Ecuador: Quito-Baños-Misahualli-Cuenca

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What a week! After six months enjoying warm weather, my arrival into Quito was a shock. It was so bloody cold! The altitude wasn´t too bad, I had more trouble trying to get warm.

I met my tour group the day after I arrived in Quito. The tour group is made up of Aussies, Kiwis, Canadians and some Latinos from California. One of the Aussies is another dyke from Sydney, I don´t know her but we share mutual friends back home. After travelling for six months and bumping into only a handful of queers, being around another Sydney dyke is wonderful.

Our first stop was a town called Baños. It´s apparently a thrill seekers paradise where you can do all types of adrenalin sports. I thought I´d try tandem paragliding. It was great fun flying over the mountains of Baños but instead of landing elegantly on the hill like everyone else, we crash landed in somebody´s crops a short diving distance from the landing spot.

Our next stop was Misahualli, the mouth of the Amazon River. The others took the optional two day tour into the jungle while I stayed back at the hotel. I´m doing the jungle in Brazil for a month so I´m saving my money for other optional tours. The others didn´t see much wildlife but that´s because it was in my hotel room. I found a tarantula on the wall next to my bed. Not happy!!! Then when I went to breakfast, a monkey came into the restaurant and took my pancake right off my plate. Another monkey took my bottle of water. All in a day´s sightseeing in Misahualli apparently.

Our last stop before leaving Ecuador was a colonial town called Cuenca. I´ve seen lots of colonial towns throughout Latin America and this one was right up there.

Next: Peru!

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