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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Hey everyone, So it has been a while since I have posted a blog. Sorry about that I have been pretty busy. Let´s see. Clay and I took a week off work and took a trip to the mountains with two of the other volunteers. We took a night bus out of Bahia to the biggest city in Ecuador, Guayaquil. From there we headed to the mountains. We stopped in a town called Guaranda and had lunch. Already things were completely different. I stepped off of the bus to really cold weather. I had to borrow a sweatshirt because my long [View Full Entry]

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Rastas limpias. I did my hair. Dayne, Veronica and I went to Parque Seminario (Iguana Park) today during break to see the iguanas that hang out there all day. There are tons and I petted a big one. I saw my first Ecuadorian squirrel too! It has a black head and striped tail and no fear, as people were feeding him nuts and he just chilled to eat them. Some old man talked to us and thought we were ecuatorianas! QUITO & BAÑOS!!! Veronica and I have a plan for the rest of my time here. All the details are still [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Cuenca, back in the mountains again, this time further south, and quickly walked round the standard sights. There were 2 cathedrals, an old and a new, the latter being so much more impressive, with big blue domes and decorative facades. Heading down to the river we past what turned out to be the flower market, which was really just a couple of flower stalls. The river was pretty with gorgeous views of the surrounding mountains. We were headed for a group of small inca ruins, but they were so small we managed to walk straight past them! It [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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Sorry NJ, I am moving to Baños. There is so much to say about this past weekend! I have to be sort of brief because I need to go to lunch and then do a ton of homework and projects, but it was definitely my favorite place in all of Ecuador. I was told Guayaquil is the armpit of the country and after this I will agree, even though I love my city. Baños is very tourist oriented, not just to gringos, but also people from the rest of Ecuador. The city is beautiful and peaceful but bustling with interesting people. [View Full Entry]

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hopefully there will be some photos to go with this! went to mitad del mundo! the center of the world, was cool very interactive. there were lots of experiments to do such as watching water go straight down the plug hole! balancing an egg on a nail( much easier on the equator apparently)! watching men lose all their strenght when standing on the equator line as opposed to a meter either side of it. that was wierd you lose muscle resistance and weigh about 3 kilos less on the equator than anywhere else! there was lots of native stuff there too [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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What a weekend! First off, as I was told, Montañita is definitely livelier on the weekends. Starting Friday night, a bunch of street vendors set up small shops along one of the main roads to sell one thing: alcohol. Basically, it’s a row of 10 or so stands selling all kinds of drinks throughout the weekend. And this is in addition to the existing bars, restaurants, and stores which all sell alcohol throughout the week. Drinking is such a common thing here that I think people are less inclined to “drink” and more inclined to “sip”. Meaning that since you can [View Full Entry]

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Hi all! Gemma here for once! I thought I should make an appearance every once in a while (well actually Kay refused to write it so I had no choice). So after the devils nose train ride, we left the bizarre world of Alausi and headed for the coast. The landscape here is totally different from the mountains and the jungle, completely flat and about 15 degrees hotter. We spent a day and a half here and pretty much saw all there was to see. Guayaquil is the biggest city in Ecuador (and remember how big we thought Quito was), but [View Full Entry]

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