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Boobies!

4 Feb

That’s right, the guest star is back for more fun-filled Epic Adventures and this time I have managed to drag M along for the tour – actually all I did was mention the possibility of the Galápagos Islands and she jumped on board. Her reason for going – to deliver new salsa dancing skirts to mis hermanas; unfortunately the skirts did not arrive in time to make it in her suitcase… Haha

After 18 hours of flight and airport time (Ecuador is really far away from Hawaii, at least as the plane flys), M and I arrived in Quito and were NOT greeted by our REI Adventure and Red Mangrove guide (NOTE: I was projecting forward during the original draft of this post). This will be our first time traveling with REI – I love their stores, products and company, just ask anyone who has had to drive me to their store on mainland visits (no stores in Hawaii 😢, but free online shipping which is a big deal in the islands). Most visits to the Galápagos Islands are arranged through travel tours, because to go anywhere outside of the port towns you must have a tour guide (to protect the natural setting) – although my travel book says it is possible to just fly to the islands and hook up with walking tours. With M’s requirement (and my extreme interest) to go to the Galapagos, we decided to take REI up on all those Adventure emails they send. And I have been talking about Boobies, the blue-footed kind, ever since!

But before the islands there was a day in Quito and we managed to fill it with a trip to the Equator, a trip to the actual equator and some old churches. Our first stop was Mitad del Mundo where we looked at a large ball (which was the earth) on top of a giant podium (which was a giant podium). We grabbed the typical photos standing on the equator line then booked it next door to the Museo del Intinan where the actual equator is. Apparently when the French marked the middle of the Earth they were about 300 meters off according to GPS. The Museo was quite good and included not only different experiences to try out while standing on the equator, like draining water in each hemisphere, balancing an egg on a nail and trying to walk in a straight line, as well as shrunken heads and a highlander dance in which we all participated. We end our daylight hours by peeking in the doors of churches (apparently everyone gets married on Saturdays) in Old Town Quito.

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We called it a early night due to our early flight the next morning.

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Our guide arrived exactly on time in the morning for our transport to the Galapagos (which I am told is quite an event since Ecuadorians are usually late). Our morning consisted breakfast then transit from one end of Ecuador to the other with a 2nd breakfast then onto the islands with an early 11zs via a plane then to another island via a boat then over to the other side of the island via a coach to our Red Mangrove Lodge all before 11:30am. We explored the lodge for the rest of the morning and watched marine iguanas swim in and out to sea, brown pelicans bathing themselves, sea lions sleep under the deck, frigate birds cruise the wind currents, and examined the finches’ bills as they came to our table to display.

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After lunch and the arrival of the rest of our group, we headed to the beach with our nature guide to enjoy the beautiful afternoon – then just as H and I swam out into the ocean we noticed an usual bird sitting next to the pelicans – our first blue-footed booby! We immediately swam out to check out his feet which were a lighter blue then we were anticipating, still a beautiful blue though. The rest of the afternoon we watched numerous pelicans and boobies drive bomb the ocean in search of fish – all and all a pretty great start to an exciting 2 weeks.

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Another week in Colombia?

31 Jan

So Ecuador lost the football match. And we returned to Colombia!

I know, I know. I have just spent I don’t know how many posts being excited about our plans to leave Colombia (6 is the answer, I just had to count them 🙂 ), and he we go, jumping at the first chance to return. But it really does make sense. 1) We want to go spend at least a few weeks to over a month working our way down the Pacific Coast of Ecuador surfing and generally relaxing. And the coast is about 12 hours away from Northern Ecuador, where we were planning on waiting for our family. So the timing doesn’t really work there since they arrive on the 1st of February. Also, 2) we intend on performing a loop through the Amazon but that would make us see the same parts of Ecuador again later with the G & M visit. Our choice was to either spend our time looking for things to do in Northern Ecuador (and the other things we were interested in were all much more expensive – parks, transport & lodging) or to trek back to Cali to visit our people while we had the time. Also, 3) this gave us a finite amount of time that we could subsequently spend in Cali (which is a sticky city if I’ve ever seen one!) since we must meet M & G’s plane in Quito.

Plus, Colombia won the game.

So we decided to stop by the beautiful Cascada la Paluz waterfall 3km outside the city of San Gabriel (which was surprisingly adorable) on the way to the border. We had vague directions from the guidebook I had been studying, and we assumed that once we got on the right road it would simply be a matter of following the path. Not so much. Turns out you can take any road, according to the locals, and yet not all of the various diverging paths lead to the same spot. So H lead us into another pathless, flower-filled field and we rolled down the steep hill together. We even greeted the woman doing laundry who watched us stumble down through her fields! But in the end we followed the groups of livestock (pigs that lead to sheep which in turn put us in contact with the cows who really seemed to know the way) and just sat and marveled at the natural beauty.

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We probably could have stayed the entire afternoon, but we were hesitant to sleep in Ipiales again. So we crossed the border, bused, and then colectivo taxi-ed all the way to Tuquerres. We were back to bartering and our ridiculously sweet driver decided to help us find accommodation in town for the night. Everyone in town seemed absolutely shocked to see us, and were not very exact with responses to simple questions (like is there hot water, or where is there internet, or where does the bus pass to the Laguna Verde and at what time does it pass by). This does not seem too surprising with the abundance of information that link above will give you on the city… Locals also disagreed about the relative safety of the area (which we find in Southern Colombia to just be generally true) so we decided that on the off-chance some people were right and it was dangerous we were not going to simply go and hike to the volcano ourselves.

We eventually did find a bus to take us to the base of the mountain, had quite a climb to the crater. H found some really interesting new friends and took some fabulous photos, which she will post at some undetermined time in the future (we need internet, a computer, and the software to all match up… this has become increasingly rare these days). This is the best I have for you:

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Then we jumped into the ridiculously long travel portion of this mad dash north and bused ourselves all the way to Cali. We are staying with my boyfriend (yes, family and friends… I have a boyfriend. He insists on the title. It must be a machismo labeling thing that we either don’t have or I have never encountered up north) and we started our time here by getting the cutest inexpensive dresses we could get our hands on and dancing the night away. So. Much. FUN!!!

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But somehow said boyfriend got deathly ill with some sort of throat abscess and we have been cooking soup, learning and preparing random local remedies, and chilling close to home for the past few days. I have spent more time with him at different doctors’ offices than I could had imagined possible, and my vision of the health system here is a little shocked. H has been a trooper and using our extensive network of contacts here to still get her dance on with as many different salsa partners as possible while she can (we can only hope that Ecuador has the same quality of dancers as we found to learn from here in Cali!), but largely we are a relaxing, movie-watching, and quiet-afternoon-lunches-out-with-friends-we-met-across-the-country sort of house. We will shuffle along to Ecuador on the 31st early, and plan on arriving at yet another volcano before we meet G & M in Quito at night on the 1st.

Luck & Love all, because (hopefully) this may be my last post for a couple of weeks!!

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