Ecuador Day 2

After a full night’s sleep, Katie and I had some coffee while listening to a million fireworks going off nearby. The fireworks here just make noise (a lot of noise) and don’t actually put on a show like they do in the US. It’s kind of obnoxious after awhile, especially when you’re trying to sleep or when you have a dog that HATES fireworks. Ha. After coffee we headed into the main house for breakfast. Barb made eggs and toast and bacon and pineapple. We also had some Yaupon tea that Barb drinks every morning in lieu of coffee. After breakfast we called the airlines to see if there was any progress on Katie’s bags. It turned out that they made it to the Guayaquil airport, just a bit later then we did. Score!

We then headed out to the annual Cuenca Christmas Eve Parade. We met two of Barb and Mike’s friends there and wandered through the parade (note: it wasn’t moving at all at this point). There were kids dressed up with moustaches and fancy clothes and decorated horses and cars covered in decorations and floats adorned with food and whole roasted pigs and chickens (head still on). It was quite the site. There were also tons of street vendors selling delicious smelling food. We stopped for some coconut water that came straight from a coconut. It was delicious.

 ^^One of the many dead animals in the parade, which was on the back of a horse next to two girls^^

^^view down the street from the beginning of the parade^^

^^The fruit stand where we bought our fresh coconut water^^

 
^^I loved this girl’s dress^^

After a while we broke away from the crowd (there were SO many people in the streets there) and Katie, Mike and I decided to head back to the house. We hailed a cab and got inside. Cabs here don’t have seatbelts, usually cost less than $2 to take across town and are kind of terrifying because as far as I can tell there are no traffic laws and taxis honk at pedestrians and it’s a bit crazy. As Mike said, “traffic lights are merely a suggestion here.” But they’re easy to hail and super cheap so we’ve taken a lot of them. Also, Mike and Barb’s place doesn’t have a real address or a street number, so we leave it to one of them to explain in Spanish to the cab drivers where the house is. Fun times!

When we got back to the house we walked to a shop to get Katie’s passport copied and then walked back to the house to wait for Havierre who we hoped could pick up Katie’s bags from the Guayaquil airport. After we gave him the copies we walked down the street to get some lunch. Katie got a combo plate with both tripe and goat, I tried a little of each. The tripe was in a delicious peanut sauce and one bite of the goat was enough for me. I had a fried corvina fish with rice and salad and French fries which was delicious.

After lunch we caught a bus (our first one since being here) to the marcado where we bought Santa hats and some really delicious fruits neither Katie nor I had ever tried before. The marcado was the most magical place, Katie and I had a blast looking at all the fruits and trying to talk to the vendors in v broken espanol. I wanted to purchase all the fruits. Apparently we are going back on Saturday when the market will be in full swing! I will buy more then!

 
When we got back to the house Katie and I thought that it might be nice to sit on the roof deck with a few beers and read for a bit. We walked a few houses down to the market to get 4 beers (1 each for the 4 of us). They cost $1 each, you guys! They were huge and it was awesome. So we sat outside and we read and it was really nice.

After it started to get a little dark we came inside and watched the movie August: Osage County which Barb picked up that day downtown for $1.50. It looked like it was in a legit case but the DVD inside was a burned one and there were English subtitles you couldn't turn off (the movie itself was in English as well). Despite all that, it was a good, albeit intense and kind of cray cray movie. We ate some lasagna and bread during the movie. Since the altitude is so high here, bread is much different than it is in Seattle. It’s good, but different. Thinner, I think. After we finished I suggested Katie open one of her Christmas gifts early so we could enjoy it that night. I got her the game Cards Against Humanity and the four of us actually had a blast drinking wine and playing until we went to bed.

It was a great second day in Cuenca!

Travel + Ecuador Day 1

I made it to Ecuador! To get here Katie and I flew from Seattle to Phoenix, Phoenix to Miami, Miami to Guayaquil and then got in a car with a man named Havierre who drove us 3+ hours to Cuenca. Thank God for our Hoodie Pillows! It wasn’t quite that easy though. The airline made Katie check her carry on bag in Phoenix, promising that it would arrive at the baggage claim in Guayaquil with us. Well, it didn’t. And neither did the bag she checked to begin with. Both bags lost, and the people at the airport have no idea where they are. Cool. This caused a 2ish hour delay when we got to the Guayaquil airport at 4:15am, there may have been some tears, a lot of confusing conversations because we don’t speak Spanish very well and a very, very kind driver waiting patiently for us when we finally got out of immigration, baggage claim hell and then customs.

^^Katie and I with our hoodie pillows FTW^^

Havierre insisted we stop and get coffee before starting our trip so that we did. Then we drove through the outskirts Guayaquil which looked exactly like you would imagine the outskirts of a poor, Latin American city to look like. Lots of closed storefronts and stray dogs and random animals on the side of the road intermixed with banana farms and rice fields and fields of sugar cane. When we got out of the city we started seeing road side fruit stands every 1/2 mile or so. I declared that I was only eating fruit for the rest of the trip because the fruit looked so gorgeous and fresh. (spoiler alert: I haven’t followed my diet very closely yet)

About an hour into our drive we started going up, up, up a windy road. At the beginning of the drive up the mountain we were stopped by a heard of cows in the middle of the road. 

^^cows as seen from the back seat of the cab^^

This is how the last 2ish hours of our drive would go. It was a gorgeous drive and once we got stopped by  a head of cows once. We drove up the Andes Mountains and stopped along the way because: car sickness and the amazing view.

^^Andes mountains with an active volcano way in the background^^

^^Katie and I with the volcano in the background^^

We then entered a national park with a sign that said watch for Llamas (or something to that effect, see note above about needing to brush up on spanish) and I exclaimed that I would be SO excited if I saw wild llamas because that was like, the one thing I wanted to do in Ecuador.

We drove a little ways and saw a heard of wild llamas. I was so excited I couldn’t speak a real sentence. I leaned out the car window while Havierre stopped in the middle of the road so I could take pictures. They were mangy and tame and beautiful and amazing. After a few minutes we drove on. We ended up seeing two more heard of llamas and at one point I was shouting out the window “hola llamas!!” Seriously guys, it made me day.

^^HOLA LLAMA!!^

 
^^More llamas!!^^

 
^^Baby llama!^^

We also stopped at the highest point in our drive to look at the view and realize that neither Katie nor I could climb a small hill at 40,000ft elevation without feeling like we were going to pass out. Cute.

^^View from the highest point on the drive – crazy how it went from lush, tropical views to barren, mountain views within about an hour^^

Most of the drive up the mountains was on a three lane road (two lanes going up and one down), so it was fairly safe for us to pass semis going about 10 miles per hour up the mountain. However, after a while the road turned to a two lane road and Havierre was passing semis right before sharp corners. It was mildly terrifying but apparently he does that drive multiple times a week, and we made it out alive, so all is well.

When we finally arrived at Katie’s dad (Mike) and his partner’s (Barb) house we were exhausted but seeing as Katie had no bags, we decided to go with Barb to a small mall nearby so Katie could get a few essentials and we could get some breakfast complete with amazing juice made with fruits I’ve never heard of.

After shopping, we came back to Mike and Barb’s house and passed out in their guest house, where we’re staying while we’re here, for a few hours. It was glorious considering we’d probably only slept 3 hours on two separate planes up until that point.

When we woke up, we got ready and had a dirty martini with Katie’s dad before heading to the town square for dinner.

 
^^Katie and I before dinner in Mike and Barb’s gorgeous yard/garden^^

I had some chicken with rice dish for dinner that was yummy and a pineapple juice. The pineapple here is totally different than pineapple in the US, it’s almost white in color and it’s way less acidic in a really delicious way. After dinner we walked around the square, peeked in an ancient church, popped into a store to get Katie a few more clothes, then Barb and I got really amazing hot chocolates while Katie and Mike stood in line for the symphony.

^^Cuenca town square^^

Symphonies in Cuenca are fully funded by the government so it was free to watch. The symphony was really wonderful, and at the end a choir came in and sang with the symphony. They played some Christmas songs both in Spanish and English, it was really lovely to watch and listen to.

^^Choir^^

^^Cuenca Symphony^^

After the symphony was over we went back to Barb and Mike’s house to have a glass of wine and play with their dog, Stella before going to sleep.

It was a great albeit veryyyy long first day in Ecuador!