It's All Over

Well it had to come to an end eventually, I'm currently writing this post in Guayaquil Airport, Ecuador while I wait for my connecting flight home. Helen wrote the second part of this post a few weeks back and I was supposed to send post it a while back also, so some things are a little out of date. We've both had an amazing time in Ecuador. If anyone is interested in learning Spanish, I would definitely recommend Cuenca, Ecuador.  It's a beautiful old city surrounded by great countryside and mountains. There are also a lot of spanish schools in the city, we went to Amauta Fundacion  and I can't recommend it enough.

Here is the post Helen wrote a few weeks back...


Another two months have passed, and we are still in Cuenca, and there is quite a lot to update on. Carnaval was great fun here. It was a celebration that lasted for about 4 days, and every day we got wet! Gringos and girls are especially targeted, and one day as we were walking back from the market, I (Helen) was chased by 4 men with buckets. They managed to catch me and poured all the buckets of water over my head! I was completely drenched! We spent a few days over Carnaval in the country with friends, pictures can be seen here. We also spent a fun morning driving round the streets of Cuenca armed with water balloons and throwing them at whoever took our fancy. Revenge was sweet!

Our visas turned out to be very easy to sort out. We were able to get student visas, organised through the Spanish school we’re attending. The visas cost $130, and allowed us another 12 months here, with multiple entry and exits. We also received student cards for Cuenca, which allow us to get into many places at the prices Ecuadorians pay. Quite a bonus, as the difference between the two prices is sometimes fairly substantial.

We are still taking Spanish lessons, and are both pretty proficient now, although more practice is certainly needed! We are now in our fourth home in Cuenca! After staying in a beautiful apartment in the centre of the city for 6 weeks or so, we decided to try living with a host family here. We rent a room in their house, and the idea was that we would improve our Spanish through being more immersed in the language. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked out quite as well as we’d hoped, since the family aren’t in the house too often.

 Our time here is running out now, we are both due to return to the UK in 3 weeks time. In the last few weeks, we have planned a trip to the coast and a weekend trip to a town 5 hours south of Cuenca called Vilcabamba. We have both really fallen in love with Ecuador, and especially Cuenca. There is so much that we will miss from here...the price of food (4 avocados for a dollar!), the markets, the people, the clowns who dress up and juggle in front of lines of stopped traffic for money, the strange and affectionate nicknames people have for each other – gordita (fatty), viejita (oldy) just two examples, the bakeries with their delicious pastries and cakes, and of course the friends we have made here and the local people, who love to wear bright colours and Panama hats (and are so protective of them that when it rains they put plastic bags over their hats, while still wearing them), who are friendly  and funny, and even sometimes a little bit sly.

Bye Ecuador!

England, here we come.

2 months later...still in Cuenca (Warning: long post!)

Cuenca...we arrived here by bus shortly before Christmas and intended to stay only a few days and decide what to do in the long-term as cycling no longer seemed to be an option due to Chris’s leg injury. Over a month later and we’re still here! We have decided to stop cycling, at least for now, to give Chris’s leg a chance to heal properly. Six months of hard cycling and determination/stubborn desire to keep going has finally taken its toll. So Cuenca is home for now! The fact that we have stayed so long says a lot for the town. It’s a beautiful place situated in the Andes at a height of 2530m. The city is filled with churches, plazas, colonial buildings, cobbled streets and friendly people. It also has a great climate!



The bus journey from Baňos (about 8 hours in total) was fairly uneventful, we managed to get the bikes on ok, and were far more wary with our bags as a result of the camera theft on the way to Baňos. This is pretty difficult when we have panniers and backpacks – 8 small bags between us to keep track of – and makes for a fairly unrelaxing journey. After about 6 hours I noticed that the man sitting in the aisle next to us was eating something that looked very like a big lump of chocolate. I was jealous, and pointed out the treat to Chris. As we looked closer we realised that the ‘chocolate’ was in fact part of an animal’s face, and that the man was pulling teeth out from the jawbone before tearing off chunks of meat! Not so appetising after all.

When we arrived we were lucky enough to find someone to couchsurf with over Christmas – Allen, a photographer from San Francisco who has bravely decided to leave his old life behind him and start again in South America. We ended up spending about a week with Allen. On Christmas Eve they have a big parade in Cuenca – the Pase del Nino – it starts at around 8am and seemed to go on until about 2pm! Everyone seems to get involved, dressing up as anything from an angel to a clown to a Maypole dancer and parading through the streets of Cuenca (see pictures here). Hundreds of people were lining the streets to watch and it was a really great occasion. We have learnt that they love parades here; in fact they seem to happen so frequently that now when we hear the banging of drums and the sounds of brass instruments playing sometimes we don’t even investigate what is going on.

They also seem to celebrate occasions in the most incongruous places here. In the lead up to Christmas we were in a meat market when we realised that a small Christmas service was about to start! Amongst the stalls selling raw meat, cows hooves, tongues and hanging sausages there was a small group of children dressed up in traditional and festive clothes representing a nativity scene (see pictures here). There was also a vicar who was chanting into a microphone. Most of the market activity stopped while everyone watched the display and joined in with hymns and prayers.

We spent Christmas with Allen in Cajas National Park, which is about 40 minutes outside of Cuenca. At first I was very dubious about this idea – what is a Christmas day without hours of inactivity inside and copious amounts of good food? Well apparently it can be pretty good without these key ingredients. We spent the whole day walking in mountains with wild llamas around us, strange new plants to look at and breathtaking panoramic views everywhere we looked. We even managed to have some pretty good food in the evening. Of course we did have to pay the tourist entrance fee for the park of $10 (versus about $1 for Ecuadorians!) but it was well worth it.

Allen left the next day after a cold night in the refuge building (he had no sleeping bag). Chris and I stayed for two more nights, and really fell in love with the area. We explored the national park fairly well, and managed to see some brilliant wildlife, lakes and waterfalls. We even went swimming, ignoring the advice of the brochure that we received when we entered the park: ‘The water in the lakes of Cajas National Park is very cold. Avoid contact at all times.’ It was pretty cold, too.

Cycling was far from our minds when we returned to Cuenca and got ready for New Year with the rest of the city. Everyone here makes Guy Fawkes-esque mannequin people who represent all the bad aspects of the year that they are leaving behind as they enter the next year. They put papier-mache masks on these ‘people’. The masks are pretty spectacular and were sold in almost all shops in the lead up to New Years Eve. As we approached the big day, more and more mannequins were visible in front of shops and houses. Lots had signs attached asking for donations, and in the afternoon of New Years Eve there were mini roadblocks all over the city as men and boys dressed up as women and danced in front of the oncoming traffic until they were given money. As well as making mannequins, people in Cuenca make huge cardboard scenes in the streets consisting of cardboard people, cars, tables etc. The best way to explain is through photos...check them out here. It was very impressive! At the turn of the New Year, we were at a big cardboard scene...after the hours that everyone must have spent making all everything, it was thrown onto a huge bonfire, doused it with petrol and set it alight exactly at midnight. It was quite spectacular! For luck, some crazy people even started jumping over/through the big fire! Then they started firing crazy homemade fireworks everywhere. I felt like I was in one of the videos that are shown at every school in the lead up to Guy Fawkes night – what not to do with fireworks: keep them in your pocket, use them in a street or public place, let small children hold them while lit, light them and throw them into a crowd etc etc. The lack of safety was sort of liberating though, and no one seemed to get hurt. We spent the night dancing in the street having flour thrown over us, and ended the night in true English style in a kebab place. The great thing about the Cuencan New Year (apart from the fires and fireworks) was the mixture of people dancing in the streets. Unlike anything you’d be likely to see in England, there was a huge group of strangers - old people, young people, children, tourists and foreigners all enjoying themselves together. It was a great atmosphere.

Cycling was far from our minds when we returned to Cuenca and got ready for New Year with the rest of the city. Below is a 10-step plan to enjoying a Cuencan New Year:

1. Make a papier mache person to represent all the bad aspects of the year that you are leaving behind as you enter the new year. Leave the mannequin outside your house with a sign attached asking for money.
2. Put a mask on the mannequin (see pictures here).
3. Spend all of New Year’s Eve making huge cardboard scenes in the street. If necessary block off a few roads.
4. If you are a man, dress up as a woman and make more roadblocks with string. Dance in front of the oncoming traffic until they give you money.
5. Converge on the street for midnight (preferably close to a big cardboard scene).
6. Throw everything you have spent time making (mannequins, masks, cardboard scenes etc) onto a big bonfire.
7. Douse bonfire with fuel and light at midnight.
8. Jump over big bonfire to bring you luck for the next year.
9. Set homemade fireworks off. Give lit fireworks to small children, throw into large crowds of people or just keep the fireworks in your pocket for later use.
10. Dance around big bonfire with fireworks all night. Throw flour over gringos and anyone else who gets in your way.

We spent the night dancing in the street having flour thrown over us, and ended the night in true English style in a kebab place. The great thing about the Cuencan New Year (apart from the fires and fireworks) was the mixture of people dancing in the streets. Unlike anything you’d be likely to see in England, there was a huge group of strangers - old people, young people, children, tourists and foreigners all enjoying themselves together. It was a great atmosphere.

The next parade was just a few days later, and was called the Parade of the Innocents. This parade commemorates the children (or Innocents) killed when King Herod ordered the killing of all male children in Bethlehem. It was probably my favourite parade so far, the costumes were fantastic and the whole atmosphere was electric. Again, photos are the best way to get this point across...see them here. My favourite group of people was the Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ group. They were all dressed as zombies and lying on the floor with wooden gravestones in front of them. We were lucky enough to walk past just as the Thriller music came on, and they all dragged themselves up from their ‘graves’ and started doing the thriller dance. Brilliant! Link to videos from parade

So...a month later and we are still here. And what have we been doing? The main activity has been learning Spanish! We have enrolled at a language school here called the Amauta Fundacion (www.amauta.edu.ec), where lessons cost between $6-8 an hour. The school is situated in the heart of the city in a lovely old building with a covered courtyard area inside. We have been having lessons for about a month now, and the teaching has been brilliant (surprisingly a lot of fun!). We have met a lot of great people at the school, and our Spanish is gradually improving. Aside from Spanish, we have been taking salsa lessons, Ecuadorian cooking lessons, cycling (not Chris), playing Frisbee with the local Gringo crew, going to markets, and (importantly) catching up with the latest series of Spooks. We are planning on staying here for at least another 3 weeks, and after that we will see what happens. It would be great to get really good at Spanish before we leave. Our visas run out at the end of the month, and we have just found out that it’s no longer possible to do visa runs in Ecuador. Hopefully we won’t get kicked out of the country...we are looking into getting a visa extension somehow, or getting student visas. The next cause for celebration in Cuenca is Carnival. This festival is to compensate for the abstinence of meat which will follow during lent. It starts this week, but already people are getting ready. Shops are stocking up with water pistols of every kind, and we have been the unfortunate victims of TWO drive-by water bomb attacks! So, watch this space for updates on carnaval and visas.

More photos from Ecuador - Banos, Cuenca & Cajas National Park

The photos from these parts of our trip are now on the blog and also be viewed by following these links:


Banos:


Cuenca:


Cajas National Park:

Cotopaxi to Banos

After our night in the brothel in Machachi we cycled to Cotopaxi National Park, named after Volcan Cotopaxi, an active volcano sitting at 5897m. The route was along the Panamerican Highway – the main highway through South America. The Panamerican Highway was sadly smelly, hot, hilly, dirty and tiring! The majority of the traffic was buses and lorries. They must use some dirty fuel here, because all the exhausts were spewing out black fumes all over us. And it was Chris’s birthday...happy birthday!

Road up to Cotopaxi National Park

We took one of the first opportunities to get off the main road, and followed a small track up towards Cotopaxi National Park. It was so nice to be away from the traffic! We ended up camping for two nights in the national park in a nice spot with a great view of Cotopaxi. It looked beautiful in the evening, shrouded mysteriously by golden clouds. While in the national park we went for a few walks, and at 3500m we could definitely feel the effects of the altitude! This perhaps wasn’t helped by the food we were eating...as our decision to camp had been entirely made on the spot we weren’t very prepared and all our meals for two days consisted of some combination of rice, mango and nuts. Cold and congealed mango flavoured rice for breakfast...gourmet!

Helen with Cotopaxi in the distance

By the time we decided to leave Cotopaxi it was clear that Chris’s leg was causing him a few problems. He has had a recurring groin injury for about 4 months now. We had hoped that a few days off in Quito would help to reduce the problem, by the uphill day on the Panamerican made sure that this wouldn’t be the case. So we decided to cycle back to the Panamerican and get a bus to Banos, a small city a few hours south. But first we had to find our way back to the road...this proved to be very difficult! The guy who we had paid for camping told us that the route to the camp spot was circular, so we decided to leave the way we hadn’t come. This was a bit of a mistake, the road was a dirt track (as it had been on the way up, but the way down turned out to be much worse). For about thirty minutes we fought our way down the worsening track, which led us through ditches, across fields, to dead ends and passed dogs determined to chase us and yap at our heels as we peddled frantically past. Eventually we saw a hopeful looking road. Chris went ahead to investigate, and as I was struggling up one of the hills I saw him coming back towards me. He reported, not very calmly, that at the end of that road there was a 'big f*****g gate that was f*****g locked!' Armed with rocks and big sticks, we faced the dogs again to ask at a nearby farm how to get back to the main road. The friendly farmer told us we should simply lift our laden bikes over the 12 foot gate. So...back again past the dogs, weapons at the ready (unused thankfully) and to the gate, which now was miraculously open! Eventually the road did lead back to the Panamerican, where we managed to flag down a bus. The bad luck wasn’t over yet though...

View from our hike

On the bus journey of woe, Chris’s expensive camera was stolen. Luckily, only the night before we had uploaded photos to the laptop, so at least not many photos were lost. But after a birthday cycling along the Panamerican, two days of eating rice and mango, an injured leg and a frustrating morning of dead ends and furious dogs this news obviously didn’t go down well. We stopped at a restaurant and ate more rice while we contemplated our options and worked out which dirty scoundrel had been the thief. After an hour or so of this we decided to continue on to Banos.

Banos turned out to be a lovely little town, and restored our good spirits. The town is situated right at the bottom of a valley with huge hills all around it. Just above the town is the active volcano Tungurarhua (meaning ‘throat of fire’), it is an impressive sight. Banos is so named because of the natural therapeutic mineral baths there. We visited them a number of times, hoping they would help Chris’s leg to heal. Even if they didn’t, it was fun and refreshing to alternate between the hot, warm and freezing pools. We found a great food market in Banos – the central market, where lunch was always less than $4 for both of us. Guinea pigs were a local delicacy, and although we didn’t try any as they were quite expensive, we saw them being cooked whole on big stakes over fires. They actually smelled quite nice! After a few days in Banos we felt refreshed from our traumatic few days and ready to face the rest of Ecuador. Next stop...Cuenca.

Photos From Ecuador

Since arriving in Ecuador we haven't  done much cycling due to my stupid leg so after leaving Quito, we spent a day in Machachi walking around the market, then a few days near Volcan Cotopaxi before heading to Banos. The photos from these parts of our trip are now on the blog and also be viewed by following these links:

Quito:

Machachi:

Cotopaxi:


Enjoy!

Helen Arrives

I arrived safely in Quito after my 50 hour journey from Auckland to be met at the airport by Chris. I was relieved that my bike and luggage also made it, I had had 3 flights to catch and wasn’t that confident that they would arrive with me.

We stayed in Quito for 6 nights. The city is split into ‘old’ and ‘new’ areas; the new area is pretty touristy and more expensive, whereas the old area is much less touristy, cheaper and has plenty of beautiful old buildings, as well as steep, windy cobbled streets and plazas to explore. We spent most of our time wandering the streets, people watching and trying to learn Spanish. Very few people in South America speak English – even at Santiago airport I was surprised that people at the desks etc didn’t speak English. So, we are trying to teach ourselves the basics. We haven’t done too badly, and I usually feel quite confident after we’ve done some learning until I try to speak to someone and they reply too quickly for me to follow, and then all I can do is stare blankly and say ‘no entiendo’ and start to mime, while they try to explain in even faster Spanish. I think we will gain much more from the trip if we can converse with people, so we will keep learning and are planning on having some Spanish lessons somewhere along the way.

Despite our poor Spanish, the people in Quito were really friendly and always willing to help us out. I was surprised to see a lot of people (especially women) in traditional dress, it is a very colourful outfit consisting of long socks, a skirt and poncho, and completed with a small trilby hat with an extravagant peacock feather pinned to it. Often women had small children strapped to their backs with long strips of material – I only saw one pushchair while we were in Quito! There were very few beggars on the streets, which was another surprise for me. I had expected to see quite a lot. There were, however, plenty of shoe shiners. People who live in Quito must have the shiniest shoes in the world, on every street and in every plaza there were shoe shiners! People of all ages had their shoes shined; I think the youngest person I saw was a boy who looked about 2, and the oldest about 80! We were sitting in a plaza one day and were approached by two shoe shining boys. Although we were wearing flip flops, they offered to shine our shoes! They were very determined and even when we declined they got their polish and tried to shine the sides of our shoes. We eventually managed to send them away.

After an enjoyable time in Quito it was time to build our bikes, pack and leave. I was almost certain that I’d be unable to fit all my stuff into the two small panniers and one rucksack that I will be travelling with for the next few months (a challenge and a difficulty for any girl). Chris kindly said he’d take some of it for me, but between us we still seemed to have too much to carry! An amusing (in hindsight) few hours followed where we asked each other questions such as: “Do you think I’ll need this saw/ perfume/fishing rod/3 books/adjustable spanner/llama wool jacket?” The reply was usually “Do you think you’ll need it? Have you used it?” To which Chris usually responded “Well... I haven’t used it since Canada. But, you know, might come in handy somewhere.” We ended up being fairly ruthless and leaving the hostel staff with a nice pile of rejected items. The rest we managed to squash in or strap on somewhere.

It was time to leave! We decided to cycle from our hostel to the main bus station, and get a bus to our next destination - a town called Machachi, which is about 25 miles south of Quito. By doing this we hoped to avoid much of the traffic in and around Quito, and on the 4-lane highway out of the city. BUT...we still had to negotiate the busy streets of Quito. I felt quite apprehensive, mainly because I have no front panniers (bags) on my bike, so all the weight is at the back. Lifting it is almost impossible, and I had frightening images of myself doing wheelies while going up steep hills, and then falling over backwards while Chris cycled ahead obliviously. Luckily that wasn’t the case, and once I had got used to the crazy steering on my bike I was fine. We unknowingly picked a brilliant day to leave Quito (I wish I could say we planned it). Twice a month, all the streets in the city centre are closed to vehicles, and there is a cycling event. We picked one of these days! Even better – most cyclists were travelling the opposite way to us, so we had half to road almost to ourselves. There was a real mixture of people taking part in the cycling event, and some very unlikely characters too. The most memorable person was a guy who instead of having panniers on the back of his bike, had two huge speakers and a sound system! Very inventive I thought.

We managed to get a bus successfully, and paid only $1.50 for both of us and our bikes! We arrived in Machachi to find there was a huge food market going on, where we tried a lot of new food, most of it delicious. We also met a very giggly, chatty old couple (we didn’t understand anything they were saying) who we laughed with. After they had walked off the woman scampered back and stuffed $5 in Chris’s hand! He tried quite forcibly to give it back, but she was having none of it and just laughed as she trotted away. Everyone else was laughing too, and we felt quite bemused, but very grateful for her small and incomprehensible act of kindness.  After the visit to the market we headed back to our hotel which we realised as the night wore on was actually a brothel, but for $7 who's complaining!  The next morning we headed south towards Cotapaxi National Park.

More Mexico Photos

These are my photos from Baja, Mexico.  Click to see in Picasa.  I'll hopefully add some captions soon.  Enjoy!