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Published: October 28th 2008
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27 October - I spent the day with three Norwegians running around the Mariscal, the New Town, of Quito. We’re all leaving for the Galapagos this week and had odds and ends to pick up - waterproof disposable cameras, toothpaste, contact lens solution, etc. And we had to make a big trip to the post office for Ragnhild to mail a package home. That may have been the most interesting part of the day, since the post office here is very different than home. For one, they don’t have boxes. That meant we went on a hunt for one in the building and got one at a copy store downstairs from the post office. The whole office is basically one desk with one lady behind it and a couple walls full of P.O. boxes. Very strange. And then it basically POURED when we got done with our errands. So we took a taxi about 4 blocks to get to a plaza to meet yet another Norwegian for late lunch.
26 October - After being able to sleep in, Ragnhild and I pulled ourselves out of bed just in time to get to the hostal around the corner for an all-you-can-eat
breakfast to get the day started right. Then headed with Sarah to Teleferico in Quito. On the volcano Pichincha, that the province is named after, there’s a fairly new amusement park and giant restaurant complex (which is probably buzzing during the dry season) and, most important of all, a cable car! After walking up a few escalators, we waited in line for over an hour before getting to go up the volcano to an altitude of 4100 m. And of course, right when we got to the top, it was raining. Had a brief rest inside and waited for the rain to stop before wandering around and taking lots of pictures. But that was limited too, since it wasn’t long before we were in the middle of a cloud and absolutely freezing. Spent the evening with the internet (the most time I’ve had online since I’ve been here!) and a couple special chat buddies.
25 October - The day started far too early with a 6 o’clock alarm and an uncoordinated scramble to get ourselves out the door by 6:45. Sarah, Ragnhild and I hopped on a bus at the main terminal headed to Otavalo, a town north of
Quito, and north of the Equator. On Saturdays, Otavalo hosts the largest market in Ecuador and most of the vendors are indigenous people. Indigenous people who average a height of five feet. Maybe. Standing in the line for the bathroom, none of the locals reached the height of my armpits. The men are taller and wear a long braid. The market is incredibly colorful, with scarves, bags, everything you can think of to knit from alpaca yarn, jewelry, bowls, wooden trinkets, spices, food stalls, live chickens with their heads poking out of bags, and panama hats. Bargaining is a must. We learned pretty quick to name our price and stick to it, or to at least budge less than the vendors. We had a quick lunch of potatoes, rice and beet salad at a food stall, and kept shopping until after 3:00. And then prepared ourselves for the 3-hour bus ride back, which turned out to be 2 hours. That means Otavalo is 2 ½ hours from Quito?
24 October - My last day at Santa Martha! I spent the morning in the bottom lions enclosure, cleaning up poop and chicken bits and cutting grass. Once we finished that task, Ragnhild and I got to work on building steps for one of the paths with Sampson, Heather and Amanda. The steps were rotting and after we chucked logs down them to build a bridge over a stream at the bottom of the path, they were in terrible shape. The hard work had been done by the time we got there and we only had to fit logs to the steps, watch Sampson use the sledgehammer to knock stakes in and then push soil in around the new steps. Then packed everything up and took a few last snapshots before watching “Pretty Woman” in the top house. Took the taxi with Johnny, his son and Patricia the veterinarian to Quito. Four gringos and all of their stuff don’t fit very well into the back of a taxi pick-up with an extended cab. I was a bit stiff and my feet were asleep by the time we got to Quito. Ragnhild and I took a cab to our hostal on the Plaza San Blas in the Old Town and ate a bit of Chinese food at a restaurant around the corner (including wontons without the cream cheese…)
18 October - COTOPAXI! After finishing the 2-hour Saturday morning shift at Santa Martha, six of us volunteers headed down to Tambillo with the taxi and caught a bus towards Latacunga. We paid the gringo price and after 40 minutes the bus stopped on the Panamericana, the biggest highway in Ecuador, and the driver told us we were there. So we trusted him and got of the bus. After Frogger-ing across the highway, we were at a little information outpost/taxi stand. We bargained with a nice little Ecuadorian man and he agreed to drive us up into the park and back to Machachi for $10 each. And we had to backtrack to Machachi and go in the north entrance to the national park because rain made the main entrance impassable. It took about an hour to get to the entrance to the park. And, since it is the rainy season, we got our fair dose of rain and hail and crammed 7 people into the 5 seats in the cab of the pick-up. At the entrance we realized it would be one hellishly cold trip and there just happened to be a lady selling hats and gloves, which we all bought. Except Richard. He´s too cool for alpaca hats with ear flaps. Another hour brought us through Andean grasslands and fields dotted with rocks dropped by Cotopaxi, Ecuador´s 2nd highest active volcano, in the 19th century. We passed llamas and horses and gained about 1500 m of altitude, enough to give me a headache and to put us right in the middle of some gorgeous snow. At the parking lot (4500 m), we got out for a walk around and posed for some triumphant pictures. It was cloudy, so you can´t really even tell we´re at 4500. It looks like we could be anywhere foggy and cold. But once it cleared a little, we had some spectacular views. The rain stopped for the drive down to the entrance and we could ride in the back of the truck and take some photos of the scenery we couldn´t see out of the fogged up windows on the way up. Most of my photos are a bit crooked since it´s hard to focus on something and get good light while bumping along a dirt road. And we saw an orange faced eagle. At least that´s what I would call it. I know enough about birds to just name them after some colored bit of the body…Our taxi driver dropped us off on the side of the road in Machachi and we caught the bus back to Tambillo to curl up with hot cocoa (my drink of choice at Sta. Martha).
I’ll post photos online soon and put the link here (if I figure out how). Wednesday I’m off to the Galapagos for 5 days and will write more when I’m en route to New Zealand next week!
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