Time to leave Ecuador....

First and foremost let’s get this out of the way....

¨The admissions committee was faced with a much larger applicant pool this year than in year’s past. Due to the high degree of selectivity in the applicant pool and the increase in overall applications, there were a group of candidates that were unable to be offered full admission at this time – however, the committee did elect to keep a few candidates, such as yourself, on a waitlist should seats become available.¨
Director of Admissions, University of Denver

So waiting list, story of my life....wtf...but the good news is that I’m in touch with the director and hopefully still going to start in the summer/fall...have to wait and see, what else is new....

Anyway on to the important things in life...Ecuador is absolutely my favorite country so far in this trip...except for the fact it has rained everyday for the past two weeks, but usually only for a little bit. The people and the country have been amazing, from the mountains to the lowlands, everywhere we have gone has been great. So let’s begin the summary, shall we....

We arrived in Quito only to leave the city right away and head to Otavalo, a little town north of Quito that is comprised of mostly indigenous people. This is by far my favorite town...everybody was really laid back, willing to talk about their day to day life and just wanted to sit back with you and exchange info. The food was great at a cheap price, always important when you don’t have a job and not contributing to society, there was a huge market that sold everything you could possibly imagine and the hostel we stayed in was open and friendly.

From here we went back to Quito to pick up Vanessa, someone else was supposed to be on the plane and wasn’t, but we won’t get in to that...haha, just playing...so Vanessa got in fine and is a welcome addition to our little group. We hung out in Quito for a couple days taking in the sites and decided we needed to go to the center of the world...literally. So we tripped up to Mitad del Mundo, which is the center of the world and made our presence known, which basically means took a lot of pictures and probably made asses out of ourselves, good times....the picture will explain...

We trekked from Quito down to the Quillota Loop which was put us really high in the Andes in villages that I thought I would never see. We made it over to a lagoon in the center of a volcano and made our camp there for a night and explored the surrounding areas. Pretty remarkable...if you ask me.

We went to Riobamba where we saw Ecuador in a whole new way....by riding on top of a train for 7 hours...it was safe, sort of...well except for the fact that the train derailed 4 times and everyone was on the side of a cliff when it happened...don’t worry we all made it safe and for the most part had a good time with it....ok some parts sucked...but it can’t be sunny all the time...I guess...

To finish up Ecuador we move south to Cuenca, the third largest city in Ecuador and very traditional and colonial....going to stay here until Sunday morning and than make the trek down into Peru...

So...that brings everybody up to date in a very broad and general sense...as always to many details to get into...

Couple side notes.....

we finally made our reservations for Manchu Picchu and are not able to begin the Inca Trail until April 14-18, what does this mean you ask....that we have a month in Peru before begin one of the main hikes...and what does that mean...that I will have a month and roughly 5 days to see all of Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. Can it be done you ask....hell no, not enough time so somewhere along the way the trip will have to shorten in order to make my flight out of Rio, I’ll let everybody know when I figure that out...

about school, yeah that sucks...but I´ll still get in, if it´s not this summer or fall, than winter....still moving to Denver. Kess is already there and finding a place for my homeless ass to live, way to go kess...
so that will all work out, one way or another

So guess I´ll close now that I have bored everyone to the point of contemplating taking a long walk off a short pier...to put in nicely...
Hope all is well with everyone and the weather if finally getting warmer in Chicago

Miss ya all and will see everyone soon...well, some sooner than others...almost half way point of the trip, can you believe it.

Take care

me

try to get pics up tomorrow....