Baños and Quilatoa

The shoulder got better eventually, and in the middle of last week we were able to leave Quito for Baños, a lovely town sitting at the bottom of a huge green mountain. It is a "healthy waters" place, a bit like Bath in England I guess, and there are long, thin waterfalls coming down the mountains into the town. We had superb views from the roof top terrace of our hostel.



We experienced the "thermal waters" aspect of Baños by having the steam bath special they offer there. It's called a "baños de cajón", and you basically sit in a box filled with steam, with your head sticking out (yes, it makes for a funny sight!). You stay in there for 4 minutes at a time, before cooling yourself down by splashing cold water all over yourself. After 5 time of the steam box/cooling down process, it ends with you being jet-washed in freezing cold water. It's a pretty good way to wake up in the morning...

On Saturday last week, we took the plunge and organised a trek on horseback. I was fantastic fun for me as I used to ride horses in my teens and I was delighted to be doing it again. Gary had a slightly different experience as he's done it only once before and isn't too keen, but we saw it as payback for all the mountain biking trips I've accompanied him on! But he was very brave and did enjoy cantering after a few tries. We're definitely doing it again - once our legs recover, that is.



On Monday we took a couple of buses from Baños to end up in Chugchilan, a tiny village on the Quilatoa circuit. Quilatoa is a large volcano whose crater is filled with water (it basically looks like a large lake) - it's really magnificent. Yesterday we arranged to be driven to the volcano (about 1.5 hour from Chugchilan) and walked from Quilatoa all the way back to our hostel (that's a 5 hours walk). We saw the most wonderful landscapes and got plenty of opportunities to chat to the locals as we were trying to find our way back (I was initially a bit worried that we were doing it without a guide, but it ended up being rather good fun).





Like I said Chugchilan is a tiny village where people are quite poor, and we thought it must have been really strange for the locals when hostels started opening up there (there are now three places where tourists can stay in the village). We spoke to a local teacher who told us that the first time a tourist turned up 15 years ago, he went off for a trek on his own and the locals went after him because they thought he was crazy and needed rescuing. Also when the locals saw him dance by himself at the village party, they saw it as confirmation that he was a complete loony (because in Ecuador, people traditionally only dance in pairs).

In the evening, little girls from the village came to our hostel dressed up in colourful "party" outfits and performed a traditional Quechua dance. We all ended up joigning in and dancing with them, which was excellent.





This morning, we set the alarm for 2.30am so as to catch the 3am bus to Latacunga, then back to Quito, where I'm now writing from. We've just checked the flights and will be making our way up to Cartagena, in Colombia, tomorrow (all depending on seat availability, of course). Both looking forward to visiting a new country...

C.

Cotopaxi, and... more Quito.

So, nothing for three weeks and then two updates on the same day - we're on a roll... (see Gary's summary of our Galapagos trip below).

Last week, we went on a mountain biking trip to Cotopaxi National Park (a couple of hours away from Quito). Within the park is Cotopaxi, a 5,897 metres high active volcano which last "woke up" in 1887. It is active about every 120 years, so they're expecting an eruption any time now!

We were driven 3,800 metres up the volcano, then went down 1,500 metres on our bikes - it was great fun. Well, I must admit that after my last mountain biking experience (or shall I say trauma) in Thailand, where I fell off my bike once every 5 minutes, I wasn't too relaxed. But the landscape was so gorgeous: colours of greens and browns, fields of rocks, volcanoes and mountains all around us... After lunch, for some reason, something switched and I felt at ease and in control, and started riding so fast I nearly left Gary behind :)





I know it gets boring, but we are still in Quito. After the Galapagos trip, we did an extra two weeks of Spanish lessons as was planned, and also managed to get our passports situation sorted within that period. On Friday last week, we had our last lesson and were sad to say good bye to our lovely teacher Amparo (that's us during a lesson below. Out in the sun, learning Spanish... what more can you possibly ask for!):


So we were all set, had said our goodbyes, went out to a brilliant salsa club called Seisebero on Saturday night and danced our backsides off, had our bags all ready and were all set to leave Quito for good to go to Baños (about 4 hours away) on Sunday morning, when... I did my shoulder in, and have found myself harldy able to move these past three days (let alone carry a 15 kilos' backpack on my back!). So we're still here, doing mostly nothing and waiting for my shoulder to get better.

It's such a pity as we were both excited to be setting off and on the road again. Plus we were going to go horse riding in Baños, which I cannot wait for! But I guess we just have to be patient and see how it pans out.

C.

The Galapagos

OK, a belated blog update about our trip to the Galapagos Islands.

Didn’t start off too well… after a big panic/argument in the morning about where the tickets were (and who last saw them etc etc), we set off to the airport not in the best of moods, only to discover when we got there that the passports weren’t in the document case. Bugger. Now at this exact point in time, we were looking at potentially seeing the plane flying off without us, the boat setting sail without us and the best part of 2 grand trailing closely behind it. Also fair to imagine that the ensuing week in Quito wouldn’t have been spent in the best of spirits. Fortunately, the nice people at Quito airport checkin/Galapagos tourist control in Quito/security control/boarding process/Galapagos airport arrivals etc were all kind enough to let us through with nothing more than a photocopy of our passports.

When we arrived, relieved, we bussed over to the main port in the islands to meet up with the others in our boat, then back on shore to check out the Charles Darwin Research Centre, which is the centre for conservation efforts in the islands, and where they breed the giant tortoises to save them from extinction. There’s one old fellow they found 20 years ago, called loneseome George and is 150 yrs old, who is literally the last of his kind, he therefore can’t mate with anyone (though I’m sure if he just followed our example and downed 8 pints of Stella Artois beforehand, he’d find his standards had dropped remarkably, and that he wasn’t too concerned by that point about the particular sub-species he was trying to get it on with.) Another of his buddies, Diego (120 years old), is having more joy, and was busy going at it shamelessly as we wandered round.





Back to the boat, for dinner and to meet our guide proper for the week. There were 15 of us on the boat, a nice bunch, though with so many French that trying to speak in French/Spanish/English got very confusing. Add to that the peculiar variant of English that the guide was speaking, communication wasn’t easy.

We didn’t move overnight, as the next morning we were back on the same island, Santa Cruz, to the see the ‘Gemelos’ (literally ‘twins’), which are a pair of volcanic craters between 100-200 metres wide, and approx 70 metres deep, covered in jungle now. After, disappointingly, no-one managed to fall in, we headed back to the boat again, and (finally) set sail. It was only a short journey of 2 hours, but the waves were choppy enough that at least 2 of the passengers threw up over the side of the boat. Luckily the sea sickness pills that we’d scored in Quito did their job and we felt ok (and through the rest of the week as well).

On arriving on Santa Fe island, Barrington Bay, we had our first snorkelling of the week. Firstly, it was bloody cold, no wetsuits, and I at least was shivering throughout. Having said that, we got to swim with a group of sea lions, eagle rays, giant marine turtles… all pretty incredible really. When you shell out so much money to come to the Galapagos, you’re looking for something unique – maybe you can get to do this elsewhere, but I doubt there’s anywhere else it’s quite so easy, and that the animals show so little fear of you (this was the story throughout the week). We followed this up with a tour of the island, where we saw land iguanas (the yellow ones), and various other odds and sods.





Overnight on the boat, an interesting experience sleeping about two feet from the engine, with the boat swaying from side to side like a rollercoaster, but managed to sleep ok (with the medical assistance of our pills and a bottle of wine we picked up in the port).

Wednesday – Isla Espanola, the most attractive of the islands. On this island you can find it all – sea lions, marine iguanas (the black ones, thousands of them), mocking birds, frigate birds (that look just like terydactyls), albatroses, blue footed and masked boobies (yes, you can buy the t-shirt), hawks, crabs, golondrinas (petrels), swallow tailed gulls, herons, and more sea lions. You have to be really careful wandering along not to step on half of these, there’s just so many of them and they have no fear of humans. At one point, you have a beach with high cliffs, with a big blowhole (where the waves fill up an underground cave with a hole in it, through which the water bursts out in a big tower). It’s a bit like the Antrim coast in Northern Island, or perhaps the west coast of Scotland, but with sunshine. And iguanas, obviously. Spent a good 40 minutes just chilling there, could have happily spent the day there. Albatroses look cool, big and majestic while flying, but unfortunately a bit like a giant version of the kind of rubber duck you have in the bath, when on the ground.







As we went back to the boat, one of the most unexpectedly impressive sights of the week was watching the blue footed boobies (feel free to snigger by the way) diving for fish… they really get speed up, look just like the kamikaze planes from the war, but with blue feet obviously. And they get to go more than once. Also saw penguins at the end, always seems weird to see penguins at the equator.





Spent the afternoon snorkelling again, more swimming with sea lions (this time a big scary one that went for me, or at least looked like he was), plus manta rays, followed by chilling on the beach while our guide tried to chat up one of his colleagues.



Thursday - Isla Floreana, and flamingos. Obviously. Very pink, lots of them. Plus sting rays which you could see from the beach. The guide claimed that they weren’t the dangerous type of stingray, like the ones that killed Steve Irwin in Australia, but the nice friendly ones that do work for charity on Wednesday afternoons, and listen to Dido albums. Didn’t get too close at any rate.



More snorkelling in the afternoon, loads of giant marine turtles, must have seen 6 or 7 of them, and was able to follow behind one for 10 minutes of so until he finally outran (or outswam) me. Trust me, keeping up with a giant turtle is harder than it sounds, in water at least. I’d fancy my chances on dry land. Only disappointment was not seeing any sharks, which most people manage to do at some point (usually hammerheads or white tail). Did get a glimpse of a hammerhead shark swimming under the boat that evening, but not quite the same.



And finally on Friday morning, up early to do a tour round a small island near the airport called North Seymour. Here you had the mating grounds for frigate birds (with their big red chests puffed up to attract their mates, a bit like the Brits out on the piss at the seaside), and the ubiquitous blue footed boobies. Plus more sea lions (by this stage we could have seen a sea lion eating an ice cream singing excerpts from Les Miserables and we wouldn’t have batted an eyelid).







Then finally back to Quito, to hunt (unsuccesfully) for our passports. Overall, a great week, would have liked to have done the 8 day option, but silly money would then have become over sillier.

Gary