This past weekend we traveled an hour outside of Quito to the avenue of volcanoes. We were literally dropped off on the side of the freeway and following the directions we were given by the travel agency, we walked about a half mile up a dirt road, in the middle of no where and we found our hostel Papa Gayo. It is this really cute red farm house getaway, with stables, farm animals, including lamas, sheep, ducks, pigs and horses. There is also pastures where they grow food for the animals and the people staying at the hostel. They have a [View Full Entry]

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Bunny, Rachel´s mom got here this week so for the weekend we took a trip south to the small adventure town of Baños. The town is known for its hot springs and adventure activities. It took about four hours to get there and we didn´t arrive until after it was dark so the first night we pretty much just checked into our hotel and went out for dinner at a cute local restaurant and then explored the town a bit. While we were walking a dog started humping Bun Bun´s leg and wouldn´t leave her alone, and some of the locals [View Full Entry]

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We just finished working a full week at the Guadaria (children´s day care center) and it has been a very interesting and exhausting experience so far. Every day we have to take a bus 30 minutes to a very poor area of Quito where we then walk 10 minutes up a huge hill to the small day care center. There are about 35 kids there, ages ranging from 2 to 9, and all of them are put together in one group. We arrive right after they finish their breakfast, usually bread or a hot milky drink. The families pay about $7 [View Full Entry]

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This weekend we made another excursion outside of Quito to the mountainous region of Quilitoa. There are a number of small towns that make up the ¨Quilitoa Loop¨and we were able to visit three of them in two days. Friday morning we took a 2 hour bus to the town of Latacunga where we walked to another bus station, wanting to go to Quilitoa, and they immediately threw us on a bus that was completely full. There were at least 10 people standing in the aisle and we had to stand for an hour and a half in the aisle until [View Full Entry]

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We just got back from our first weekend trip to the cloud forest at Mindo. We left very early on Saturday morning and on the bus we met a group of American girls who are volunteering in hospitals in Quito and they were traveling to Mindo for the weekend as well so we joined them for most of the weekend. Mindo is a small little town that is in the middle of the last cloud in Ecuador. There are tons of things to do there and we couldn´t do it all in just two days. It only took two hours to [View Full Entry]

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After an 11 hour drive back from the coast we got to our appartment at 7am to find that there were people sleeping in our beds so we had to sleep on the floor for four hours while we waited for them to leave. After getting enough rest I went for a run in the park that is close by our appartment which I have been doing every day. The park is great, it has a running\biking path around the whole thing and there is a skate board and bmx biking area, and tons of soccer fields and even a little [View Full Entry]

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After leaving Montanita we took a bus an hour north up the coast to the port town of Puerto Lopez. Supposedly its is called the “Acapulco” of Ecuador but even though I have never been to Acapulco, I don’t think they are at all similar. The town was dirty and noisy and busy with traffic. We walked down toward the beach to find a hostel right across the street from the beach. The town was not very nice and the hostels were more expensive for not getting very much. The beach was pretty and big but very dirty and always smells [View Full Entry]

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From Canoa we took a 6 hour bus ride down the coast, having to change buses a couple times, but everything worked out perfectly with timing again! We got to Mantanita, another small coastal surfer town that is known of its parties and none stop night life. Many people from the big coastal port city of Guayaquil go here for a weekend vacation/party. We got to Mantanita late and walked around the cute town for a bit. There were tons of cool surfer shops and nicer restaurants and lots of locals selling jewelry and crafts. Overall this was the nicest, more [View Full Entry]

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So for the past two weeks we have been traveling on the coast. We woke up on Sunday morning and after checking out of hostel we went to the bus station to buy tickets and we were so lucky cause the bus was leaving in 20 minutes- (we have had amazing timing like this our whole trip, when we don’t know the schedules of anything and we end up making buses just at the perfect time- good travel karma I think  Anyway, it was about 8 hours through some pretty scary terrain. For a lot of the time we were [View Full Entry]

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We joined the group from the UK again and we rented a van that drove us three hours to the small mountain town of Otavalo where we spent the whole day shopping at the famous market there. The market was huge! I couldn’t believe how big it was! It run up two street for about 8 city blocks, jam packed with little shops selling everything from jewelry, textiles, hammocks, tshirts paintings, sweaters and blankets made out of alpaca and traditional Ecuadorian crafts. We were there for about 6 hours and I feel like I still didn’t see it all. At one [View Full Entry]

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