Time to catch up on the blog! Ecuador in one post! Read all about it!
14-17 Quito, 17 Otavalo, 18 Banos, 19 Banos - Guaranda, 20 Salinas, 21 Guayaquil
We arrived into Quito and thankfully got off our last bus (too many days in a row and bus number seven), had ceviche for dinner and made good use of having proper beds. The next day we went strolling round the old town with Alex, our new-found travelling partner. The highlight of this day was climbing the Basillica and seeing Quito from high moral ground. The low point was a monastery tour with a rapid-fire guide and a man-women (Katrina found this more interesting than the guide).
View from Basilica
Monastery
We also journeyed to the centre of the earth - Mitad del Mundo, where they calculated the position of the equator. We celebrated this fact by taking touristy photos on the line itself (Spike was super keen for these) and Spike practised his handstands. There wasn't much else to do... although we did meet some lovely kids. They called us "Gringo. Fatty Americans!"
Our next trip was to Otavolo, the biggest market in Ecuador, with many people in indigenous dress running around, and many many touristy stalls all apparently selling the same things... It was awesome. We tried on many very touristy alpaca jumpers (see below) and Spike bought a red woollen one with slightly less of the llama touristyness. On the way back from the market we found a dessert place with real chocolate cups containing chocolate. Alex and Spike are pictured over the moon with chocolate happiness.
On the bus back to Quito, Katrina (I) sat next to an American and was thoroughly out travellered. He was reading Che Guavara. I was reading Jilly Cooper. He was saying how touristy the market had been. I was wearing a touristy alpaca jumper with llamas on. He was keen to move off the gringo trail and get to Patagonia. Our next stop was Banos, the most touristy town in Ecuador, some say. DOH!
We duly went to Banos, which despite being touristy, is also beautiful, a town in a bowl in the mountains. It has natural thermal baths next to waterfall on the edge of town, and we visited them at night, when they were rammed with Ecuadorians having a good time and relaxing. The hottest bath could only be managed for five minutes or so before plunging into a cold one, which produced a pleasant tingly sensation... We tried all the baths, soaking up the minerals and unwinding from a rather bumpy bus journey.
We made the most of the morning after by going white water rafting in level three and four rapids just outside Banos. This was AWESOME. We went over waves, rocks, whirlpools, all sorts of rapids, getting thoroughly soaked. Kwolis had a brief trip off the boat after our first wave, but soon our German 'eins, zwei' had us in a good rhythm (we had two massssssive, classically built German uni students in our boat). Unfortunately we didn't manage to take any photos, not wanting to risk our cameras with either thermal baths or white water, and we've been to lazy to draw photos of rafting to upload...
We unwound from whitewater rafting with a second trip to the thermal baths, warming up again after the rather icy water. We then took the bus to Guaranda, encountering problems firstly with our pronounciation of the word 'Guaranda' (we still can't say it for toffee) and secondly with our bus change - one bus dropped us off on the side of the road, and our second bus would go from the other side. That might sound simple, but the road had two or three lanes on each side, and had lorries, buses and mental taxi drivers continually driving at what felt like hundreds of miles an hour past us. We made our suicidal dash to cross the road, and successfully caught our second bus and a taxi from the centre of Guaranda to our hostel.
The next day we woke up, full of the joys of the steaming hot showers our hostel had, ready to head out to Salinas, a small, somewhat remote town, famed for its cheese, chocolate and salami production (our mouths were watering). We moved outside the door, and the world began to spin, and my legs to feel distinctly wobbly. We're still not sure what it was, probably an unfortunate combination of altitude and dehydration, but only sitting down very quickly prevented me from fainting. Chris was also not feeling great, so we had a pause at the hostel to recover, and then headed to Salinas for the promised foodstuffs (they were amazing). We managed to leave Salinas still with some food remaining (it was a close run thing), and then Spike and Chris had an adventure riding in the back of the pick up back to Guaranda while I stayed cosily inside...
Salinas
The next morning, after hurried phone calls to my mum, we decided to abandon my cash cards which may or may not have been in customs somewhere in Ecuador (long story, but Fedex and Ecuadorian customs don't mix) and head for Guayaquil with a view to getting over the border and into Peru. We took a bus to Guayaquil and bought a ticket onto Peru for the evening, and settled into a restaurant in the bus terminal, spending our last few Ecuadorian quarters and nickels on water and some fruit, and making up a brand new card game, called 'the meaning of life' (the object is to pass 42...) We whiled away the time very happily, and boarded the bus by using our passports and giving them our fingerprints (Peruvians are very hot on bus security). We had a little nap and then woke up at the Ecuadorian border, were duly stamped, moved onto the Peruvian side, were stamped again, and then entered Peru!
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