Vacation--blog one of god only knows.

This is a multi-part blog...best to stretch out the interesting stuff :)

It is winter and i hates-es the winter. 

So, we did what we always do--spend xmas eve with the family in Seattle and then flee somewhere that i can't complain about being cold.  This year, it was Ecuador, chosen in part because it had the cheapest tickets in south america, in part because of its diverse climates, and in part because i was desperately craving a spanish speaking environment.  let's face it. i belong in south america. seriously. can someone tell adam to work on that?!

after a grueling trip down (17hrs from anc) and an overnight in the most expensive hotel airport in south america (costa del sol in lima) we arrived in quito where we had this awesome looking bathroom at Cafe Cultura.  The hotel is a converted mansion in the Mariscal Sucre disctrict of Quito--known as a tourist haven and much safer feeling than the old city, where creeptastic men crept by us and an old woman in a car gestured at me to keep a close eye on a 20-something with a backpack who we had been watching after his third pass by us.

as you can tell from the story of the lady in the car, most of the people we met were invariably kind and helpful.

i didn't want to translate for days on end, so we had arranged for a tour through Ecuador Adventures (Detour in the US).  the tour was a 7 day multisport tour that would take us around the Andes and Amazon.  while things in Ecuador appear close, the roads make it so that even things a seemingly short distance take longer to get to than expected.

The first day we rode in the van out of Quito south towards the volcano called Cotopaxi.  The views were really stunning and we worked on settling in to our nearly 9,000 ft. elevation.  it was windier than we expected, but warm to us despite it being "freezing" by ecuadorian standards.  that evening we arrived at the Hacienda Porvenir to rest and go horseback riding. Click on photos to make them bigger.  yes, we dressed up in the outfits with ponchos. it was super dorky. and super warm. more importantly super warm because the wind was just ripping.  the horses only had one speed and so the ponchos spared us from freezing to death while avoiding "brave cattle" aka bulls with horns wandering through the hills you see in the background.

 The following day took us through the Cotopaxi national park...where we rode bicycles (me for about 2 mi and Adam for 5 or so) through the park.  The scenery was stunning with vast expanses of paramo (high altitude meadows like tundra) below.


Cotopaxi National Park

Once we were back in the car...we headed south towards Banos. enroute we got to see a delicacy of Ecuadorian cuisine....also called your local pet guinea pig. no. neither of us ate it.

How can you? it probably has a name, like, piggie, or squeek, or something. almost made me vegetarian again. almost.

However, then we got to Banos and i was safe from the little guys haunting my dreams while we checked out this church of a virgen of the waters who performs miracles..lots of miracles, saving people from overturned cars, stopping volcanoes, making waterfalls restart after earthquakes. the thing about miracles is that if you are the one who saw it it is always true and if you didn't see it...well, then you didn't see it.

 

Following our visit to Banos, we stayed at Hacienda Leito in the mountains.  the following day, adam biked down the mountain with Santiago, our guide, pissing off horses and donkeys alike as he rode down over 3,000 feet. The photo below is not only the way adam biked down, its a super pretty pic of Banos.  please note drugs were required to keep me calm while he sped down the cobblestones at 35km an hour. seriously. we clocked it with the car.