So, yet another weekend I traveled.. I could totally get used to this when I get back to the states.. but then I would lose all my money cause gas is so dang expensive and there's nothing that fabulous around. ha So me and some friends decided to go to the beach again.. best beach yet! It's called Montanita and it's about 12 hours from Quito! We took an 8 hour bus to Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecudaor, and then took another one at 5:30 am to Montanita. The town was so cute and the streets were covered in sand. It was so lovely and what a nice day! We went to the beach all day and looked around all the stands on the streets that people were selling.. I bought a bunch of jewelry, go figure.. but they are for friends! Our hostal was really cool only cause I got to sleep in a loft! They told us they had a room for the 5 of us, but when we got to our room there were 2 sets of bunk beds so I asked and they pointed up and there was a ladder leading to a top part with 2 beds and a fan! It was lovely as well. So we spent a little more time at the beach on Saturday morning and walked down past the 2nd part of Montanita, where we climbed over some rocks and found a cool kinda peninsula thing.. me ryan and josh decided that we'd make the trek over to the point and look around.. the process was kind of ridiculous because if you went at the wrong time, the waves would crash you against the wall of rock, so we had to spend a few minutes preparing and counting waves and seconds haha. We got to see about 20 dolphins all together and it was sooo cool! None of us 3 had cameras. dang. Then jen and taylor came over and taylor cut her foot then I put a big hole in my heel when I stepped on some sharp thing haha. On our way back to the beach, as we walked across the boulders and crevices, ryan and I got sprayed really bad with a wave that came underneath and through the crevice and shot up real hard. It was hilarious.
In Guayaquil, after our lovely less than 3 hour bus ride was along the beach, we got picked up by a friend of my host mom's friend, who drove us around and picked us up and took us whereever we wanted to go the rest of saturday and sunday! He took us to the LIGA vs. Barcelona soccer game (really big rivalry), where there were only about 100 LIGA fans and we couldn't cheer for them because we were surrounded by Barcelona fans (who get a little out of hand and become dangerous to the opposing fans). when we walked in, we were walking down the middle of the side section and 4 rows up and 4 rows down all turned their heads as we walked by.. pretty sure we were the only gringos in the stadium! Needless to say, it was a blast and very crazy, and a tie. ugh. I hate that soccer games can end in a tie. (But they played each other again this past weekend in Quito and LIGA won!! woo hoo!) That night we had to eat some dinner and went to this place down the road from our hostal where the menu was a dry erase board with a few things written on it that did not make sense. When we asked each other what we got, we had no idea because really we had no idea what we ordered. it was delicious though. On sunday, G (i cant remember the rest of his name, but i know it started with a G) drove us to the Malecon, which is a very very long boardwalk following a river. It was so pretty outside and we walked the whole thing. We started playing on a playground, but got kicked off (there were only 3 other kids so i know we weren't disrupting anything.. the big people playground isn't as fun.. just work out stuff!) We went to 2 markets and got a few things then went to the biggest and nicest bus station i've ever seen here. also had the best drink i've had in ecuador called a frozen. we got back on sunday night at about 1030 and i was so tired! what a glorious weekend. oh yeah and every where we went, the 5 of us rode i the bed of the truck to get there! ha it was typical ecuadorian traveling and so fun.
lunes, 21 de abril de 2008
Lo to the ja and Cuenca
So the second part of spring break I flew to Loja to meet up with my friends Mark and Gaby in the south of Ecuador because they had been traveling Peru the previous week. When I got to Loja, which was only a 30 minute $80 plane ride, I didn't know that the airport was actually 3o minutes from the actual town of Loja.. I also didn't realize that Loja is a province so I was flying into the province, not the town. I actually hitched a ride with my airplane buddy, some older Ecuadorian woman who lived in Loja, in her daughter's truck! ha Then with all my decision making skills (sike!) I had to look around and find a hostal/hotel for the 3 of us. That took like an hour cause I couldn't decide and there weren't that many great ones, so I had to call my friend Taylor to help me! haha I ended up hanging out for almost 5 hours by myself waiting for them, because apparently something happened with their bus and all different transportation to get there (which definitely isn't uncommon). We walked around and saw a bunch of churches and bought a few things at a small market and headed out to Cuenca (a little farther north and the 3rd largest city in Ecuador) in the late afternoon.
In Cuenca, we stayed at this ridiculous hostal.. Hostal Orquidea.. because we lived in a suite for a few days. It had a spiral staircase leading up to our suite, a kitchen, stocked with everything but food and the blade to the blender, a dining table, a living room with a bar and tv in it, and 2 bedrooms with 2 beds in each and a full bath in each! It was crazy amazing. We attempted to make mora juice, boiling them and trying to strain them with many different devices (including a salt shaker, a bag with holes punches with a fork, a thin thin strainer, and maybe something else.. then decided we'd just drink it with the seeds (which really sucked)) and that didn't turn out so well. We also bought a ton of fruit, so we made a platter one evening to go along with some bread and it had cut up pinapple and grapes and we had strawberries as well. And 2 of the mornings Mark cooked some tortillas (which are pretty much omelets) and I made some strawberry batidos! It was lovely. While in Cuenca we walked around also to see the gorgeous churches and parks, bought some really good icecream a few times, and found some nice jewelry stores. One night we met up with a friend of Mark's, who was studying in Cuenca, from home in Cali!, and went dancing and I got to dance with a band member of the live band that had played earlier! It was fun. I've found that live music here is the best. We took a side trip the next day to a place called Ingapirca which was pretty cool. There were 3 sets of ruins and a bunch of llamas! ha And when we were at the highest one, I just so happened to drop my camera about 30 feet without knowing. Luckily, and not with my luck obviously, it landed in a patch of grass and didn't hit all the rocky steps it could have hit. Jeez. We wanted to go to either some markets about an hour away the next day or go to a gigantic park, but we did neither! ha I actually don't even remember what we did, but I feel like we just found a market or 2 and looked around Cuenca some more.
We decided on that Friday that we'd fly back on Sunday, so our last minute tickets only cost $63 or something which was glorious and were for row 9 which we thought was lovely because it wasn't in the front nor the back.. Deceivingly so, row 9 was the LAST row. This was, by far, the smallest plane I'd ever been on. I sat in a middle seat, the only one on the plane, with my legs propped up on my bag and 2 people on either side of me. It was glorious. I'm pretty sure though that the empanadas they gave me started my sickness, because my stomach has hurt for the past 3 weeks off and on since that Sunday afternoon! Ridiculous. Lovely trip though.
In Cuenca, we stayed at this ridiculous hostal.. Hostal Orquidea.. because we lived in a suite for a few days. It had a spiral staircase leading up to our suite, a kitchen, stocked with everything but food and the blade to the blender, a dining table, a living room with a bar and tv in it, and 2 bedrooms with 2 beds in each and a full bath in each! It was crazy amazing. We attempted to make mora juice, boiling them and trying to strain them with many different devices (including a salt shaker, a bag with holes punches with a fork, a thin thin strainer, and maybe something else.. then decided we'd just drink it with the seeds (which really sucked)) and that didn't turn out so well. We also bought a ton of fruit, so we made a platter one evening to go along with some bread and it had cut up pinapple and grapes and we had strawberries as well. And 2 of the mornings Mark cooked some tortillas (which are pretty much omelets) and I made some strawberry batidos! It was lovely. While in Cuenca we walked around also to see the gorgeous churches and parks, bought some really good icecream a few times, and found some nice jewelry stores. One night we met up with a friend of Mark's, who was studying in Cuenca, from home in Cali!, and went dancing and I got to dance with a band member of the live band that had played earlier! It was fun. I've found that live music here is the best. We took a side trip the next day to a place called Ingapirca which was pretty cool. There were 3 sets of ruins and a bunch of llamas! ha And when we were at the highest one, I just so happened to drop my camera about 30 feet without knowing. Luckily, and not with my luck obviously, it landed in a patch of grass and didn't hit all the rocky steps it could have hit. Jeez. We wanted to go to either some markets about an hour away the next day or go to a gigantic park, but we did neither! ha I actually don't even remember what we did, but I feel like we just found a market or 2 and looked around Cuenca some more.
We decided on that Friday that we'd fly back on Sunday, so our last minute tickets only cost $63 or something which was glorious and were for row 9 which we thought was lovely because it wasn't in the front nor the back.. Deceivingly so, row 9 was the LAST row. This was, by far, the smallest plane I'd ever been on. I sat in a middle seat, the only one on the plane, with my legs propped up on my bag and 2 people on either side of me. It was glorious. I'm pretty sure though that the empanadas they gave me started my sickness, because my stomach has hurt for the past 3 weeks off and on since that Sunday afternoon! Ridiculous. Lovely trip though.
martes, 1 de abril de 2008
Galapagos Islands = paradise and some Quito
So spring break=amazing! It started the 20th and that morning, really really early, me and 3 other friends, Taylor, Ryan, and Jason, left for the Galapagos Islands. The trip was a tad expensive, but covered pretty much everything and was soo worth it! We got there on Thursday afternoon with time to walk to Tortuga Bay (which actually took like an hour.. long, hot walk.). That was the most beautiful beach I've ever seen.. white sand all around, no shells, and clear blue water! We couldn't swim there because the current was so strong so we walked down to the bay area, where there were absolutely no waves at all! Then we saw a few sharks and decided it was time to get out haha We amused ourselves by taking jumping and shadow pictures and by drawing in the sand. glorious.
Friday we got up early to go to Las Grietas (were going to go kayaking, but this was definitely the better option!). It's 2 cliffs where you can jump from different rocks into beautifully clear blue water! It was amazing. Then we went to the Charles Darwin station where there were too many mosquitos, but got to see tons of turtles and very very small beach that also had too many mosquitos. On Saturday, we left early to go to Isabela Island, which took about 3 hours on a very large boat! We walked around the island a bit, went to the turtle preservation place (where we saw many many big big turtles! even got to see some turtles having sex. pleasant.), stopped by a large lake to see one flamingo (but still amazing since i've never seen one!), walked around a shark resting area of the island (but only saw one shark and then saw a family of sea lions just hangin out on the beach!), and then went snorkeling! While snorkeling, we got to see a few penguins, a bunch of pretty fish, and some sea lions! The sea lions are not afraid of humans and will swim right up in your face! We left the island about 4 pm, but didn't actually get back to Santa Cruz (where we were staying.. in the Red Booby hotel!) until 1 am! a 9 hour boat ride with a lot of black smoke, a pretty sunset, some napping, chilliness, a bit of rain, and moving about 5 mph! ridiculous, but it was pretty cool just hangin out on the pacific!
Sunday, we went with a tour group to Floreana Island, on yet another boat. The boat trip was about 2 hours and Ryan and I got to lie on top of the not very big boat while everyone else was suffocating below us inside the boat! We walked a bit to get to a beach/bay where we could snorkel and the beach was absolutely beautiful! We didn't see much while we were snorkeling, because it was kind of foggy under the water from stirred up sand. My friend Jason and I were some of the last people to come back in and when we got in we saw them yelling at us and didnt know why until we saw a male sea lion swimming about 5 feet from us.. those are only the most dangerous ones! ha Then we all had lunch at this "restaurant" where we were swatting mosquitos like it was our job.. kind of miserable while we were eating. So we got out of there and took our boat to another part of the island about 20 minutes away to do more snorkeling.. we swam with sharks, like a million sea lions, awesome fish, some rays, a few turtles, and lots of pretty coral. The best snorkeling I have and probably will ever do!
Monday, we took a tour bus, just us 4 and our russian lady friend that was traveling with us on all of our trips, to Los Gemelos, which are 2 huge craters from where there were once 2 volcanos that collapsed! Pretty neat. Then we headed to the airport that is the smallest one I've seen! I tried my first empanada there and it was pretty delicious, but it won't be my favorite food here.
Tuesday, Taylor, Ryan, and I went to the Mercado Artesenal which had about 9 rows (2 rows in each one) full of things to buy.. art, jewelry, clothes, bags.. you name it, they got it! I bought a few pieces of art and I don't really rememeber what else. Then we had lunch at a cute place called Coffee Tree and me and Taylor went back to my house to watch American Gangster. We tried to finish it on Wednesday morning, but didn't have much time, i came back and ate with my family for lunch and my brother Pablo took me to the airport...
to be continued.
Friday we got up early to go to Las Grietas (were going to go kayaking, but this was definitely the better option!). It's 2 cliffs where you can jump from different rocks into beautifully clear blue water! It was amazing. Then we went to the Charles Darwin station where there were too many mosquitos, but got to see tons of turtles and very very small beach that also had too many mosquitos. On Saturday, we left early to go to Isabela Island, which took about 3 hours on a very large boat! We walked around the island a bit, went to the turtle preservation place (where we saw many many big big turtles! even got to see some turtles having sex. pleasant.), stopped by a large lake to see one flamingo (but still amazing since i've never seen one!), walked around a shark resting area of the island (but only saw one shark and then saw a family of sea lions just hangin out on the beach!), and then went snorkeling! While snorkeling, we got to see a few penguins, a bunch of pretty fish, and some sea lions! The sea lions are not afraid of humans and will swim right up in your face! We left the island about 4 pm, but didn't actually get back to Santa Cruz (where we were staying.. in the Red Booby hotel!) until 1 am! a 9 hour boat ride with a lot of black smoke, a pretty sunset, some napping, chilliness, a bit of rain, and moving about 5 mph! ridiculous, but it was pretty cool just hangin out on the pacific!
Sunday, we went with a tour group to Floreana Island, on yet another boat. The boat trip was about 2 hours and Ryan and I got to lie on top of the not very big boat while everyone else was suffocating below us inside the boat! We walked a bit to get to a beach/bay where we could snorkel and the beach was absolutely beautiful! We didn't see much while we were snorkeling, because it was kind of foggy under the water from stirred up sand. My friend Jason and I were some of the last people to come back in and when we got in we saw them yelling at us and didnt know why until we saw a male sea lion swimming about 5 feet from us.. those are only the most dangerous ones! ha Then we all had lunch at this "restaurant" where we were swatting mosquitos like it was our job.. kind of miserable while we were eating. So we got out of there and took our boat to another part of the island about 20 minutes away to do more snorkeling.. we swam with sharks, like a million sea lions, awesome fish, some rays, a few turtles, and lots of pretty coral. The best snorkeling I have and probably will ever do!
Monday, we took a tour bus, just us 4 and our russian lady friend that was traveling with us on all of our trips, to Los Gemelos, which are 2 huge craters from where there were once 2 volcanos that collapsed! Pretty neat. Then we headed to the airport that is the smallest one I've seen! I tried my first empanada there and it was pretty delicious, but it won't be my favorite food here.
Tuesday, Taylor, Ryan, and I went to the Mercado Artesenal which had about 9 rows (2 rows in each one) full of things to buy.. art, jewelry, clothes, bags.. you name it, they got it! I bought a few pieces of art and I don't really rememeber what else. Then we had lunch at a cute place called Coffee Tree and me and Taylor went back to my house to watch American Gangster. We tried to finish it on Wednesday morning, but didn't have much time, i came back and ate with my family for lunch and my brother Pablo took me to the airport...
to be continued.
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)