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Published: February 6th 2008
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Hey! So we finally made it to Quito! We took two 12 hour bus ride to get here from Lima. The border between Ecuador and Peru is CRAZY! The out for peru and the in for Ecuador are 8km apart! So we took a taxi. That ripped us off. They charged us $50 for the ride to both immigration offices and for the bus ticket. The ticket turned out only costing $10... so they made $40bucks. boo. This left us without cash so we couldnt buy food on the road for 12 hours!!! Luckily we brought fruit. The ride was beautiful! Tons of moutains covered in cloud forests and lots of little towns. OH! And TONS of banana farms! We saw the Dole farm... for 10 miles. Also lots of rice. Overall it was a good drive.
So here we are and lemme tell ya its so nice to not live out of a bag! Our apartment is great, it has a pretty nice kitchen, hot water, and an INCREDIBLE view. (hopefully I can steal Zachs memory card and post some pics soon). Its also well located and near a park. The only downfall is we have to walk
up TWO enormous hills to get to from the center. The other people that live in the building seem really nice too. Ecuador is a very cool place so far. They use US money (I saw US money for the first time in months) but that means things are a bit more pricey and I feel like i'm spending real money instead of the play money in Peru and Bolivia. The first thing we did arriving in Quito was hit up the SuperMaxi... a HUGE grocery store. I was in heavan... Ive also learned that I have a strange love of grocery stores... HEB will always be the best. We stocked up on yummy food and have been happy every since. hehe.
So we went on a little 3 day adventure to Banos, a small town about 3 hours from Quito. Its famous for 2 things: hot springs and a huge, very active, volcano and we saw niether. haha. We went because we heard the town was where a lot of Ecuadorians went for Carnaval. It was awesome! Immediatly apon arrival we were shot with "carioca". A multi-colored foamy soapy silly string like stuff in a can. It gets
you pretty wet and covered in colors but it washes out! Zach probably bought 10 cans in the 2 days we were there along with water balloons. The coolest part was that no one cared! You could spray people driving in cars, little kids, adults, and they would most likely spray you back or laugh. At night it was WAR. Hundreds of people battleling with foam! We befriended a group of little kids who Zach bought a can for and we had a good time playing with them. We even developed archrivals... a group of 5 16 year old girls who attacked us multiple times. The got Zachso good at one point that he was laying on the gorund. I lifted up his shirt to spray him and one of the little kids gave him a RASPBERRY! It was great. Zach looks down to see a 4-year-old buzzing his lips on his stomach. The look was priceless! When it got late the crazy teenage boys started throwing flour and eggs... which wasnt nearly as cool as the foam. On the second night we were watching a live band and a group of boys standing next to us wanted to fight
so we sprayed em good but they got us bad! The sprayed us and then floured us! Being wet and floured doesnt mix... for the record. We were both crazy crusty. The whole thing was just a trip and tons of fun!
Well we tried to see the volcano... We paid $5 for a "tour" to the top. We hopped on a bus like vehicle at 9pm that was over booked so Zach, being the nice guy he is, had us give up our seats to old people. We rode on the back of the vehicle clinging on to bars and being held in my 20 other people. We were also a very easy target for water balloons, buckets of water, and of course more foam! (It really wasnt bad). We got to the top and saw an AMAZING viwe of the tiny town of banos and were lucky enough that it was Carnaval so we got to see fireworks from above. We saw some guys juggle fire but NO volcanic erruptions. We got back yesterday and the irony is that this morning we saw on the news that Banos is on evacuation alert because the volcano is
Me...
After 24 hours on a FREEZING cold bus and sitting at the bus station for 5 hours... Attractive I know goin nuts and might have a huge erruption. I guess we got the calm before the storm...
I ran this morning for the first time since being here. Running at 3000 meters (9000 feet or nearly 2 miles) is really hard. If I can take it here Valparaiso will be easy peasy. So far Ecuador is pretty sweet.
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