Kerri

I need to access the internet more often, otherwise I will forget everything we did. Eek. Okay, going back a week or so ago to our stop in Saraguro...

We took the world's fastest hike in Saraguro before we caught our bus home. We happened to stumble across the tourist office in town on our walk around the streets and the nice woman in the office managed to convince us it was a good idea to take a hike to a nearby waterfall. (¨How long are you staying here? Oh, not even for one night? Why? There are some nice things to do around here...¨said with a sad puppy dog face.) She called a camioneta who whisked us away to the waterfall, well, after he got lost and asked for directions. The ¨walk¨to the waterfall, called Baños del Inka, turned out to be an incredibly steep, muddy hike. The waterfall at top is used once a year, I believe in June, for ceremonial baths. Our driver said he´d be back for us in 40 minutes. Somehow we made it there and back just in time to meet him as he was pulling back up. Perfect timing. The hike was beautiful, if not a bit hot and muddy. There were some gorgeous views of the valley below and all the little houses and farms.

We got back to town just after the 5:30 bus was about to leave. The incredibly bored man working the Viajeros bus office told us that the bus was a bit late so we could still probably make it. Then a few minutes later he changed his mind and told us it wasn't coming and we'd have to take the next bus at 6:45. So we went to the store to buy some snacks, only to glance back down the street after a few minutes and discover that there was a bus in front of the office! We ran down the street, pushing down any locals in our way (maybe not) and made it just in time. We had a lovely (scary) 2 hour ride to Loja from there. I happened to sit next to a strapping young lad of 19 who was singing along to Aventura (Puerto Rican pop band that sings in bachata style) songs blasting through the bus´ speakers. To make conversation, I asked him what he was singing and that turned into a long conversation in Spanish lasting for the rest of the bus ride. I got to practice my Spanish, but since the music was loud and the bus ride bumpy, I had to ask him ¨Que?¨more times than I want to admit. However, he understood me overall and it was nice to get to practice my Español! (Warning!... you don't want to know this Mom and Dad, so cover your eyes for these last few sentences): The bus was a bit bumpy towards the end and was lurching a bit from side to side, so I casually asked the kid if there were a lot of bus accidents. He said yes. I asked if there were a lot of deaths. He said yes. Then he made a motion with his hands indicating a bus tumbling over a cliff. That made Rachel and I feel real great. Luckily we made it to Loja without incident, but we were really glad to get off the bus!

Unfortunately, Loja wasn´t as amazing as our guidebooks suggested it was. The descriptions in both of our books painted a picture of a picturesque town in a valley surrounded by green mountains (which it was). The books also said it was super clean and cute and had won numerous awards for its trash and recycling programs. Let me tell you a secret... Loja's not that clean. The streets had a lot of construction with dirt flying around, there was trash on the streets and by the river, and just a lot of cars and exhaust. We were a bit disappointed and started to miss Cuenca at this point. Not to mention that when we ventured out after 8pm to go find some dinner on our first night, everything was closed and the city had turned into a ghost town. Where the people had disappeared to, I really couldn't say. Bedtime at 8pm? Playing cards? No sé. We managed to find a nice Mexican restaurant, however, and had some trusty burritos (they were good here). Y guacamole! Wahoo! We soon discovered that we were the last customers, though, and the poor owner was waiting for us to finish our meal so he could close up.

Later that night we met a lone traveler from Portugal who was hitch hiking throughout Latin America. Rachel was tired at this point and read a bit before goin to sleep, but I decided to go out and try to find some signs of life in Loja (a bar) with my new friend Miguel. After walking through some deserted streets and stepping in some yellow paint on the street (I guess they didn't think to put a warning sign out since nobody goes out after 8pm anyway), we found a tiny hole in the wall place with a few people called ¨El Viejo Minero¨(the old mine) and talked a bit in there for a while. My new friend had grilled cheese and fruit juice. What a crazy guy. I learned a lot of odd facts about Portugal that night, such as the fact that the entire university system is huge on hazing its incoming freshmen as a giant group, from the first two weeks up until the entire year long. Plus the freshmen are forced to wear the graduation robes to differentiate them from the older students at the same time they´re made to do all sorts of silly things.

The next day Rachel and I walked to Parque Japiro, a ¨15 minute walk¨from the edge of the city center. It turned out to be a bit longer walk and it involved walking a main road with cars belching fumes into our faces the entire time. Once we arrived at the park, it turned out to be quite odd... it had everything from a skate park, a pool, and a basketball court... to a playground including a replica of St. Basil´s Cathedral in Moscow complete with slides (wee!)... to ducks, miniature horses, llamas, and OSTRICHES. Hmm...

That night we went to our favorite mine and managed to make friends with the Ecuadorian bartender and a Swiss German volunteer who speaks fluent Spanish and made me jealous. Again, it was great to have the chance to practice our Spanish and the guys were both very nice. The bartender enjoyed Rachel very much, I think he could have cared less about me. Perhaps it was because I started to fall asleep while he was talking to her later on in the evening? They spent most of the time trying to convince us why we should stay in Loja one more night so we could see the musical performance the next night (playing hits by U2 and all our favorite 90s bands), but we had to refuse... Vilcambaba was next on our list! The guys told us that it was filled to the brim with tourists, but it turned out to be anything but...

When we arrived the next morning, Vilcambaba turned out to be a tiny little town in the junction of 5 valleys... with NO tourists but us! Interesting. We got some curious stares as we took a tour of the tiny 10 street town. Just like in Loja, I was the only blonde one there. On our way back from the river, we stopped to buy some water at a mini market and somehow ended up caught in a conversation with an old, drunk New Zealand man who told us he was trying to teach his daughter and her friends about the dangers of talking to strangers. Then he proceeded to ask us to go on an overnight trip on horse to his cabin in the mountains with his Swedish and British friends, and then to come to his house ¨just down the street¨so he could cure our colds with ¨something¨. After asking him 5 times he finally let on that that something was a bitter tea, but we politely refused... and refused again. We walked away with him muttering ¨I didn´t frighten you guys, did I?¨. Turns out that this guy is written about in our guidebook, as he runs a famous horse rental place and apparently has great tours in the mountains. I am not quite sure what to think about that. Ironically, as we were trying to avoid him, we discovered that his tour shop was right across the street from our hostal. Oops.

Speaking of which, our hostel was one of the best we´ve stayed at so far. The rooms were great and they all were situated around a central garden. Breakfast was included and there was a restaurant with awesome Mexican food (finally!). The cooks also made some delicious homemade oatmeal chocolate cookies and orange chocolate cake. Mmm mmm. Plus, there was a TV room where we spent a good deal of time watching our favorite trashy TV show, The Girls Next Door... though here it´s called ¨The Girls of the Playboy Mansion¨(said in a very thick Spanish accent).

On our last day we went on a ridiculous hike in the Rumi Wilco reserve (part of a hostal with the same name). We felt like bushwhackers yet again even though we were on marked paths that even had little tags hanging from the plants with their names on them. I don't think the trails had been walked or cleared in a while. It was all fun and games, though, until I walked into a spider web. I screamed, Rachel screamed, and I ran away down the path. Rachel made fun of me. It was my turn to laugh hysterically when just 10 minutes later she walked into a spider web and this time the spider was actually on her. She screamed and ran away, trying to get the spider off. I think we scared the living daylights out of the poor thing. Granted, it was kind of creepy looking because it looked like a black crab.
On the way back to town after our adventure in the jungle, we came across the saddest dog I think I've ever seen. I am not sure what was wrong with it, but it seemed to be asking us for help and kept hoping up to both of us, clearly in some kind of pain. Something was wrong with its hips/back legs and it seemed to be squatting as it hopped along (it couldn't even walk normally). We had to leave it because we didn't know what else to do... I don't really want to think about it anymore, but I hope it's okay...

That night there was live music at our hostel. Turned out to be live folk music... played by French Canadians and some hippies. All the middle aged, hippy tourists came out of the woodwork that night and were there watching the show. An old hippy who looked a bit like Jesus got a bit drunk and started demanding that the musicians play ¨Yellow Rose of Texas¨every five minutes. Then he tried to dance with all the women but he didn´t succeed in wooing anyone, probably because he was a drunk Jesus. I sat and had milk and cookies, Rachel ate her cake, and everyone else got drunk. They played a few popular songs, but always reverted back to good old folk. We finally had enough of it and went to watch some more trash tv.... only to discover that Dexter had arrived in Ecuador, so we watched a few episodes of that and scared ourselves silly. When we finally went to bed, we heard a noise on our roof that sounded like a rodent gnawing on wood and were so scared after watching Dexter that we didn't fall asleep for quite some time. Eek.

The next morning we woke up early and started to make our way to Peru... this involved busing back to Loja, only to get on another bus to go back south again to cross the border at Macará in the jungle and then end in Piura, Peru. More on Peru next time!

Rachel and I have been sick for a few days now and so our visits to Cuenca, Saraguro and now Loja haven´t been too exciting. Nonetheless, we still managed to have some adventures and funny stories...

We got facials in Baños at a slightly overpriced place on our last morning. Then we took a short hike through the city with our giant backpacks in the hot sun as we tried to find the bus station. We finally got there and discovered that we couldn´t take a direct bus to Cuenca like we´d thought! We had to take a 2 hour bus ride to Riobamba, then catch another 6 hour bus to Cuenca from there. However, once we got to Riobamba, we found out that we´d missed the bus to Cuenca by 20 minutes. Grr. Rather than waiting around to take a night bus, we just found a hotel and spent the night in Riobamba and decided to take the 5:30am bus the next morning. Not the most interesting town. Our guidebook said it was cute, but it wasn´t. Plus it decided to start pouring rain as soon as we got there. We ate dinner at a place called Club Valentin or something, which was kind of like a 50s diner but with a lot of drunk, screaming Ecuadorian teenagers. They were literally screaming the lyrics to songs at the top of their lungs. It was great background music to our dinner. We watched some terrible TV for a while before we went to bed. You haven´t seen bad TV until you´ve visited Ecuador. They continuously play cheesy soap operas, amateur lip synching and dance videos, and cooking shows that feature techno dance breaks and a scary looking muppet.

The next morning we woke up dark and early at 4:45am so we could catch our bus. When we arrived, we discovered we were the only white people there and our bus was entirely filled with indigenous people carrying large sacks filled with food and things to sell at the market. They looked at us like we were aliens. We tried to sleep on our 6 hour journey, but since Rachel was on the asile for the first part of the trip, she had to deal with random women sleeping on top of her. They seem to have different standards here about personal space. I once had a woman leaning on my head on another bus trip, and I tried to jab my sunglasses (which were on my head) up into her arm a few times so she´d realize that she was leaning on me... but she didn´t even flinch. During the bus ride, we stopped at an unknown town for a food break, though nobody told us it was break time and we only figured it out once the bus driver jumped out of the bus and everyone else gradually started filing out and disappearing. We asked a kind woman carrying a puppy if it was our break and she said yes. (I think I mentioned this before, but everyone here carries puppies around in their hands. You don´t need a leash. You just carry your dog like a baby, whether you are taking a stroll in the park, eating lunch, or riding on a bus.) Rachel stopped outside of the bus to blow her nose and I took a really great picture of an indigenous man sticking his head out of the bus window, gawking at her as she blew into the tissue. We tourists are very exciting to watch.

Cuenca is a very cute, old town in the southern sierras. We stayed in the city center, which basically looks the same as Quito´s ¨centro historico¨but minus the pollution and crime. The streets in Cuenca are all cobblestone, there are a bunch of beautiful churches and pretty parks/main squares, the buildings all have cute, flower covered balconies, and there is a gorgeous river on the border of the old town and new town with green tree- and flower-covered banks. Of course the rain followed us to Cuenca as well, but at least it only seemed to rain in the evenings for an hour or so and then it stopped. During our two days here, we visited the Banco Central museum, which is supposedly the best in Cuenca (almost all other cities have their own Banco Central museum). It had sections on paintings, ethanography (about the indigenous communities here), money, and there was also an archeological park behind the museum with some ruins, rescued birds, and a garden re-created in the Inka style with corn, yucca, and other typical plants they cultivated. We also visited the Cathedral in the main square, which kind of looks like Notre Dame from the front, but it is more of a tan color and has two blue tiled domes in back. The inside was very open and simple. We noticed a cartoon on the wall of the church and moved closer to get a good look... and realized that it was an anti-abortion cartoon. It basically said ¨Mama, I am not a tumor! I am your baby boy!¨and then had a bunch of cartoon depictions of really bloody, exaggerated abortions and a baby saying ¨Don´t kill me!¨. In one picture, a baby was getting his head chopped off with a machete with blood was spurting all over. I can understand that the Catholic church is anti-abortion, but this cartoon was a bit too weird to be placed inside on the walls of the church. As we stared at it, an Ecuadorian man came up to us and said, ¨Yeah, it´s a little odd, isn´t it!¨. The abortion cartoon turned into a random conversation starter and we made a new friend.

On our last day in Cuenca, we wanted to send home a package of odds and ends to make our bags a bit lighter. We went to the post office at around 9am with all of our things only to discover that the woman who sold the envelopes wasn´t in yet. Yes, here in Ecuador the post offices never have any envelopes, stamps, boxes, etc... you have to buy them from a different store, usually located nearby. While we waited for the woman to arrive so we could buy an envelope, we asked where we might find a box. We were told to ask the security guard, who for some reason was the keeper of boxes as well. He went into a tiny closet where I saw about 4 old boxes piled up, and selected one for us. We then asked for some cardboard pieces to protect some paintings we had, and once the guard finally understood what we were asking for, he had to search the entire post office before he was able to find 3 pieces for us. By this point, the envelope woman had arrived. I got an envelope and then asked if there was a marker lying around that I could borrow to write my address with. The security guard said I had to walk upstairs and find the secretary´s office and see if she had one. She had the only marker in the post office, apparently. The whole post office is incredibly inefficient and we were there forever trying to mail our stuff even though we were the only people there for most of the time! I still can´t figure out why the security guard was in charge of the boxes, or why they don´t sell boxes in the first place or have more markers. I asked the security guard if most Ecuadorians come to the post office with their own boxes, and he said no. Which confuses me even more... where do they buy their boxes then? Do they use one of the security guard´s 3 boxes? Do they just not send packages? Things here in Ecuador are quite curious.

Anyway, onto our next bus trip! They are oh so fun. After our interesting morning at the post office, we caught a bus to Loja, about 6 hours further south. This was our first really nice bus (inside), though that had nothing to do with the type of driver we got... he was still a bit loco like all the others. We decided we´d had enough of the bus after 4 hours and an unexpected wait while they rebuilt the road or something and our bus driver decided not to tell us anything about what was going on and he just hopped out for a while. So we stopped in Saraguro, a small town where the indigenous community still dresses in their traditional black clothing and brightly colored jewelry. The indigenous community here is descended from the Incas who were forced to move into Ecuador centuries ago. We ate lunch at a restaurant near the main square and the waitress didn´t really understand anything we were saying and took about 20 minutes to realize we were asking for the bill. During our lunch, a cute little 2 year old girl decided it was amusing to stare at us through the window, so we started making faces at her and taking pictures of her and she really enjoyed seeing us act surprised or scared to see her pop up in the window and especially liked seeing herself on the camera!

Hm, must go now, but more to come about Saraguro and Loja later...

After one last day in Quito spent doing laundry and frantically trying to buy airline tickets for our flights within Peru, we were ready to head south to spend some quality time in the quaint town of Bathrooms. I believe the town was actually named for its thermal baths, but I find Bathrooms a funnier translation. Baños is in the central sierra, but it is a good 1000 meters lower than other sierra towns so there´s pretty nice, warm weather here. The town sits at the base of the active Volcano Tungurahua (aka The Black Giant), which is a beautiful cone shaped volcano covered in snow. It has been erupting a bit in the past few years, but at the moment its nothing to be worried about.

To get to Baños, we took a 3.5 hour bus ride south from Quito in the afternoon through the Avenue of the Volcanoes (I think there are 7 or 8 of them on either side of the main road). We shared the bus with some crying babies and a dashing young man carrying a tiny white puppy in a plastic sack (to prevent any unwanted accidents, I´m guessing). I took 100 pictures out the window and Rachel tried to sleep. Unfortunately for her, everyone who came on and off the bus bumped into her as they made their way down the aisle and for some reason all of them had mud on them and managed to cover Rachel´s arms in dirt. I ate some peanuts and took more pictures. Then an old woman walking down the aisle paused near Rachel and somehow covered Rachel´s head with her shawl on accident.

We are staying at a pretty cute hotel here called Plantas y Blanco. It literally means Plants and White, such a creative name. The rooms are great, we have free internet (though it´s practically useless for me since the computer here won´t recognize my portable hard drive with all my pictures on it), and a beautiful roof top terrace restaurant with awesome food.

We woke up early today and took the obligatory bike ride along the ¨Ruta de las Cascadas¨, or the route of the waterfalls. We rented some bikes for $5 and took off at about 9am through town. The road we took is on the way to Puyo, in the jungle, so we essentially biked a third of the way to the jungle. We biked a good 20 or so kilometers. For a while we shared the road with trucks and cars, biked through a pitch black tunnel with no lights (I am starting to think the Ecuadorians are a bit crazy), and became covered in sweat. I managed to take some video while I was biking because I couldn´t pass on capturing the beautiful mountain scenery around us. We stopped every so often to look at the waterfalls along the side of the road. Our main destination, however, was Pailon del Diablo, the most famous waterfall on the route. I just Googled it for more information, and you might be excited to know it was featured in the movie Proof of Life with Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe at the end. It is essentially 3 waterfalls in one, but for a long time nobody could figure out where its origin was and only the last part of the waterfall could be seen shooting out of a cliff. It´s gorgeous. We had to hike down the mountain for about 15 minutes to get to the view point. The all uphill climb afterwards wasn´t so nice. Rachel and I were panting and sweating like pigs. But we kept passing old ladies being escorted by their grandsons and giant French women in ballet flats on the trail, and this was a bit baffling to us.

Before el Diablo, we went on a short 50 cent hike to see the two other feeder water falls, San Pedro and San Miguel. (I could have the names wrong.) Our new, super friendly drug addict friend Antonio collected our 50 cent entry fee at the start of the trail (he was giving everyone a discount, so he said). We thought that we´d pay and then be off on our little hike. Not quite. After he discovered we were ¨California angels¨he could not stop talking. He somehow got on the subject of the 3rd and 11th dimensions and paintings that would be hung along the trail that would be like a giant puzzle to the story of the waterfalls and anyone who ¨understood¨would understand the real, deep meaning of it all. He made us promise, as well, if we ever met Robert DeNiro or Quentin Tarantino that we would tell them that he was waiting for them in Baños. We promised.

We took a camioneta back into town rather than biking back again. We tried to get some money out of the bank and the ATM wouldn´t work. Rachel only had $12 at this point and I had none. At this point we thought we would have to survive on $12 for the next few days until we could figure out what to do or how to get our cards to work. Everything turned out to be okay in the end and Rachel´s other card ended up working at another bank, but it all gave us a little scare and reminded us that we can´t be spending too much money anyway. We´ve been splurging at bit and buying $4 meals for dinner. Oh, so expensive! Shame on us. I just have to make sure I have enough money at the end of my trip to cover another 3 months down here in South America.

As we were typing in our blogs just now, some Argentinian and Colombian guys just introduced themselves and asked if we wanted to go to the thermal baths with them. We said we wanted to just stay on the internet and go to bed. They must think Americans are so boring. Perhaps we are. At least tonight.

One more random story before we are off to bed... there was a parade earlier today while we were using the internet cafe. I am not sure of its purpose but I saw a bunch of young boys jumping and twirling around in the street in purple and red shiny pantsuits to the tune of a marching band. I missed video taping it. Later in the afternoon we were walking along the same street and I saw a mass of people coming towards us in the street and heard some music. I took my camera out with lightening speed and yelled out excitedly, ¨I am going to video tape this!!!!¨. Turns out it was a funeral march. And the whole entire town was mourning the loss of this man. Oops.

Cuenca tomorrow... 6 hour bus ride... yay.

As I write this, it´s our last day on the islands. Dinner tonight, sleep, wake up, breakfast, airport. I´m sad to leave because it´s been such a nice contrast to Quito´s cold and rainy weather, and smoggy polluted city. But it will also be nice to not have to cover myself from head to toe in sunscreen every 10 minutes once we´re back on the mainland! The humidity is actually the worst on Santa Cruz, the island we are on now. It´s almost 7pm and I am sweating like a pig! Imagine what it´s like during the day when we are hiking through the cactus and lava covered landscape.

Anyway, back to post-Floreana. After our beach stop, we traveled by boat to Isabela, the largest island. The boat trip was really crazy because the wind was exceptionally strong that day. I will spare you all the details, but to give you an idea of how rocky it was, there was an Israeli guy who I thought was just looking at the nice view of Tortuga Island as we passed by, but then when I took a closer look I realized he wasn´t gazing at the scenery... he was throwing up overboard. Oops. I, on the other hand, somehow managed to read a book during it all. It calmed me down a bit and I didn´t pay so much attention to the rocking of the boat. Or the fact that we were in deep, deep water!

The next day on Isabela, we piled into a van and drove up to the highlands. For some reason our driver turned the A/C on for the first 10 minutes, which was wonderful, but then he mysteriously turned it off for the rest of our 40 minute drive and we all sat in the uncomfortable heat as we bounced up the dirt road toward Volcan Sierra Negra. Once we got to the horse ranch, we were all given a small horse that would be ours for the day. I never caught the name of mine, but all I can tell you is that he liked to bite other horses, he refused to run except when all the other horses around him started to gallop, and he didn´t like it when other horses overtook him. He also made my butt hurt, well, the saddle did... after about 4 hours of riding on his back! Our horses took us to the rim of the Sierra Negra crater, which is the second largest volcano crater in the world after one in Africa. It´s about 10 km in diameter and you can still see some steam coming up from the flat expanse of lava if you look closely. We road along the rim and then stopped for a hike to the nearby Volcan Chico, which last erupted in the 1970s. We walked across the lava flow, which looked like the moon. We had a picnic lunch under the shade of a tree (yay, shade! It´s rare here) and then hopped back on our trusty horses to go back. My horse started off in front along with the two Norweigan girls and two Danish guys, and we were galloping along and my lunch was bouncing around inside my stomach and it was a bit uncomfortable... Rachel´s and the rest of the group´s horses started off after us at a slower pace and soon we couldn´t see them anymore. But then out of the blue, my horse decided he didn´t want to run anymore! I was left in the middle of the two groups as the others quickly ran off in front of me and left me and my nameless horse in the dust. Well, in the mud, actually. My horse slowed down, nibbled some grass here and there, and soon it was just me, the mud, the volcano, and my horse. It was kind of nice to be alone for a while, but then I started to wonder what would happen if my horse decided to take off and race down into the crater. So I started hoping that the other group would catch up to me, and soon they did.

Later that afternoon, our butts were hurting like crazy, my knees felt like someone had hit them with a hammer, and it was hot. Rachel wasn´t feeling too great overall, so she stayed in the hotel and took a nap for the rest of the afternoon. I decided I wanted to see some more of what Isabela had to offer because we´d be leaving the next day, so I walked to the beach with Flavia (my German friend) and Phillip (the funny 6.5 foot tall Swedish guy). I forgot to mention earlier that when we met Phillip, his lips were gigantic. He made a point to tell us that he´d been stung on the lips a few weeks earlier by a mystery bug while in Banos and so his lips were normally not so huge. Sadly, his lips never made it down to their original size and he is still having to cover them with lip gloss and bright white sunscreen. He also got the most sunburnt out of all of us... his poor back was lobster red, and his feet were so burnt that they swelled up, too, and he couldn´t even put his flippers on to go snorkeling. Then his lips started to hurt from the salt water and snorkeling mask, so he had to sit out on one of our best snorkeling trips with the sea lions. He is really funny and good humored, though, and even though he´s clearly suffering I don´t think I ever heard him complain except when we forced him to complain because he deserved to! And when you see him with his glasses and giant lips with pink berry lip gloss smeared all over them, you just can´t help but smile a bit.

Anyway, back to the beach... it was really beautiful and relaxing. I took some more pictures of a bunch of marine iguanas lounging around on some rocks in a pile of about 100. There were also some bright red crabs but they were a bit too shy and I could never get close enough to get a good picture. We swam a bit, watched the beginning of the sunset, and enjoyed our time to finally relax a bit

That night we went to a really neat bar on the beach with our entire group. It was the first time we all hung out together at night (the other nights just a few of us would go out to different places), so it was nice to have everyone together. We got the chance to get to know each other a bit better and the Israelis became a bit less shy and then we ended up dancing with our boat captains until 1;30am. They appeared out of nowhere and it was really hilarious to see them try to dance. Flavia, the Norweigan girls, and Mathis (Danish guy) all ended up dancing a bit of salsa for a bit. If only I were good enough, too. At the end of the night it was just Flavia, me, Matan, Oskar, and Sofia (our silly travel agent... why is it that Rachel and I always end up going on our tours with the agents who sold us the tours? Haha). As we walked home, we looked up and realized we had never seen so many stars before. It was beautiful.

The next day we had the chance to snorkel with penguins! The penguins in the Galapagos are the only tropical penguins in the world. They are too cute. And very speedy! We spent a while in the water trying to chase them down so we could actually see them up close. They just flew through the water with the greatest of ease, I cannot figure out how they managed to move so quickly. We also saw an octopus and blue footed boobies.

After our swim with the penguins we went to Tiburon Islet and hiked around a bit. It is a small little island that we easily walked the length of in a half hour or so, formed completely of black lava. We saw those crazy red crabs again, more iguanas lounging around on rocks and spitting salt water out of their noses at us, and some really cute sea lions that were total hams for all of us photographers. There was a mother and baby who flung themselves out onto the rocks in front of us and just started striking a bunch of poses. They are so playful and fun... can we have one for a pet Mom and Dad?

In the afternoon we sailed (okay, I mean we flew across the ocean at lightening speed) to Santa Cruz, the last island stop on our tour. We stayed in Puerto Ayora, the main town in the Galapagos with about 12,000 inhabitants. We were there for 3 nights. We ended up changing around the next day of our tour because nobody seemed to like the idea of waking up at 4am to take a 45 minute bus ride to the north of the island and then take a 3 hour boat ride to Bartolome Island (it is the island that is always in the typical Galapagos Island pictures.... very beautiful, apparently full of penguins, but we already had the great luck of swimming with some on Isabela). Instead, we bused to the north of the island and then went to North Seymour Island instead, a short boat ride away (on a much calmer, slower boat this time with plenty of room to lounge around on). This island is very small, but it is a great place to see the magnificant frigatbird. At the time we went, there were also a ton of baby frigatebirds and they were really cute. They also let you get so close to them! I took a picture sitting right next to a baby frigatebird, who kind of just stared at me a bit and wiggled its throat in a weird way (perhaps it was hungry?). The male frigatebird has a large red balloon like pouch on its throat and it puffs it up to attract females. It's pretty funny looking, but the bright red color is definitely very striking agains the dark black color of the rest of its body. The males and females take turns sitting on their eggs, and while we were there we mainly saw the males in the nests.

We then snorkeled a bit more, though this time we didn't see many interesting things except a bunch of different types of fish. I believe we were supposed to see some sharks but either way it felt amazing to jump into the water since it was so hot and humid outside during our hike! I lost my snorkel, though, unfortunately and had to buy a new one later.

On our last full day, we drove up into the highlands again our bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere. Turns out we were going to see some lava tubes on someone´s private property. There is a ranch on the property and the owner´s cows started mysteriously disappearing one day. When he went to investigate, that´s when he discovered the gigantic lava tubes... the cows had been falling through the ground into the lava tubes the whole time! Oops. Lava tubes are formed when the lava flowing down the volcano cools faster on the outside than in the inside. We walked through one of them and it was enormous! In some parts the ceiling was at least over 100 feet tall, and in another part we had to shimmy on the ground and get a bit muddy. After the lava tubes, we went to see... you guessed it... MORE turtles. (One of the guys on our trip wrote ¨no more turtles!¨as a complaint on his review sheet at the end of the tour.) We went to the Charles Darwin Center, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the islands and their flora and fauna. It´s run entirely on donations, mainly from tourists. Around the center are some tortoises, iguanas, and other endemic species to the islands... and good old Lonesome George is one of them. In Spanish, he´s called ¨Solitario Jorge¨... heehee. So amusing. We just saw his butt, unfortunately. He didn´t feel like turning around to greet us. He lives with two females from neighboring islands, because they are the closest match to his species, but he doesn´t want anything to do with them. Sadly, there aren´t any more females of his own species left, so he is essentially the end of the line.

We went out every night on the islands to local bars, and well... of course we had to go out on our last night, too! Right? We all went to a nearby bar to have a drink and talk one last time. The bartender made Rachel and I margaritas that tasted like salt and ice. They sure don´t know how to do Mexican ANYTHING here in Ecuador! Regard everything ¨mexican¨with suspicion here, take my word for it. We ended up meeting these South African boys that we had danced salsa and merengue with the night before and talked to them a bit again. Unfortunately, they weren´t quite bright in the head, but the guy I danced with somehow turned me into a professional dancer and was flipping me and twirling me all over the place. When we chatted with them again, we discovered that they didn´t believe in evolution.... hm, maybe their visit to the Galapagos might change their mind? They are sailing across the ocean on a private yacht, from Panama to Galapagos to French Polynesia. I think they´re insane. Nice, but insane.

We went to go dancing next and turned the club into a foreigners only party. They were playing salsa at first, but I was sneaky and requested some electronica and dance music without the Ecuadorians knowing... soon the floor cleared and it was just Philip, Rachel and I shaking our booties on the giant dance floor. It´s okay, though, because I am pretty sure that we looked great. Or perhaps we didn´t, because soon the salsa music started playing again and everyone crowded the floor. We didn´t have our great South African sailor dance partners again, though, so instead we all sat and watched an Ecuadorian couple dance the salsa and it was quite mesmerizing. They were our age, but they looked like they´d been dancing together since they were 2 years old. All of us sat there with our jaws open, looking like complete idiots. They were really fun to watch. If only I could dance like that. Someday. Must take more lessons.

The next morning, on our last day, we stopped off to view Los Gemeles, aka The Twins. I believe they were the largest (now collapsed) lava tubes to be found in the Galapagos. They are enormous, at least a few football fields wide and just as deep. Afterwards, we continued on north to Baltra island to the airport... where we waited for a lovely 2 hours to board our flight. You have to get there early so that they won´t give your seats away to someone else. It was hot, humid, and they only had A/C and fans in the employee rooms. How nice. We browsed some stalls with overpriced trinkets, gazed longingly at the computers with overpriced internet, and I drank a nice cold coke. Finally we boarded at 1245 and we were off. We didn´t get home until around 6pm, even though our travel time was only 3 hours total.

I was a bit sad when everyone was saying goodbye at the airport. I really liked getting to know Flavia (from Germany), Matan (Israel), Philip (Sweden), and the Danish guys and Norwegian girls. I made extremely vague plans to visit all of the Europeans this fall when I go to Germany... it would be nice to visit Scandinavia for the first time and have some local friends to show me around Matan, however, is actually following a similar route to ours and will be in Peru later on... so perhaps we will meet up with him again.

Anyway, the Galapagos trip was amazing overall and I really enjoyed everything (minus the humidity, which I wasn´t expecting... okay, or the crazy speed boat rides and the choppy waters). I was surprised by how green some of the islands were... I was expecting the islands to be mainly lava and cacti from the bits I´d heard about the iGalapagos before we arrived, but in some areas of the islands I really felt like I was in a cloud forest. Everything was beautiful in its own way, from the cloud forest areas to the lava moonscape near Volcan Chico to the deserty areas to the beaches. The animals were so fearless, especially the baby frigatebirds (well, perhaps this is becuase they couldn´t exactly fly or run away from us yet!) and the sea lions. My favorite part of the entire trip was definitely having the chance to swim with the sea lions. I wonder what they thought we were with our funny looking googles and snorkels? I can´t wait to get my underwater camera pictures developed... I took a whole roll of just the sea lions as they dive bombed our faces and swam in circles around us underwater.

Sad to be back on the mainland now that we´ve left the Galapagos Islands behind, but also excited for the rest of our trip south... we´re in Baños (teehee... bathrooms) now as I write this, and its gorgeous...

Wow, I´m in the Galapagos Islands! Crazy! Thank you thank you thank you Mutti und Pappi fuer dieses wunderbare Geschenk

It´s our 6th day here and we´ll be flying back to Quito on Wednesday after lunch. I´m not ready to go yet. Although the sun is ridiculously hot since we´re at the equator and we´re running around in our bikinis every day and snorkeling, so it´s a bit uncomfortable, especially with our small sunburns we got the other day. But other than that, it´s been an awesome trip so far.

We arrived last Wednesday after a pretty smooth 3 hour flight from Quito. We spent our first couple of days on San Cristobal Island, which if I remember correctly is the oldest island of them all. It´s fairly large, but the main town itself is pretty sleepy, cute, and extremely safe. And yay, no pollution like in Quito! We first went to the information center and learned a bit about the islands and conservation efforts. Then we went on a little hike behind the center to a beautiful viewpoint and then after we were good and sweaty we hiked down to a small bay where we could jump in the water for a bit. There was a male bull sea lion in one of the coves, however, so I didn´t want to stay in the water too long in case he got angry with us. We then spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening hanging out at a nearby beach and relaxing before dinner.

On Thursday we drove up to the highlands and passed through four different areas of vegetation. The people on the islands grow coffee and other crops. We ended up in the pampas area, which is normally a bit cooler and often misty. We went to the breeding center for San Cristobal´s tortoises and got to see a ton of little babies. There are only 12 species of giant tortoises left in the world, and most of them are native to the Galapagos Islands. However, their populations were reduced almost to extinction by sailors who brought them on their ships for meat as well as by many introduced species on the islands that either eat their eggs, eat or destroy the vegetation they feed on, or harm them in some other way. The breeding center raises baby tortoises in cages until they are 5 years old (and at this point, they are hardly bigger than your hand), after which they can let them go into the wild because their shells have hardened enough to protect them from predators like goats, cows, rats, etc. It takes them a good 150 years to become full grown. We got to see some large tortoises at feeding time and they also put on an impromptou mating show for us! They are so enormous, wrinkly, slow, dinosaur-like, and awkward looking. But I love them.

We got to snorkel again later at Los Lobos island and Leon Dormido, both small nearby islands. The first stop involved... get this... snorkeling with sea lions!!!! It was incredible. I was afraid at first because they are so playful and curious and they dart towards your face underwater and then swim away in another direction at the last second. But my god, they are just so cute. Then above water, they are just like dogs, barking and curling up in little balls to sleep, or staring at your with their wide brown eyes. It was so much fun to be able to be so close to them in their natural environment. Our second stop involved snorkeling that was a bit more advanced because it was in very deep water and there were about 100 sharks below us. I believe they were harmless reef sharks of some type, but our guide Jorge assured us that there is such an abundance of food in the Galapagos that they wouldn´t be interested in dining on us anyway I wasn´t quite sure what was going to be beneath me when I first jumped into the water, but as soon as I looked down and saw the sharks, I screamed and made a beeline towards my German friend Flavia... because if I was to be devoured by 100 sharks, I didn´t want to be devoured alone!

On Friday we woke up early and took the Costa boat (our speedy transport between islands) to our next destination, Floreana Island. I love the history of Floreana, because it involves a bunch of crazy German colonists interested in creating a utopian society, a husband and wife who removed all their teeth before arriving and then shared a pair of metal dentures, an Austrian woman who came with her 3 lovers and called herself the Empress of Floreana, stories of murder, disappearances, general craziness, and, of course, pirates.

Floreana only has about 80 people living on it. We landed at the sleepy port and took a billion photos of the marine iguanas lounding around on the black lava rocks near the water. They are black and completely blend in with the rocks, so it´s often hard to spot them at first, and are the only species of iguana that live on land and water. They are vegetarians, feeding on just the algae in the water, and have developed a neat adaptation to help with all the salt water that they consume... they kind of spit water out of their noses ever so often, and this is their way to rid their bodies of the excess salt. We then did a bit more snorkeling, where I saw a sea turtle briefly as it flew through the water. I was also bitten by thousands of tiny, bright blue plankton type things that were floating in the water all around us. Good times.

Anyhoo... time for dinner, but more to come later about the rest of our trip

Kerri