Realtime

Hello hello, we´re back in Quito once again after our little trip to Mindo. Mindo was beautiful and very relaxing. It rained everyday (hence being in the rainforest) but we made the best of it. We went Birdwatching on our last day with a local guide named Sandra. She spoke English and picked us up at 5 am to begin our tour with hopes to catch a glimpse of the cock on the rock. The cock on the rock is a local bright red bird that does a mating dance every single morning. We got a glimpse of him around 6am after hiking up a mountainside...pretty cool. We have some great pics from Mindo that we will post. Sandra brought her scope so we were able to get some cool pictures of the birds. Greg got ... read more

so the other morning, a week or so ago, i woke up and wanted to brush my teeth but there was no pure water anywhere to be found.......so i used beer =) hahaha it was delicious, brilliant vicki we made it to mindo yesterday and this is a tropical cloud forest birdwatcher paradise. yesterday we walked into a little garden where there were hummingbird feeders and sat down for a few minutes....no lie, there were at least 50 hummingbirds all different colors shapes and sizes....it was amazing! we´re going to head back to Quito tomorrow and then into the Amazon on the 30th. check out the new pictures we put up yesterday. have a great day!... read more

Hello! So we haven´t really had a lot of time or the means to write a whole lot lately so I will try to fill you in on the latest. We are now in Canoa but got here by travelling up the coast after Vilcabamba. We had a hard time deciding what to do about Machu Picchu. It was much more expensive and time consuming than we had imagined. We had a long debate at a mexican restaurant in Vilcabamba (you all know we really wanted to make it to Machu Picchu) so we decided to flip a coin because the decision just was not coming to us easily (one of the downfalls of a loose itinerary...one move decides the whole rest of the trip, if we went to Peru that would mean only 4 days ... read more

Just wanted to drop a line and say that we´re alive and well and on the coast of Ecuador. Very few internet cafes around here...in a restaurant right now using theres. Everything has been smooth and we´ve been through Vilcabamba, Montañita, Oloñ, and now we´re up in Puerto Lopez. Tomorrow going to Los Frailes Beach in their National Park and then to Canoa... Realtime... read more

Hello our friends and family. We left baños on monday night and spent two nights in a ciudad se llama Cuenca. We found a beautiful hotel that was over 300+ years old (greg was a bit mistaken) en Cuenca there was an iglesia (church) on every corner each one seemed more beautiful than the next in its own way. We went to 3 iglesias in Cuenca which the last one we visited was one of the oldest (if not the oldest in the entire city). Within the church there were 4 different chapels. we took one picture before being told that picture taking was a ¨no no¨ so we will try to post those when we have the chance. I think the computer i am typing on may be as old as the churches...anyway, we left ... read more

Yesterday we got to Cuenca after an 8 hour bus ride, and got settled into a sweet 100+ year old hotel room with a balcony overlooking this square and the cathedral of the immaculate concepcion....we went inside it just a few minutes ago and it was absolutely gorgeous....huge!! reminds me of st peters basilica in rome...easy to tell that faith is of great importance to people here, and all throughout ecuador for that matter. the architecture here is something else, up and down every street old colonial buildings with these verandas and parks all over. we´ll take lots of pictures. the plan is to head south to vilcabamba tomorrow which is a small town (after our time in baños we both want to be out of the city and in the country). vilcabamba is the city ... read more

Wow, where to start...with each day this adventure gets better and better. First of all, it´s Saturday (we actually both thought it was Friday) so we skipped a few days inbetween with the blogs (hard to keep track of realtime). Beginning with Thursday...cuatro y cuatros...in other words we took a double seater 4 wheeler on a cruise to check out the scenic waterfalls along the ruta de cascadas. It was pretty amazing. We must have seen 7 or 8 different waterfalls and took our time cruzing along. Greg did an excellent job driving Big Rojo (yes, nice big red 4 wheeler couldn´t be called anything else...) while I took the back seat and snapped pics all along the way. Words can´t even describe the views or the feeling of the fresh mountain air and the wind ... read more

Wow what a day. So this morning we were deciding what to do...because in baños here there is so many options, and we opted for an uphill hike because with the idea of walking the inca trail it would probably be a good idea to prepare for it. so we talked to this really cool little restaurant owner hermano and he pointed us in the direction of a map and a trail. it was a pretty steep incline and we had a few cuba libres (rum - coke - lime) last night plus a cuban cigar so we were fatigued. On top of one of the smaller hills there was a lookout point and a big crucifix so we got to the top of that, and it was going to be the extent of our hike, ... read more