleen , Pepo, and Claire-Marie tonight, going to Pepo´s family´s property to help with the house-building effort on Friday, going to my Spanish teacher´s family barbecue on Saturday, and going to Cajas national park on Sunday. Enshallah-ojala. Oh yeah, and studying and working too :)
We haven´t really plotted out exactly what´s next, but after seeing Roos´photos of climbing Cotopaxi, we decided we can´t leave Ecuador without doing it. So after here it´s back north to prepare and acclimatize to the elevation, hiking a rad glacier-covered volcano (with professional guides and good gear, no worries!), then baaackkk south (again) towards Vilcabamba and on to Peru. We´re thinking we should be in Iquitos, Peru by Christmas so we can either enjoy a magical hippy Christmas on the Rainbow Community farm or be out in the jungle spearing pirahnas and cooking them over the fire for our Christmas dinner. Or something like that.
Lots of love to all of you back home. We love and miss you, as always.
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