Whales and Surfing

In my last post, I talked about our new found freedom in not having to plan anything for the future for a couple of weeks. Well I'm glad to report that we still have managed to keep that freedom but its definitely a struggle! I have this nagging feeling that we shouldn't be here. That we should be looking up flights from Columbia to Brazil and planning what we want to do in Columbia while we're there. I think in large part the ability to avoid all this is where we are. We're currently on Ecuador's coast. Here in this location happens to be over 300 humpback whales who come here every year to mate and have their calves! Since that was one of Suzanne's goals for this trip, we decided to take a dreaded overnight bus to see them. Below is a couple of pictures of these huge but graceful creatures!

Suzanne's super-excited face:

From Whales

From Starred Photos

From Starred Photos

Suzanne loved them so much that we went back the next day. Unfortunately, I happened to get sick that day and ended up barfing over the edge of the boat! But afterwords I felt much better and the tour continued!

From Whales

From Whales

While we were down here we decided to check the surrounding area and then we found out that just an hour away was the surfing village of Montanita Ecuador! Since I had been wanting to do surfing ever since my appetite was whetted in Peru, we put the rest of our plans on hold (yes!) and headed down. After getting some antibiotics from the 14 year old pharmacist in town for my stomach, I was feeling good enough to go surfing the next day! So today was the first surfing day and it was fantastic. Suzanne opted for just a body board since she thought she would enjoy that more. I felt like I improved considerably from the first time. I think the reasons for this was that the ocean floor was sand (instead of rocks) so I could walk my board up to the waves instead of paddling constantly. Next I think my shoulders are a bit stronger due to their previous beatings from last time. Anyway, I was getting up pretty consistently and now my goal for tomorrow is going to be learn how to turn the board and follow a wave. At least that's the plan.

So for now, that's where we are and what we're doing. We're liking this place so much we think we'll stay another day at least before heading back to Quito.

~Mike

Doing nothing and loving it!

After a bad experience at a hostel in Lima as we were dropping off my mom from her visit, we just wanted to get out of Lima and Peru in general. We spent in total just under 60 days there and we were ready to move on. But where to? We now have an extraordinary experience of not having to be anywhere at anytime for several months! I know that sounds weird, we've been having one great adventure for the past 8 months right? But one thing we did since the beginning was place deadlines on ourselves that forced us to do some detailed planning out at least a month or two. At the start it was get south as soon as possible before bad weather set in at Patagonia, then we wanted to get to a cool celebration of Semana Santa up in Peru, then we wanted to get Galapagos done before Thomas arrived, then he was here, then we were in the US then Mom was here. But now, glorious now, we have nowhere to be and no deadline except the end of our trip! Our road is completely open once again. Our first act in our new freedom was to head up to Quito. We had thought about going along the coast of Ecuador because we had heard good things about it from an Australian surfer dude but we had an urge just to go to Quito where we had familiarity and take some more salsa lessons. So that is what we did! The past couple of days have been full of nothing except a dance lesson! The rest of the time we have spent catching up on our blog, our pictures and just reading books in our room. We have a nice little setup in our hostel which has a great guest kitchen so we've been cooking our own meals.

But can it last?

We're reveling in our new slothfulness but we know that it'll eventually have to end. After all, there is only so much of our trip left and there's still a ton to see. Our long range plan currently includes us heading up to Colombia where we will spend a couple of weeks. Then a big decision is before us. Do we continue north through Central America or do we stick to our original plan and head down through Brazil and end in Buenos Aires? A quick finance check says that while we'll definitely go over our budget for our trip, we have enough spare cash to experience Brazil and BA. So that's our decision. Here's the catch. Since Brazil is expensive and BA is at the end of our trip, we're going to have to book flights and that means long range planning again! But for now, we're just enjoying the moment.

Included are some more shots of Quito's old town both at day and night, plus one or two of some dancing people we saw at the archbishop's palace.

From Quito

From Quito

From Quito

~Mike

28 not so great. . .

At the beginning of June, Mike and I each celebrated our birthdays. Some say that bad luck comes in threes so we'll hope that this is true. It started with Mike's Dad letting us know that he would not be able to join us in Peru and would have to reschedule around 9PM very near when my actual birthday occurred. Although we both understood we were both disappointed. Thomas, Mike's brother, would still be coming down but I had lost my blue circle traveling buddy (in the skiing sense, not their airport security line skills). Whereas Michael and Thomas are more of black diamond travelers erring on the side of extreme and moving fast, Mike's Dad and I enjoy taking it all in. The next blow came the following day when our camera was stolen within 20 minutes of bus ride from Cuenca. The rest of the day was spent in the police station and then on a later bus replaying what things we should have done differently to prevent the theft. However, hindsight is 20/20 and there was nothing we could do- the camera was gone. We finally arrived around midnight on the other side of the border in Tumbes, Peru. Clearly it had been a long day and we were both looking forward to a good night's sleep and a hot shower. We arrived at the hotel and took out our Peruvian money. We handed the owner a 100 sole bill that we had gotten back in April and were told that it was counterfeit. Luckily he said we could just pay tomorrow since going to an ATM at that time of night would not be safe or fun. Well the first 28 hours didn't turn out so great but we're hoping for better luck now that Thomas will be with us to add to the fun.

From Banos

This being said our birthdays were quite fun before the bad luck began. For Mike's birthday we were in Banos, Ecuador enjoying the hospitality of Mary Beth's Ecuadorean family. They took us on a waterfall tour, to the hot springs, and Sarah made a birthday dinner complete with cake. The excitement of Banos was increased with the sounds of the exploding volcano nearby. Because of the volcano the town was a little less crowded than normal and it was nice to be with locals for a change.

My birthday was spent in the beautiful town of Cuenca. We stayed in a wonderful hostel and I awoke to find two dozen roses in our room that Mike had gotten from the local flower market early in the morning. Many of the roses in the US come from Ecuador and they were very beautiful. We spent the day exploring the city's churches, a mosaic exhibit, and shared a delicious piece of chocolate cake. That night we walked to dinner. We picked a restaurant on the second floor of the corner of the plaza. This turned out to be the perfect spot. We sat by the window and fifteen minutes into the meal a celebration began of Corpus Christi in the plaza below. Fireworks and floating candles were lit before our eyes. However, it was not uncommon for the fireworks not to go straight up and they seemed to land right in the crowds of people gathered below. We watched safely from our balcony and just enjoyed the moment. It was truly magical evening that we won't soon forget.

Ecuador & latest happenings

While we try to write our blog posts about Galapagos, I decided to give a quick update of what's been going on with us so far.  

We crossed into Quito from Bolivia after a grueling 4 day bus adventure.  We then enrolled in two different schools.  One was a Spanish school the other Salsa.  One of our goals with the trip was to learn Spanish and we decided that speaking English to each other and stammering out phrases to locals just wasn't cutting it.  So we had Spanish school in the morning and Salsa classes in the afternoon.  In the meantime we searched for last-minute deals to the Galapagos Islands.  We ended up finding a great deal on a first-class boat for the next Saturday for 8 days!  We're still going through those pictures and trying to keep them manageable for those who actually look at them all. :)   Both our schools were really fun.  Both Suzanne and I had private teachers for around 4 bucks an hour, 4 hours a day.  They really helped us out on learning all the grammar that we hadn't learned or mastered in school.  We're still by no means fluent but I can say proudly that I am 70 pages into the first Harry Potter in Spanish and besides some vocabulary, am understanding it pretty well. :)  Salsa was the same way.  I really like dancing it, Suzanne does too.  It's so fast, but sensual and fun too!  We are looking forward to perfecting our skills in the discotecas down here.  

After the Galapagos, we took another week of our schools and packed up and headed south.  My dad and brother were going to join us in June for a trip to Machu Picchu and we had a week before they arrived.  So we decided to hit a couple of the main tourist spots on the way down.  First on the list was Otavalo, a huge and giant market in Ecuador.  We took the opportunity to get a lot of gift shopping done!  

Next on the list was Banos, the top Ecuadorian resort town.  It is nestled in beautiful green mountains with a stunning volcano just 5 miles away which gives it plenty of hot water for springs and resorts.  There we met up with some good friends of Suzanne's sister Mary Beth who took us under their wing for the 2 days we were there and showed us an amazing time.  Oh and did I mention that the volcano was erupting!  :)  We would hear huge explosions during the day that would rumble down through the valleys towards Banos.  If you were in direct line of site of it, you got an even louder bang.  Standing outside our new friends house, we were able to see the shock wave push through the ash and water vapor and then wait for the thunder clap to reach us (I counted, 26 seconds roughly).  It was awesome.  Then I set up my camera (poor camera...) to do a time-lapse video and you can see it erupting.  At night, you could see some of the rocks glowing red that had just been expelled from the cone.  Sadly I didn't get a picture, but here's the video:  

From Banos

Then we headed south to Cuenca, a beautiful colonial town.  We enjoyed it a lot there.  The highlight was on Suzanne's birthday, which happened to coincide with the feast of Corpus Christi (Body of Christ) in which the locals have fireworks and parties most of the night.  We walked down to the plaza and sat in a restaurant with a view and watched the fireworks go off.  It was amazing.  The cathedral was lit up and the fireworks would be set off just in front of it.  This was actually very dangerous (or so it seemed to us) because there were trees in the plaza and sometimes the fireworks went off into the tree.  Luckily no fires that we saw.  In addition to the fireworks they were setting off what seemed like little hot air balloons.  They looked like a candle in a big paper bag or something  but they would rise very slowly and then eventually start sinking (hopefully out).  And through it all we just sat and drank our wine on the balcony and had a blast.  

The next day began a rough patch for our journey.  As we left Cuenca to head south towards Lima to pick up my brother, my camera was stolen.  We were on the bus and we had put the camera on the luggage racks above us. About 30 minutes in, I got a funny feeling and decided to bring the camera down but when I got up it was missing. We think it was someone who had gotten on the bus to sell stuff or someone else who just got on to see if there was anything worth stealing.  They appeared to slide the case towards the back of the bus then took it down, took out only the camera and left the case on the floor.  When I looked up, case was gone then I started looking around the bus, then fell to the floor to see if it was there.  There I found the case under the seat of a young boy.  I took the case but felt my momentary joy fall as I realized the case was much too light.  Opening it up, the camera was gone.  :(  Not only that but the wonderful neck strap that our friend Julie had made for us was gone too.  We stopped the bus, got off and called the police.  He took us to the station and we filed a report.  Overall it was very sad.  We had insurance on it, and it seems like the claim will go through without a problem but it just sucked.   


So anyway, then we continued on, there was nothing we could do in Cuenca anymore (the police never find stolen cameras).  We arrived in the Peru border town of Tumbes tired and feeling a bit violated.  We eventually got to Peru and waited there for Thomas my brother to arrive.  We picked him up no problem and we are now currently in Cusco, the capital city of the Incan empire.  We're going to spend the next couple of days exploring the sacred valley and visiting Machu Picchu.  It's great to have a visitor with us and we're sure this month is going to be a blast!  


~Mike

Volcanoes!

For those of you who heard about the volcano in Ecuador we were not near the affected area.  However, we're planning on heading there tomorrow. . .  Our hostal called the hostal in Banos and they said the ash blew in the opposite direction, that the roads are open, and that you can still hear the volcano erupting.  My reaction to hearing that you could hear the eruption was slightly different than Mike next to me who was reveling in excitement.  Just like Chile we got lucky by not being in that part of the country when the natural disaster occurred.

~Suzanne