Oh boy. so much Ecuador, and so few blog updates...



So last time I wrote, all four of our intrepid adventurers were battling the Inca two-step... as Justin´s cynical travel doctor told him "your chances of getting travelers´ diarrhea on a trip like this... are about 100%". A week later, we´re all back up to speed and have thankfully regained our abilities to control our bowel movements.



Buses:


A whole new beast in Ecuador. In Chile, we were all extremely impressed by the low costs, efficiency, timeliness, and cleanliness of all the buses we took. Hell, Justin and I took a 12 hour overnight bus with Semi-bed seats and a provided snack for $35 each. When we arrived in Ecuador, we were all first excited about all prices being in US dollars (Ecuador officially switched to USD in the early 2000s), and then were all excited by the even cheaper costs -- you can figure on buses costing about $1/hour. Our first week of travel along the Ecuadorian coast set us back only about $12 a piece for roughly 12 hours of buses.

Things got a little more down to reality on our overnight bus from Guayquil to Loja when we were waylaid for 2 hours by a landslide. But we got stuck around sunrise (6:30am, everday) so the time was easy enough to pass while sleeping. During our next short bus ride (normally an hour) we ran into the other classic Ecuadorian bus experience -- a breakdown. This time it was actually a flat tire, which the driver and his assistant were deftly able to switch out in about 40 minutes. While down in Vilcabamba, however, a giant landslide actually cut all the town´s ties to the outside world for 12 hours. Rains washed a 30´tall pile of mud across 150´of the only road into the town, which also knocked out power for Vilcabamba and the other small villages further down the valley. So on our way out of town we had to take a taxi up to the landslide and then walk across the mud between two giant back-hoes in order to catch a bus on the far side. The road above the landslide was hardly better, though paved, the road was full of nature-made speed bumps, sinkholes, and small landslides -- one of each flavor every 100 yards or so for about 15 miles.

After a few days at Chris´s site, the four of us headed north up to the provincial capital of Zamora, where we were able to access the giant rainforest of Podocarpus National Park. We had a surprisingly bright and sunny day to wander around some of the park´s trails as its only visitors for the day. We had a classic Ecuadorian lunch of Pap y Pollo (Pappy Po-yo), french fries and fried chicken, before catching our evening bus back down to Guayzimi. As the bus arrived, Chris advised us to hold our ground and use our bodies to defend our spot at the front of the line to board the bus. A couple hipchecks to small children, elderly women, and a few teenagers later, we scrambled aboard the bus but still found no open seats. While this might pose a problem in the US or even Chile, here it´s merely an inconvenience. Us four Gringos stood along with about a dozen Ecuadorians in the bus´s aisle. This is totally normal on a subway or even a city bus, but our bus ride was a solid 3 hours. Luckily the driver decided to stop halfway so he could eat dinner for 45 minutes. Chris, Jon, and I took a new angle when we reboarded this time and decided to be the last people onto the bus before the assistant. It worked out great -- a little reshuffling of passengers and Chris and I got to actually sit down and even see out a window while crouching in the wheel well. haha. Oh well... according to Chris other Peace Corps kids had witnessed standing passengers for full overnight buses, which sure makes our couple hours of standing look weak.


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More updates to come...

Justin is currently on an 8 day boat-tour of the Galapagos Islands.

Jon and I now heading off to the airport, leaving south america. We have a flight tonight from Guayaquil, Ecuador to Lima, Peru to Los Angeles, California. Jon and I will each get picked up by an Uncle in LA, and spend the next 3.5 days visiting with our extended families (Jon´s mom and my parents are also flying in) and regearing for winter. Justin escaped the cold, but Jon and I are headed back to the Southern Hemisphere for another two months in New Zealand. Our beards can´t wait, but it will be sad trade our shorts and sandals for fleece and insulation.

We are currently in Vilcabomba, EC. They bill themselves as the fountain of youth here based on some National Geographic article from the 1950s that found people to live extremely long here due to the perfect weather. It does have perfect weather, but subsequent research found that people had lied about their ages and that somewhere else must be the valley of youth. Plus there is no fountan here -- bummer.
The hostel where we stayed the last three nights made a good case though - we rented a private cabaña for $11/person/night and that included a delicious breakfast of fresh fruit, yogurt, bread, and a crepe or eggs. They also had a restaurant with a gorgeous panoramic view of the town and surrounding valleys and a spa with cheap-ish masages.
Unfortunately though Jon started feeling sick the day we left the beach to head here. So Chris took Justin and I on this amazing hike along a knife-edge ridge. Dad you would not have been able to finish it -- the computers here are too slow to send pictures though, so I guess I'll just ahve to post them later. That afternoon, Chris, Justin, and I went for lunch at a local counter and had a Ecuadorian special -- cows intestines in a kind of peanut sauce. After getting over the idea of it, it tasted really pretty good (flavorless, like chicken basically). However that evening I got violently ill ... out both ends... I have never been so sick in my life. It seemed like it was just food poisoning from lunch though, so I dont think that I will be eating intestine again any time soon. Chris came down with a milder version yesterday, while I spent the day lying around feeling okay, but not good. At 5 am this morning we were all woken by the sound of Justin emptying the contents of his stomache in the bathroom. In the dark room, chris asked "who is that" and Jon and I answered before we all burst out laughing. We were now 4 for 4. We were such a sad sight that Chris's peace corp friend who came to visit us ended up leaving after only 24 hours ... I mean who wouldnt want to hang out with a bunch of puking and shitting guys lying around a bedroom?!

Chris took the bus back to his site today so that his hosts wouldnt worry about him, while Jon, Justin, and I are hanging out for another day, waiting for Justin (who just got sick this morning) to recover a bit before the 7 hours of bus rides. We will hang out at Chris's site for a week before Jon and I head back to Guayaquil to catch our flight up to LA.