Blogs from Chugchilan, Centre, Ecuador, South America

August 12th Another drive day (7 hours) but the views were gorgeous. We were going up into the highlands so there were gorgeous hills and farmland everywhere. Lunch was in a small village where we set up a picnic table and made sandwiches that my cook group had bought the ingredients for. My favorite part of today was when four little boys who had been watching us joined in a game of futbol with us. It was actually more just kicking the ball back and forth but they were adorable and loved showing off for all of us gringos. A 20 minute drive past that town and we reached the Quilotoa Volcano (now a crater with a lake inside). Rumor is that the lake is somehow connected to the ocean since the water is salt water ... read more

I arrived back in Ecuador at the tail end of June and hit the ground running! Within hours of when my flight landed, I took over the wheel of my pick-up (thanks, Roger for taking care of Morci and for buying him new shoes, and meeting me at the airport) and was making the rounds to pick up donations for next fundraising Garage Sale to benefit the Volunteer Library in Baños. Muchas gracias to Maggie for using her garage to collect quality stuff from the Colegio Americano´s departing teachers. Also gracias to Jean for helping Carl (finally) clear out some his parents´and grandparents´ things. My green canvas tarp suitably humped up over the truckbed, I departed for Banos with Julien in tow. Julien is a young French-Canadian guy I met at the guest house where I ... read more

The next town in the loop was Chugchilan, a town only slightly larger than Quilitoa. There’s really nothing there except a small town square, 3 hostels, and an enormous amount of natural beauty, which is why anyone bothers to visit it at all. The hostels here are much more expensive than anywhere else because they can be. There’s no competition. One, the most famous of the three called The Black Sheep Inn, actually charges $35 per night per person for a DORM ROOM that doesn’t even have a bathroom in it. You have to walk outside and go into a different building with the bathroom. Yeah sure, it includes all your meals, but that’s about it. The sauna, the hot tub, the yoga classes… all that hoopla costs extra. So, we ended up at the Hostel ... read more

We left Quito after only one day when we checked out the Mitad del Mundo (the middle of the world monument that marks where the equator crosses through Ecuador), wash some laundry and catch up on some internet time. We were heading to the Black Sheep Inn, an ecolodge that we had read about that had great reviews with regards to its sustainable living, recycling and permaculture setup. The lodge is located in a more remote area of Ecuador, near a village called Chugchilan, which is nestled within the Andean Ranges. We were picked up at our hotel by the flying Dutchman - a Dutch expat, who thought that he was a professional rally driver - who owns a 4WD and runs a taxi service to the ecolodge when required, at a cost of US$100. We ... read more

Ecuador is SO beautiful. I really can’t even describe it - it’s simply breathtaking. For my last part of vacation before school starts up again, I went to a place about 6 hours away to basically hike in the middle of nowhere. We left early Friday morning to take a 2 hour bus in order to take a 4 hour bus. We caught our buses no problem, walked 2 minutes through this tiny town, put our stuff down in our hostel, and then set off down the road not knowing exactly where we were going. We were about 12,000 feet above sea level in a very mountainous area, and we are also far away from everything. It is surrounded by TONS of farms, with all the crops and animal pens slanted on the sides of the ... read more

WOW. It seems to me when you stay in a place long enough to absorb some of its rhythm, the people then become the adventure. As many of you know, I will graduate from college this upcoming May (GULP) and in order to delay finally becoming a big kid a little bit longer, I am looking for ways to get paid to have further adventures in South America, focusing on women's health and medical anthropology. One of the ways I could do this is through a Fulbright scholarship and so I have spent the past week tracking down some folks to get some more information. Holy cow. This process has taken me to: -a conference on Ecuadorian maternal health care at a very swank hotel (which, I might add, I was invited to at the last ... read more

So the trip is almost over, and unfortunately, I have been out of touch for the last 8 days or so, so instead of trying to put it all into one blog, I am going to break down where I left off last time up until Chugchilan, which was 4 days ago, and then I will do a different entry for Cotopaxi. I feel like so much has happened since the last time I blogged from Cuenca, so I will try my best to put the good details in here, and then in the next entry I´ll give a full detail of the climb. So we left Cuenca last Monday and flew back into Quito for one night to chill before a long bus day. The flight was quick and easy, offering incredible views of Volcan ... read more