Okay so i just want to make this clear, the reason that Ryan and I have been on the internet so much lately is cuz we have free WIFI in our room and there is only 4 channels on the tv in english. I know listen to me complaining. Well today was an interesting day we finally made it to the immigration office today side note: yesterday we went to the canadian embassy registered there and got a few names of legitimate real estate agents, then we went to the ecuadorian immigration office and waited for 2 hrs only to find [View Full Entry]

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Quito is a city of 2 million people. Admittedly, it is in a developing country. However, typically you don't realize it and there is plenty of whatever one might need. The fruit shelves are abundant with the most incredible exotic fruit you may ever have dreamt about. The supermarkets have literally everything you can buy back home. And there is beautiful artesania, medicinal plants, stolen cameras, heaps of cheap pirate copies of whatever CD or DVD you might dream about and loads of other things. But then, every once in a while the whole city all of a sudden runs out [View Full Entry]

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Hola Well as you may or may not know, Ryan and I made it here safely as well as our luggage. Which we really werent expecting, so that was a pleasant surprise. We are staying at a really nice hostal a bit out of the way of the main plazas but it just forces us to get out and walk. Today we walked around and just tried to get back into the groove. I have a bit of elevation sickness so we had to take it easy. Which is okay because we are both still a bit tired from the 24 [View Full Entry]

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It is amazing how one can take for granted simple luxuries in life. Like for instance when you have an address for a government building you assume that that is where it is. Not so in latin america. We got up early today in order to go to the canadian consulate as well as the ecuadorian department of immigration to register our visa so that we could leave quito and start looking for land. When we got to the what we thought would be the right place all that we could see was a piece of paper that said the canadian [View Full Entry]

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As Edith preferred to relax more in Papallacta and could not be pursuaded to another hike, I went to the Guacamayos trek by myself. It starts about 7 km south of Cosanga. Just about 2 hours from Papallacta, the landscape here is completey different: lush tropical forest versus the harsh paramo of the day before. Well, as different as it was, it was just as beautiful. And quite as remote. I saw a number of plants I had not seen in any other place before. [View Full Entry]

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I had persuaded Edith, a local friend, to come along on this trek. Obviously Edith did not know that the four hours (which I had been told by various guides) would turn into eight hours. Well, it wasn't really my fault. First, one had to add one hour to get up from the Virgen to the Antennas, and then we got lost twice because of the unclear signposting and the fog. And we were probably slower than average due to all the mud. So it was Edith's first (and last?) eight hour hike. Anyway, it surely was an adventure and we [View Full Entry]

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We have absolutely arrived. Flying is so surreal. One minute you´re sweating in Miami Beach´s neon colored humidity and the next you´re flying over the panama canal. It was almost anticlimatic how easy getting to our hostel was from the airport. Upon exiting the plane we encountered what can only we described as a booming, cacophonous, banging of drums and bass as we descended the escalator. Not only was it impossible to ignore but the noise was coming from somewhere on the other side of the wall. The phantom band went on to hilariously serenade us through an hour long immigration [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone! I´ve got about 2 weeks of recapping to do, so this might not be as detailed as I want it to be. So the night before we left for the lake, we met up with the rest of our tour group for the first time and had dinner and introductions and such. All together, including Klver (the guide) we were a group of 12, and it turned out to be a superb bunc of people. First there was Hilary and Steve- Hilary was sort of like my second mommy to me while we were on the trail and supplied [View Full Entry]

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My first attempt to traverse from Guagua to Rucu Pichincha a few months ago had been interupted by a thunderstorm which made it too dangerous to climb over the one steep rocky part in the traverse which was then covered with hail and very wet and slippery. This time, though, it was easy and I did the whole traverse from peak to peak within 3.5 hours. My landlord Patricio had kindly driven me up to the refuge, together with a Japanese friend of his and the three of us went up the crater of Guagua. Unfortunately while in the early morning [View Full Entry]

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Der zweite Tag unserer Reise fuehrte uns gestern zur Mitad del Mundo - dem Mittelpunkt der Welt. Naja, zumindest lautet so der Name der Touristenattraktion im Norden Quitos. Hier verlaeuft der Aequator, zu dessen Ehren die Spanier und Franzosen ein Denkmal errichteten. Es macht schon Spass, zwischen beiden Erdhalbkugeln hin und her zu huepfen und dabei die stechende Aequatorsonne zu geniessen. Ein sehr interessantes Experiment haben wir im angrenzenden Museo de sitio intinan gemacht. In einem Becken, voll mit Wasser, wurde der Stoepsel gezogen. Direkt auf der Aequatorlinie floss das Wasser senkrecht ab, 3 Meter weiter auf der Suedhalbkugel bildete sich [View Full Entry]

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