Bathrooms, long days and Panama Hats

As a sit in the Ecuadorian internet cafe with Che Guevara plastered on the walls and speakers blasting local spanish tunes I wonder how we made our way here. Through mountains and clouds, beggars and tunnels, stuffy buses and bad food we managed to make our way to the beautiful town of Cuenca in Southern Ecuador.



Banos, a town that actually means bathroom, known for its thermal natural springs (although excited at first to try them out they were full of very wringly people in bikinis so decided not sure a good idea, plus the water was very brown for some reason..hmmm maybe not) was a great city full of panaramic views of mountains, clouds, and waterfalls. I
t has the 10th highest waterfall in the world (i think), called the devil..we walked to see this and stood in ore of its grandeur. I took some spanish lessons here too to try and improve, fluency is the aim. Ill get there. Terry also went on an adventure trek (so him) to the local cable cars that are about 300 metres from the river bed below and rocked like they were tied by a piece of string rather than any kind of aluminium cable. Unfortunately for Tel and our two friends, Margarita and Nic, they took the wrong cable car and ended up walking for about 5 hours up and down mountains, through local village houses, getting directions from people who have never even seen westerners and getting back to camp just in time for dinner although very late and dark at the time. Was funny to look back on but they were exhausted! I was on cook group this night, so stayed back to make everyone falafel wraps, they went down a treat!

After Banos, we had a full day on the truck, driving up and down beautiful scenery and stopping for lunch with views over the cloud invested mountains.

We stopped off for a toilet stop and met with the locals having a party! We danced and drank thier local brew..or was forced too! Was so cool!


Our next stop was Cuenca, where we are now. Cuenca is a lovely town, full of cathedrals, churches, old buildings and happy people.


We chilled out with some sheisha last night in a dubai style bar and hit bed early, catching a few flicks on the TV. Its been a few weeks since we have been able to do that! We woke up this morning to a procession of schools through the streets, local dancers, musicians and circus styles acts followed and was well worth the watch. The sun was out, the music was playing and we were dancing. Travelling gives you such a feeling of freedom that ive been loving for the past 2 weeks.






Cuenca is the home of the Panama hat, so we are going to go se if we can get one made for us now. Very Stylish. We also went to see some more shrunken heads, tribal need for the retention of intelligence, cant see us doing that in the UK.

Peru tomorrow, we are crossing the border early as we heard there are going to be riots at the border due to the government trying to charge people for water. The war over water is beginning.

Adios!

Oasis Overland in South America

The big yellow truck waited outside, engines ready for our group. We got up early as our bed was like a rock and the trucks outside were too loud for sleep, and made our way outside to our home for the next 5 weeks, a big yellow truck. All of our bags go under the seat, massive areas so our bags can just spew everywhere and no need to sort it out everyday. We drove for about an hour out of town to Mitad de Mundo which is a museum that documents the equator, as if you didnt know already Ecuador is at the centre of the world. You can literally stand on the equator line and each side of it watch the water flow down a sink different ways. Pretty awesome to see. We also saw some local tribal traditions, one of which is how a tribe literally shrinks heads to perserve the intelligence of the elders. Pretty weird to see.

The next stop was Otavalo for shopping and views. The driving views were incredible, steep green mountains with clouds passing over them, children waving to us as we pass, such a free feeling you will ever feel.

Our first night was spent camping in Otavalo, a huge field for our brand new tents. The whole truck is brand new which is amazing for us, the tents smelt great! We set up our tents on the mountain side over looking the town and spent the evening playing badminton and tel cooked up a huge curry for everyone, was soo needed as we were all so hungry!

A sleepless night was had due to the fact we had no pillows, it rained all night and the 3 dogs that live on the property was barking throughout the night! We drove into the town and terry had his shopping mission to complete. On this overlanding trip each group has to buy and cook all the food on a rota basis. I went along with his group to help with translations. Then we spent the rest of the time in the beautiful and colourful market where we brought a bag and some tshirts and also a huge piece of pizza for a dollar!

From Otavalo we drove through the mountains and through the rain (it only stopped raining when we went into the jungle!), to Papallacta, the town of the thermal springs. It rained on us all night but we managed to get the tents up even through the owner of the camp site hadnt even turned up to say that we could. She eventually arrived about 10pm and we were on tender hooks if we could even stay there! Everyone spent the rainy night in the spas and relaxed with beers with the stars overhead. Perfect.

On the 19th September, we drove about 5 hours down the mountains to around 350m to the Amazon Basin. We stopped off in Tena, after a sweaty drive through the rainforest. You could defiantely feel the temperature change to hot, hot, hot. We took a canoe ride on the river to Toms Eco Lodge, Arejuno. Tom was american and had lived there and built up his eco lodge for about 10 years. Tom had adopted a monkey called Mona, who made herself known with Terry and was literally terrys new girlfriend for the next 3 days.
The lodge also looked after some endangered turtles and fish and was working with the local communties to stop them using diamite to fish. The distruction here was on a much larger scale to our last Amazon trip, you could literally see bulldozzers, wood everywhere and rubbish in the river. A complete different experience to our first trip where it was literally amazon paradise. We shared a room with Margarita and Nic, our new buddies on the truck. The second morning we were there we treked to an animal sanctuary named Amazonica. Here, the owners take in any animals that have been kept as pets that couldnt be reintroduced into the wild. They had parrots, tons of monkeys, jaguar, caimans, all sorts. This was the best place to see animals here due to the amount of hunting and destruction in the area, all the other animals have fled.
The rest of the time was spent trekking through the primary and secondary forests and tubing, yes tubing, down the the amazon river for hours. The river was so calm and clear, and the weather was perfect for this. All the children from the local communities would run out and look at us asking why we why sitting on rubber rings on the amazon, now i think of it it does look a little funny.

After a lot of cards and Yatzee, we left the jungle for Banos, our next town about 1600m up. We are staying here for 3 nights and have just been to an amazing waterfall, one of the 10th biggest in the world, diablo for devil is its name.

Best go, have to do the calling rounds, Aidan broke his arm so need to makesure hes doing ok now! Miss you all!

Cotopaxi Crisis in the snow

On the 16th September, Tel and I decided to book a day trip to the highest volcanoe in the world, Cotopaxi National Park in Ecuador, 2 hours out of the capital Quito. We were glad of the day trip distraction from the hectic and smoggy way of life that was Quito. In Ecuador, there are 50 so volcanoes of which 37 of them are active, pretty scary fact considering most of them were situated around the capital city. Cotopaxi last erupted in 1905 and has erupted in general every 100 years so is definately due! The tour begin by picking us up from the hotel and driving us out to the National Park on the Pan American highway, a road that strecthes all the way from California. When we arrived, the rain did too and the cloud and the actual volcanoe was covered in cloud so we didnt have much of a view. The altitude by now was around 3800m and was difficult to breathe properly. We sat and drank coco tea to help with the altitude.

Our guide, Wilson let us free for 45 minutes to walk around the vast park which has hundreds of deep cravesses caused by the volcanic eruptions every 100 years. You can distinctly see each eruption and lava flow.

We then drove as far up the mountain as our car would take us, we reached to about 4400m before the snow caved in on us and literally made us turn around. The snow was so heavy that the car was skidding in all directions. We decided to get out though and have a little snow fight. Felt so strange to be with the snow considering only a few hours ago we were in shorts and tshirts!

The evening was spent in the new Hotel, Hotel Majestic where we met our tour group, Oasis Overland crew. There are currently 16 of us from all over the world, Germany, Australia, UK and Italy. Everyone is amazing, a great crew. We spent the evening eating 1 dollar a slice pizzas and catching up with everyone, hearing all the travelling stories and drinking beers. Perfect start to a 5 week trip on the truck, overlanding!

Amazonias Adventures

Hola! After we left the tour company in Quito and our heavy backpacks in the hostel (crazy you are thinking!) we attempted to use the local bus system to get us to the main bus terminal Quitombe, for our Amazon trip. This took us 3 buses, lots of translations, and sitting under sweaty armpits! Once we finally managed to speak Spanish to about three different people, we found the right station. It took us one hour and 25cents! Sweet. Luckily Jen could converse a bit by now so we found it, if we didnt have any knowledge of the language who knows where we would be now!

Now, for the nightmare bus journey to begin...but not quite. A further hour of chilling in the airport style station, we hit 9.30pm...it was time to find our seats on the bus. It was a good looking bus, looked pretty comfy and was going to be our home for 12hours. We were given crackers and juice to keep us going..nice touch. The bus journey began.

A loud and crazy Ecuadorian movie began and we headed out of Quito. The bus was to take us from 3000m to 300m...we certainly felt it! The journey started off well but then hit the dirt "roads", lol. Not pleasant. The morning came around, no sleep was achieved and at least 1million school kids were picked up and dropped off along the way, lol. At this point we started to see the Amazon baby!!!

Green, lush, vast and awesome looking. We then arrived at what we thought was our stop, were pushed off the bus and saw a sign for the Cuyabeno Reserve...East of Ecuador near the Colombian and Peruvian border. We were greeted by a fast speaking spanish dude who didnt give us much confidence we were in the right place, lol. After 30mins of waiting in the blistering heat after no sleep on the crazy bus...we heard a canoe heading our way. It was our guide Rumolo!...who we now see as a complete legend!! A 22 year old Ecuadorian guy, who has lived in the amazon his whole life. He has only a pair of binolculars, some welly boots, 2 posters of che grevera and a telescope as his possesions, needing nothing more in life. He loves all nature and loves his job as a guide.

Rumolo spoke fluent english and gave us a great welcome. He helped us on our way to the Reserve which was a 40min canoe ride through the beautiful surroundings to a peaceful and fairly remote, lush group of huts called Cuyabeno River Lodge. There were 6 huts and a main hut all made out of local palm leaves, no electricity and water from the river to wash with! Jen didnt take any shampoo so her hair was matted by the time we made it back..we actually considered chopping it all off!

We had breakfast and were told of the 3hour trek that morning after we had settled in! No rest for the wicked eh.

Our first trek took us through the lowlands with a Belgium couple who had been there for one day. What an eye opener...it was incredible. We were in the Amazon alrighte. We saw things like monkey brushes, lots of different Amazonian birds, spiders, and heaps of other stuff. The trees towered above us and the heat was like a sauna. It was so green, not many flowers as it was the wrong season.

The afternoon we travelled down the cuyabeno river to a great shaded spot to go Pirana fishing. We were both not sure if this was agaisnt our ethics but we were in the Amazon so why not}1 We picked up the beef and put it on the end of our hooks and spent an hour fishing for piranas..Jen caught one..but threw it back of course due to our veggieness, lol. I, luckily, was not successful (Terry that is). Our first evening was pretty sleepless due to the loudness of the nocturnal animals and the acclimatisation we needed. The sound of the jungle was so loud it just kept us awake, also our huts had no walls or doors so the likelihood of animals getting into our cabin was high. We only had a mosquito net to protect us and this even had holes in it! We also had bats living on the outside of what was a makeshift wall.

Day two in the Amazon was spent with a new couple from the UK, Nadine and Duncan, who were on their honeymoon. In the morning we trekked through the highlands torrain where we were lucky enough to see Squirrel monkeys, yellow hand titty monkeys, black mantel tamarins and golden pendulum birds, crependeula birds, millepedes, jumping spiders, heaps of termite and ant mounds, soldier ants, marching wasps (which make a marching sound as a defence mechanism, we shouted march loudly so they started, was incredible to hear), congo ants (that will kill you with 10 bites!!), fire flies, clicking beetles....heaps more!!

We also noticed by this point that there were beautiful butterlflies everywhere you looked (owl, tiger and blue to name a few). They were huge, at least 20 cms long. The afternoon of day two was a canoe ride up the river to go swimming. A paddle of 30mins deserved a lush swim in the Amazon River and then a nice easy flow back to the camp afterwards following the butterflies as we went. Terry jumped off the massive falling tree that was in the river at this point, so brave as it was pretty high and chance of piranas and caiman below. I just sat back and took the pictures..lol.

That evening we took the canoe down the river to see some Caymen in the dark!! You could see them by their red eyes when a flashlight hit them. We managed to see 9 that night...it was pretty scary as they reach up to 6metres!! We also slept much better that night, the sounds of the jungle relaxed us as we got more used to our surroundings.

Day three was spent much like day one, quite relaxed, four hour trek, very similar flora and fauna to our first day. We were gearing up for day four which proved to be the best day by far!

The morning began at 8am where a lush breakfast was followed by a 3 hour canoe trip where we saw around 350 monkeys including the white fronted capijin, black mantel tamarin (baby leche in spanish for their white moustaches), black caracara, vultures in the sky, river side hawk, snake bird (that dives in the river when scared and raises its head like a snake), humming birds, water spiders, stinky turkeys (for their size and smell) macaus (blue and yellow), toads and parrots! Awesome eh. What a day, we were blasted by animals and birds and insects. We couldnt have asked for anything more.

The main plan of the day was to hit the lagoon...which we got to after the three hour beautiful boat ride. This was no ordinary lagoon though...it was massive! Here we were lucky to see pink river dolphins and grey dolphins at which point we jumped in for a well deserved swim as it was around 90 degrees by this point! What a special place this lagoon was. The water was so still everything reflected. Seeing the dolphins jump through the river was spectacular. We then went for a further hour deeper into the jungle to see an indigenous community.

When we arrived to the community there was only around 10 small buildings or huts you could say. All of their buildings were on stilts in case of flood. We trekked into the plantation to find yuca (an awesome potato like root vegetable) where we then watched a lady from the community make yuca bread by squeezing out the milk of the vegetable and then grating it followed by a fire session, spreading the yuca like a pizza. It tasted great with some chilli sauce they made from local plants and some lemon!

A long boat ride back to the river lodge where we spotted a 5mtr Caymen on the way and more river dolphins took us into the evening where we discovered a huge tarantula in the camp!! Not cool, lol.

That evening we unexpectedly ended up drinking 2 bottles of Ecuadorian rum with our guides and few other tourists getting pretty tipsy. Tipsy enough to get in a canoe at 1am with very drunk guides to go Caymen hunting again!! A catfish even JUMPED INTO our canoe in front of Jen, lol. It was quite a crazy experience. She nearly pooed her pants!

Day five was quite hungover but we still managed a 3 hour trek through the Amazonian swamps where Jen fell in bum first, lol. The swamp came up to the top of our wellys and was so hard to walk in, it took everything out of us to pick our legs up to take another step! At one point Terry was walking around with a baby Taratula on his back, we all made him wait so we could take pictures before we told him what he had there! The heat was quite unbearable in the swampy area but was a great time all round. Another swim in the river when we got back, trying not to touch the river floor as we were warned about the snakes and stingray on the river bed that could kill you, lol. What an amazing day.

An afternoon chillaxing in the hammocks meant one thing only...it was the end of our trip in the Amazon. We took the canoe back to the bus area and waited for three hours for the bus to finally turn up. It was definitely not the same bus, a local one of much lower standard. I (Terry)basically nearly spewed due to the bumping around and madness...but luckily didnt!!

A 5am arrival back in Quito, we took a taxi back to our hostel where we had left our bags. Luckily there was a room for us and our bags were still there. Check out some of the`piccies, we have thousands but cant upload them all. Hope everyone is well.