hope you have found some other sustenance!
Even though for me some of the stuff I´m about to write about happened (eek!) almost a month ago, for you it hasn´t even happened yet. So I don´t think it will be as weird for you to read as for me to write!
I warn you now, it might get long.
Before I start, a note about pictures. We have taken a LOT of pictures, and have gotten kind of out of order with putting them online. As I type, Rachel is putting more up there. I´m not sure if they will be interspersed in this entry, but please go up to the pictures tab and check some of them out. Also, the blog site we use has just added video functionality, which is great! We´ve uploaded a few videos, so you can check them out in the tab above. More later, along with explanations.
So the last entry where we actually talked about what we´ve been up to was before we were in Mancora, Peru. We´ve written one since then, but it was basically one big list of complaints. I´m going to try to keep this one a little more adventure based, and we´ll see if it is still interesting.
Mancora, Peru: Beautiful beaches! This is a surfer dude and hippie mecca. The beaches are littered with sunning surfer dude´s girlfriends and guys in dread-locks selling bracelets (the kind I made at camp) so they can stay here forever. Well there´s a reason, and that is that once you leave the main area, you have the beautiful beach to yourself. We started walking up the beach one day, and after the first 15 minutes, didn´t see anyone for the next few hours as we walked along our own private beach-side paradise. We learned the neat trick that day that if you are walking along in about an inch of water, and the sun is behind you, and you kick the water, you can make a rainbow! Very nice!
The next day, we took a combi up to what was supposed to be a beautiful deserted beach, and were sorely disappointed. It was deserted, in the sense that there were not other tourists there. However, in the sense that the Pan American Highway was never more than 50 feet away, it was not quite our idea of a romantic hidden spot. Oh well. We decided we preferred the solitude of the day before, and flagged down a bus back to Mancora. It hugely overcharged us, but was the first bus in half an hour, so what are you going to do? We´re not really sure how it happens like that, since there are combis leaving every five minutes, but who knows... So we got on, and then in a little while we pulled into a station that had a sign saying ¨Control¨ and they said everyone had to get off the bus. It seemed conspicuously like some sort of a document check, and then we realized we were within a few hours of the border, so it kind of made sense. Then we realized, with not a small amount of horror, that because we were spending the day at the beach, we didn´t bring more than $20 OR our passports. It´s one thing to be without your passports in a city, but another at a border check. Not a good plan. We started to get really freaked out. I wasn´t too scared because I figured that two white twenty-something gringos covered in sand within an hour of Mancora are at least plausibly just dumb tourists, and throwing them in jail is not very productive. None-the-less, we were quite relieved (and confused) when all we had to do was get off the bus, walk through a building (where there was conveniently a bathroom and convenience store where we got a soda (pop for those of you reading this in the frozen tundra of Minnesota). We can only assume that they were checking the bus, but we didn´t talk to one official other than asking about the bathroom, and they didn´t look too fierce. Phew! Lesson learned though, we are VERY careful to bring our passports (or at LEAST a copy) with us every where we go now!
Apparently January brings with it big surf, and after our first few days there, the surfers began rolling into town faster than the waves. It was getting packed with people who we find not to be the most considerate out there, so it was time to go.
Mancora was our first and last stop outside of Ecuador. Before we started our trek, we were thinking Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and maybe a little of Chile if we had time. Well, then reality set in and we realized that there are reasons all of these countries are COUNTRIES and not states... They are big! OK, Ecuador isn´t that big, but the rest of them are. We wanted to get out of Mancora, and deciding where to go next. We were frightened to realize that we only had about a month left! OK, I know that sounds really obnoxious of me, because there are worse things than having ¨only¨ a month in equatorial South America, but when we started it seemed like we had all the time in the world! Anyway, the nearest place in Peru that we really wanted to get to was a 40 hour bus ride away. YUCK!! Also, much of Peru, and all of the good trekking, is all in the rainy season right now. So we decided to head on back to Ecuador, where there was more we wanted to do anyway!
First stop was in Loja. We wanted to find somewhere to spend new years, which I´ll talk about in a moment.
Loja is an hour from our old favorite Vilcabamba, and we decided to go for the day for a few reasons. One, we like the city and the crepes they have there. Two, we couldn´t find a book exchange anywhere in the vicinity of Loja, and we both needed books for the next part of our trip. Three, Rachel´s parents had sent her contacts there over a month ago, and while they hadn´t gotten there by the time we were last there, we figured another week was worth a check.
So we went, checked for books, but the exchange was closed for the morning. We were on our way back into town when guess who showed up? Our dog!!! He was following around some other couple heading in the other direction, and I was pretty sure it was him, but he just walked on by... We were glad to see he seemed happy, and that he had moved on from the devastating loss of our company. Then about a minute later he came bounding around the corner and jumped all over us with licks and wagging everywhere! He was so excited to see us, and we were guiltily happy to see him too... We had missed him! 
Well after a quick but heartfelt hello, he ran off back to his new friends and we continued on his way. It was so nice to see such a friendly furry face. We noticed that he had a makeshift leash on, and assume that his real owners were trying to keep him around. Well, happy that he was doing well, we headed down to the creperie for a late breakfast, but in a few minutes he was back, and didn´t leave our side for the rest of the day! He came to the creperie, back to the book exchange (where we totally scored!), I had to hold him while Rachel checked the mail (no joy), and back to the bus, where he tried to come with us, and we had to give his leash to a stranger until the bus doors closed and we started moving. Even then he tried to follow for a bit. We almost cried, but we know that he´ll be happy in the valley of longevity, with its endless flow of new tourists for him to get attached to!
Then it was back to Loja for New Years Eve! We weren´t really sure what to expect, but were totally rewarded. We first got a few groceries from the SuperMaxi, and then were walking back across town when we saw the first funkiness. People had made scarecrow / dummy type things, most with signs attached. We weren´t sure what they were at first, but the more we saw, the more we realized that they somehow represented the past year, or things that are gone along with it. 
The most common representation was the guy who just lost the election. We wondered if they would burn them at midnight, and it turns out they do, but we didn´t get to watch, but I´ll get to that. We spent the evening walking around watching the festivities. (The next day I looked up the practices, and most of them are local to Ecuador, which is neat!) Another interesting custom is men dressing up as women (in particularly short skirts, I might add!), which is normally not something you see much of in this culture, and dancing in front of cars on the street and then asking for money. It also seems that people would load the family into the truck, and drive around just looking at the fiasco. 
We headed back to our hotel to use the bathroom (not always easy to come across down here!), but when we got there it was locked and we had to ring the bell. The ¨guard¨ who came to let us in seemed to have been both drunk and asleep. It was 11:00, so rather than waking him back up to go out again and come back in, we just went to sleep. We were bummed, but later heard that the burning is not that spectacular to watch.
At that hotel (but not at that time) I went downstairs to get a bottle of water from the front desk, because I didn´t feel like pumping my own or going out to get it. Well it cost 50 cents, which is kind of high, but I didn´t worry too much about it. So I gave the guy a dollar, which he stared at and asked if I had change, because he didn´t have ANY. I said I didn´t think so, but I reached deep down into my pockets and got every penny I had, and it came out to exactly 49 cents. He just stared at me.
On a non-sequential side note, earlier on our trip, when we weren´t as used to things as we are now, we were shocked by (among other things) the number of people crammed into various vehicles. We started counting to see just how many there were, and the highest we could count (before it drove away) was 15 in a pickup. If my memory serves me (and it rarely does), that was 4 in the front and 11 in the back. And while the parents weren´t even holding on to most of their children, don´t worry, they were packed in so tightly that I doubt they would have moved at all in an accident.
At this point you may want to take a potty break, or grab a snack, because I have covered approximately two weeks, and have two more weeks of more recent memories just to catch up!
On New Years Day we took a bus to a small town called Zamora, and got a hotel room right on the river, and tried to find food, which was not easy on January 1. We tried a fast food place that wasn´t serving any food, and ended up getting ice cream for dinner. Nutritious! The next day we left our heavy stuff at the hotel and took a cab up into the hills to the entrance to Podocarpus National Park. Podocarpus has many different zones, but the area we sought was the primary growth virgin rain forest. 
There are shelters there you can stay in at night while you hike during the day. So we bid the cab farewell and hiked the half hour to get to the ranger station. When we got there, it was all closed up, with three locks on the door. 
Fortunately, the shelters were open, though to call them rustic would be extremely magnanimous! Luckily, there was a bathroom (flushing toilet and all!) and the coldest shower I have ever taken. It is fed by a mountain stream.
On the way into the park, there are some educational signs. This one says ¨Who knows if the cure for AIDS, or a better species of chocolate is hidden in the forest! The Forest Is Our Life PROTECT IT!¨ Now I love chocolate, but can you really compare the two?
Anyway, with that as our base, and without ever seeing anyone else in the park, we headed off on the fairly well kept trails. There was a raging river, and we could hear birds all around us. It took a couple days before we learned how to start spotting the birds, but when we did, they were beautiful! Blues, yellows, greens, reds, some of the most interesting and diverse birds we´ve ever seen.
We also saw all sorts of ferns, from tiny moss-like ones to huge tree-ferns. I like ferns! There were butterflies galore, in every color imaginable, even clear! There were hundreds of different kinds of orchids (unfortunately, only one or two were in bloom at the time). It was great though!
They also have a neat ¨orchidarium¨ which is an area where they have put fallen trees horizontally, almost like benches, and then they have all sorts of orchids they have collected from around the park growing on their surrogate surfaces.
Night was another story. Remember the ¨rustic¨ shelters? Well they aren´t really sealed. Sure, they have walls and windows, but they have about a foot of space at the top which is open to the outside. One word: Mosquitoes. Another word: Chiggers. I´m not really sure what chiggers are, all I know is that when I woke up in the morning, I looked like I had chicken pox (and I´m sure I didn´t because I already had them). 
And don´t think I was silly and didn´t put on bug spray. We both applied bug spray all over our bodies (and faces) multiple times during the night when we woke up because we had just been bit by something. Rachel got bit, but was lucky because apparently (as you all keep telling me) I´m very sweet, and the biting devils tend to agree with you. Yuck.
The next morning the ranger had arrived, so we paid our admission fee, but he didn´t charge us for the cabin, which was nice. He was also very helpful with information, and telling us that most of the snakes (one of which we saw within our first 15 minutes of hiking) are not poisonous.
On our second day of hiking, we followed the trail to the waterfall. We weren´t really sure what to expect, because we had seen a number of waterfalls the day before, and they were nice, but not something to make a special trail for. We figured either they made a big deal about it because it was close to the ranger station and not that impressive, or it was head and shoulders above the rest. Well our curiosity was rewarded! It was a HUGE waterfall through a deep shady valley! Everything was even lusher and greener than the rest of the rain forest!
Then there was a sign and trail, heading from the same spot as the waterfall to a ¨mirador¨ or lookout. We thought, well, if the waterfall was that impressive, this lookout, just a 35 minute walk practically straight up the mountain, must also be incredible. So up we started, even though Rachel wasn´t feeling great. We figured you only get so many rain forest lookouts all by yourself, you might as well check it out or jjust go home. Up and up and up we went. And up and up and up some more. And some more. And more, and more and more and more. At a couple points there are even ropes hanging down to help you up. At one point there was something that might be considered a lookout, but it was nothing to write home about (ignoring the fact that I just did). And the trail continued, so so did we. It had been much more than the advertised 35 minutes, probably closer to an hour and a half or more.
Finally Rachel couldn´t take it any more, but my curiosity got the best of me, and I headed up farther, thinking that the top, from which I anticipated a 360 degree view, was just over the next little rise. Well I continued on until I was in danger of not being able to hear Rachel any more, and while it still felt like it was just a little farther, I gave in to the rapidly darkening sky and headed back down to her. She seemed much farther than I had remembered going up since leaving her, and by the time I reached her it was starting to get dark and yep, you guessed it, started to rain. We got a little afraid at that point, because the path, while clear, was wet and slippery before there was rain (it is the rain forest after all) and the dark was not something we wanted to explore it in. So we went down as quickly as safely possible, cursing the lying sign and misleading path name all the way. It seemed to take forever, but eventually we made it, and it wasn´t totally dark yet.
Unfortunately, the mosquitoes and chiggers were waiting for us at the bottom! It was another miserable night, during which we ran out of bug spray, but I really don´t think it made any difference. We woke up at about 5:00 AM just as it was starting to get light out and the birds were warming up for the choir concert later in the morning. We decided to climb up to the wooden lookout tower to watch the birds in the early morning light. Didn´t see any birds, but took a couple nice pictures. Only later, on the two hour walk back to town (no cabs start at the park), did we see all manner of beautiful birds.
We had a great time in the park, saw amazing beauty of all kinds, but I think we are rain forested out for a while. Here are a few more pictures from the rain forest:
After Podocarpus it was back to Cuenca for a few nights to rest up, and because we really love Cuenca. While there, we found a really nice hotel, but it was just a little pricey, so we were about to leave (truly not a negotiating tactic) and the lady said she´d knock the price down by 4 dollars a night. This brought it into a range we were comfortable with. So we sat down to fill out the registration form, and the woman sort of coyly said ¨Its OK if you don´t get a receipt, right?¨ We said sure, what do we care? Then she followed it up with ¨But if anyone asks, I gave you one, right?¨ Then we realized it was a tax issue, and fair enough, most places haven´t given us a receipt, and don´t collect tax. But then we felt a little bad, because really what we had just done was stolen four dollars from the Ecuadorian government, which truly can use the money more than we can. Oh well, you live and learn.
While in Cuenca we decided to go to an orchidarium which sounded great, kind of like a little botanic garden. It was a bit out of town, more in the suburbs (and off our map) so we hopped on a bus we knew was going in the right direction. When we thought we were probably getting close, we asked the conductor if he knew where it (or the street it was on) was, but he had never heard of it. We thought this was a little weird, since it has over 400 varieties of orchids, and is part of the university. So we got off near where we thought it must be, and went into the local (fairly upscale) hotel to ask again about the orchidarium or the street. The guy behind the counter didn´t know, but another guy pointed us up a few blocks and to the right. We realized at this point that while we had a street name, we didn´t know where on the street it was, with no address or cross street. So we headed that way and asked someone else, and then again and again asking more and more people. Many of them didn´t know where the street was, and even when we got fairly close, people hadn´t really heard of it. Finally we gave in, after probably an hour of wandering around a fairly nice suburban neighborhood. We flagged a taxi and asked how much to the orchidarium on that street. He told us, we got in, and he started driving. Then he radioed in to the office to ask them where it was. Turns out we WERE close, and that we had passed very near by at one point, even wondering if it had been down that way. To call the street a dirt road would be kind of misleading, because it wasn´t dirt, and not really a road. It was more of a grass path, and there were no street signs we could find. After all that though, it was worth it! It was more of an academic outpost than a tourist attraction. There was a woman doing work in the office, and she motioned that we could go around back to the yard and greenhouse area. There were tons of orchids of all shapes, sizes, colors, textures etc. They were all very beautiful, and unlike in nature right now, most were in bloom. We decided on the spot that we would like to be amateur orchidologists when we next have a place to live.
On another non-sequential side note, we met a couple on our travels, and when we asked where they live, they said ¨In a storage space in San Francisco.¨ It was funny, but also fully applies to us, so I have enjoyed answering that question since then with ¨In a storage space in Minneapolis.¨
As I write this right now, out the window went probably 25 girls in their bright red school uniforms, probably on a lunch break, followed closely by a guy pushing a cart with ice cream for sale. He knows where the profit is.
Also in Cuenca, there is a planetarium. I´m not sure if I´ve written about it before, but I love astronomy, and wanted to go to a planetarium show that would have different stars and a different night sky in it. We tried to go a number of times, but were always thwarted. We found it the first time by accident, and it was a weekend, so it was closed. The next time we went in the afternoon, and the guy told us that they had shows at 9, 10, and 11 in the morning. So the next day we came back at 10, and he was very sorry, but they had a school group that day, could we come back at 3. Sure. At 3, the not-as-nice woman said no, they don´t do shows for less than 15 people, could we come back the next day. Unfortunately, we were leaving town bright and early the next morning, not to mention that the planetarium was all the way across town. Sadly we (or should I say sadly for me, not quite as much for Rachel, who didn´t really want to go anyway, but is a great girlfriend who went with me so many times) left, and about half way across town I realized with even more sadness, that the show costs 30 cents, and for that the low low price of $4.50 I probably could have bought 15 tickets and had a private show. Sure it would have been kind of obnoxious, but I had been there 4 times already, and he told me to come then. So this was all a number of weeks ago, and now that we were coming back through Cuenca, I used my powers of influence and got Rachel to agree to go with me one more time, again at 10 in the morning. We got there, and I went up to the window and asked the woman if there was a show. She just said ¨No.¨ That was it, no explanation, no come back later, no I´m sorry you have walked 10 miles in total trying to see the show. Just no. So we left, and that was that, and Rachel promised that we could see a planetarium show in the US, when we could actually understand what they were saying anyway (even though I like not understanding everything anyway) and that we could probably find one of the Southern sky. Oh well. In the next entry you´ll see that we got something much better a bit later.
Also in Cuenca, we were basically doing a tour of our favorite restaurants in all of Ecuador that we had missed since leaving Cuenca the first time. One has freshly home made pasta, where we got a (somewhat expensive) delicious meal for 2 with 2 glasses of Chilean wine for $15 including tax and tip. Yum! We also went back to Cafe Eucalyptus, which certainly caters to the upscale locals and tourists, but is very yummy. They have sushi, which I have been totally jonesing for the whole time we have been here, and it is a nice enough place that I trust it. The first time we had this amazing tuna roll which was then battered with tempura. So we got that again and I also decided to try trout, which I had never heard of as sushi before. There is a reason, my friends. It has bones. Lots of them. Sushi should not have bones. It wasn´t even particularly tasty. Oh well, live and learn, and get tuna sushi next time.
So I just sat down in an internet cafe. I´ve been writing this particular blog entry for days now. That´s how behind we were! Every time we take a break from ¨doing¨ Ecuador, we blog for a bit. But yesterday, Rachel pointed out that it is taking forever (which it is!) and that we are doing things faster than we can blog about them. Yay! To me, that says that we are really out there, seeing the country and having all the experiences we want to be having. I have so much more to write about, and I will, but for now I am just going to send this off into the aether. As soon as I do, I will start working on the next entry, but who knows how long that will take?!? Also, I think this entry is quite long enough, don´t you?
From the navel of the world,
-B
