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The Sun!

Day: 360

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After getting into Cuenca late last night we chose the first hostel we could find, which ended up putting us next to a busy all-night club; which wasn’t excessively conducive with sleeping until roughly 4am.   This morning first things were first and we changed to a mellower (and cheaper) place and set out to explore this little colonial town as the sun came out.

Cuenca is full of churches, flower markets and beautiful squares. The day passed fairly quickly and we are not sure what the holiday weekend has in store for us, the town has come alive with everyone going to what seems a non-stop mass.

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Remember These?

Day: 359

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Remember Argentina where it seemed every week or so I spent an entire day on a bus and my blog would hit a little lull?  Well, welcome back to South America with me! It´s a huge continent and the roads suck, essentially turning to mud at the first sprinkling of rain.

After standing out on the Panamerican for a half an hour the bus to Cuenca, Ecuador finally came and we boarded for our 10 hour trip south.  When we finally arrived in Cuenca (a Spanish colonial town), we had time to find some dinner and a beer before our day was at an end.

Barely Breathing

Day: 358

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I can barely breath, my lungs are burning and screaming for the thin air with the scant amount of oxygen it contains. I’m now sitting at 5000 meters (16,500feet) and wonder if it might have been a better idea to stay with Felicia at the refuge and drink hot chocolate, about 200 meters down where here lungs lost their breath,

The Swede next to me looks over and smiles, “It makes you you feel alive, huh?”

I give her a wheeze in response and try to hold my footing on this snow cover glacier, sitting on the worlds highest active volcano. The trail we had been lead up was barely more than a few footprints in the side of a steep slope, for a moment I was worried, one missed step and I would look like one of those cartoon snowballs tumbling down the side of a mountain, getting bigger and bigger until I finally crash into something, the snow would explode and I’d see stars. I carefully choose my steps and try to make my way back to were we had eaten lunch without dying.

The girl at the counter in our hostal wasn’t quite honest in what this tour entailed, we were told the tour was primarily about riding mountain bikes down the side of Cotapaxi, with a short walk around the parking lot, and on the nearby glacier. She made it sound simple, although I know even in an oxygen rich environment a 1600 feet gain over a 1 1/2 miles is hard; here I felt my lungs bleed (possibly). I am relatively sure she just wanted our commission, and doesn’t really care about tourists.

I finally, and safely, made it back to Felicia and we began our decent the other 300 scree covered meters to the parking lot. When we arrived, throughly exhausted, our guide was pulling the bikes off the trailer and ranting about how we need “much careful, on corners” less we could just lose the road and tumble forever down the side of Cotapaxi. Even in my state, I smiled excitedly, as I would with anything concerning bikes, and found the biggest looking bike I could. I helped adjust the seat on Felicia’s bike and we were off.

Jarring, fast, scary, intense, are just some words that come to mind as I hung on for dear life and flew down the bumpy volcano. Then about halfway down I glanced back to check on her and all I saw was a cloud of dust and Felicia laying on the ground.

Fuck.

I ran up to check on her, she seemed a little bruised up, and jammed her thumb pretty badly, but she shook it off and climbed back on. She lasted another mile or so before she ate shit again and called it a day. Our guide who was following with the land rover and trailer picked her up and I took off by myself to catch up with the rest of our group. The next few miles flew by, as I passed everyone else and had nothing shy of 4 near death experiences, finally I was sitting on the valley floor and pedaling to the nearby lake we were to meet at.

Even bruised up, Felicia was in a good mood as I showed up dripping sweat and smiling that I was still alive (possibly the reason for her good mood). After a short recovery period, we all piled back in the Land Cruiser and drove back to the hostal. I barely made it to 8:3pm before I was asleep.

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Not Much…

Day: 357

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We didn’t get up to much today. After booking a bike ride down the worlds highest active volcano for tomorrow (19,500 feet), we made our way down to the Panamerican and flagged the first bus to take us to the nearby town of Latacunga; where not much was going on.  The most exciting part of my day was getting followed by some 17 year old kid through the assorted markets, until I got peeved enough to just turn around and walk right up next to him and stand there and stare, he seemed to take the hint and we went on with our purchasing $0.20 avocados.

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Active Volcano

Day: 356

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This morning we woke up to beautifully clear skies with the Volcanoes that overlook Otavalo in the background. Unfortunately we planned on moving south to the worlds largest active Volcano, Cotapaxi, which sits roughly 19,400 feet above sea level.  We grabbed a taxi down to the Panamericana highway and quickly flagged down a bus to Quitos main bus station which was surprisingly deserted.  When we started looking for a bus south to Cotapaxi we soon found out why no one used the station, there is a random $0.20 tax you have to pay before you can get to the buses.  We payed ours and quickly found a driver who knew where the hostel we were heading was and said we would leave in five minutes and it would take an hour to get there.

He left the station with only us in the bus and soon picked up a couple of locals just outside the station who were avoiding the $0.20 tax.  What the driver forgot to tell us was that it would take and hour to get to Cotapaxi, after we drive all over Quito with his accomplice hanging out the door yelling “Latacunga, Ambato!!” over and over until the bus was full enough to make the trip worth while.  In the end we were on his bus for about two hours, but at least he dropped us just at the road that lead to the hostel that we had booked for the next couple of nights in the gigantic volcano’s shadow.

The hostel is essentially a converted old barn owned by a young Israeli, and Felicia and I splurged (an extra $4) for a room with a fireplace after the last few nights had been so excessively cold and rainy.  At 10,500 feet, while sleeping in a drafty barn the small wood burning stove made it extremely more comfortable.

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Going to Town

Day: 355

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(I uploaded a larger version than normal of the picture above because I think it says a lot about todays tourism, have a click)

Saturday in Otavalo is market day; and market day begins by dragging squealing hordes of piglets to the animal market to sell or trade for one of a thousand other animals. For me it started by getting up early, meeting up with the Aussies who wanted to share a cab, and driving down to a shit covered field to see what was the rumpus with all this tasty living meat. After our $3 cab ride, and the driver telling us to “watch our bags”, we arrived in the packed animal market complete with cows, pigs, ponies, chickens and llamas. We meandered about, dodging every kind of feces imaginable, until we gave up the hunt for fresh pig veal and started off towards town.

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Otavalo, on Saturday, essentially closes all its streets for 5 blocks in any direction of the main square and thousands of people flood in to sell and buy everything from, food, fruits, vegetables, snacks, hats, clothes, assorted knick-knacks, all sorts of electronics and pretty much anything else an Ecuadorian farmer could want. We settled for a couple of touristy (but warm!) hats, a roasted chicken lunch, a while at the internet cafe, and some food supplies for dinner. After a number of hours just looking we decided to try and catch the 1:30pm bus back to our hostel, after about 30 minutes of waiting and looking it was 1:42pm and we still couldn’t find it. We hailed a cab and headed back for an afternoon of lounging and napping.

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Dinner was a simple affair of a picnic overlooking the valley, with plenty of bread, avocados, cheese, tuna, chili sauce, bananas and plenty of Oreos for dessert.

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Markets and Laziness

Day: 354

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We set off to wander early this morning, taking the shortcut from the hostel to the town of Otavalo, a supposed 3.8 kilometers, but since we missed the proper road (a muddy slope) we ended up taking the long way around (more like 5 kilometers). I was alright with the long walk & off and on showers, but Felicia started itching all over and we just deduced that she is most likely just allergic to exercise… or possibly all the dogs who kept threating us with their barks and by chasing us, to which we properly replied by throwing stones at them until they ran away yelping.

We proceeded to peruse this quiet towns few markets, which supposedly blow up tomorrow, and ate a lunch of salty pork, potatos, and corn fried in lard. We followed lunch by wanting to buy a couple of bananas (to help us shit after a lunch like that), when we found out they would only sell us a full bunch of nearly 20 bananas for $0.50, so now we are well stocked on fruit for a few days (and hopefully plenty of poo). The day went by rather quickly (still no excessive sunshine) and before we knew it we had eaten our dinner of sandwiches in our room (the hostels food is expensive and rather bland), I shot a few night pictures,  then we were enjoying a few drinks in the little restuarant.

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Bus, Sun, Rain, Cold

Day: 353

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Getting up early in Quito, Felicia and I packed our bags, ate breakfast and caught a taxi to what we expected to be a insane South American bus station.  Fortunately it wasn´t (other than two guys from competeing bus companies fighting for our business) and within a few minutes we piled ourselves and our bags into a rather clean bus to the farming/market town of Otavalo two hours north.

The bus dropped us on the side of the Panamerican Highway (the single highway that connects all the Americas together, including PCH in California). We quickly got a cab to drive us 4 kilometers into the countryside to our secluded hostel.  First we took a walk in the rain checking out the random farms, then the afternoon became sunny and passed pretty quickly as we sat in a meadow where Felicia tanned and I burned.

Before we knew it the sun was setting and we were eating some mediocre food in the hostal and drinking Ecuadorean beer.  It started to get cold and we started wondering about the giant pile of blankets near our bed…

Within an hour of going to sleep we were wearing half the clothes we had brought with us and had 4 alpaca blankets layered over us.  It was still cold as hell.

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Outta School

Day: 352

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Yesterday was our last day in Spanish school and I now know how to ask the taxi driver to use the meter (“Tiene taximetro?”) and how to do a few steps of salsa (which an hour of lessons was included with for free with our 20 hours of Spanish class). Other than that I still rely on my linguist girlfriend to get me out of all the awkward situations my broken Spanish gets me into.

Today was the first day in Quito where we had the whole day free and also the first day it was rather warm and sort of clear. After picking up our Visas at the Bolivian embassy we returned to the church from six days ago and spent a couple of hours climbing the steep ladders up the inside and outside of the towers. Felicia was slightly adverse to my prodding her up rickety, 80 degree ladders up the side of a bell tower 7 stories off the street, but made it up just as easy as I did.  Later she decided it was a good idea to try to storm into the locked areas, but seemed to lack skills in picking God’s locks.

After a thrilling good time at assorted heights, we headed out through the old town for ice cream, the strongest cup of coffee I have ever had, a sunburn, and trolling the markets for weird fruits/lunch plates. The day seemed to fly by and before we knew it we were eating kababs in a small stall with the sun going down and talking about getting to Otavalo (a small market/volcano town) tomorrow. We’ll see how wired the world is in the next couple of days, but if you don’t hear from me, don’t fret, I am off in some faraway place enjoying myself. I promise.

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The U.S., Iraq & North Korea

Day: 351

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So, throughout this entire adventure of getting my visa paper work together for my Bolivian Visa I came across an interesting list on Bolivia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. The list (list III) is as follows:

AFGANISTÁN

ANGOLA

BHUTAN

CAMBOYA

CHAD

ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA (incluye PUERTO RICO) (That’s Us!)

INDONESIA

IRAQ

JAMAHIRIYA ARABE LIBIA

PAKISTÁN

NIGERIA

REPUBLICA ARABE SIRIA

REPÚBLICA ISLÁMICA DE IRÁN

REPÚBLICA POPULAR CHINA (incluye TAIWÁN)

REPUBLICA DEMOCRATICA DEL CONGO

REPUBLICA POPULAR DEMOCRATICA DE COREA

REPUBLICA POPULAR DEMOCRATICA DE LAOS

RUANDA

SIRIA

SOMALIA

SUDAN

TIMOR LESTE

YEMEN

PALESTINA
This is the list that Bolivia sees as a threat to their country in some way or another. We (citizens of the United States) are listed right up there with Somalia, Libya, and assorted “Axis of Evil” countries. It almost makes me ashamed.

I don’t normally like to use this blog as a political soapbox, but if you there living vicariously through my adventures would do me one favor, just think about who we elect in the upcoming election, and the effect they will have on international relations and the effect our actions have on the rest of the world. Maybe next time I won’t have to shell out the $100 for a visa (which ironically is exactly what we charge the Bolivians to come to the States).

Singaporeans (list II) on the other hand are given a visa free of charge after just a simple form is filled out, while most European countries (list I) just have to show up at the border with a smile and a few euros in their pockets.

Now I am through ranting and the normal photo-blogging will continue, thanks for listening to me rant.

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robertpaetz

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