Day 8: Chugchilan Day 3: With another good breakfast under our belts, we headed out to hike up to the cheese factory (Queseria in Spanish) by the longer but supposedly less strenuous route. After hiking for over 2 hours, all uphill, with a strong cold wind most of the time, we finally reached the cheese factory. It was a bit of a disappointment because it was a very small operation and the one dollar tour took about 5 minutes. It was interesting though, and the scenery along the way was pretty cool. We also missed the fork to the right we were supposed to take and walked for half an hour in the wrong direction, downhill of course, so we had to walk but uphill all the way to reach the fork. After the brief tour ... read more

Again, sorry for the delay. Almost up-to-date now. Day 6: Quilotoa to Chugchilan: Although we both slept well and warm, we started waking up at 5am and were impatient for coffee and breakfast at 7:30am. We went downstairs around 7am and then ate a very decent breakfast of hot coffee, a nice slice of fresh pineapple, a local fruit juice, homemade toast with butter and marmelade, and scrambled eggs. All very good and hearty. After breakfast, we loafed around the room (trying to stay warmish) until about 11am for checkout. We paid our bill then hiked down into the town for the view and a cup of coffee. We obtained both at the nice looking community center overlooking the crater. Feeling like we were mouching off the hospitality, after a while we went to look at ... read more

July 21: Latacunga from Mindo: We woke up at 5:30am to catch our 6:30 bus back to Quito. After arriving at Terminal La Ofelia, we tried to do what the bus folks had told us to do in order to get to the south terminal, Quitumbre. First, we took a taxi for $2.50 (although the bus folks had told us it should cost a dollar) to the north terminal, Carcelen. Arriving there, we did our best to find the bus to Quitumbre, but none of the ticket sellers would/could sell to us and kept giving us the roundaround, sending us from one window to another. Finally, we asked one of the guards and he said we just had to wait for that bus to show up, then the driver would tell us what window to go ... read more

18-19 July: Quito to Mindo, Day 1 & 2: Well, after our flight fiasco, we finally made the flights from Pensacola to Quito, arriving around 10pm. We had no problems along the way, except for a long delay in getting the in-flight movie to work. We did finally get to watch Hunger Games, which was great. Customs was a breeze, but we kept getting quotes of $5 from taxis to take us the 2 or 3 blocks to our hostel. We ended up walking a bit outside the airport and found a guy that took us for $2.50. The hostel was rather run down with very few amenities, but I chalk that up to being very new, so still in the process of rennovating. It was after 10pm when we got to the place, so there ... read more

Away We Go! Well, its time to start another vacation. My wife and I will be flying to Miami, then on to Quito, Ecuador. After travelling for 3 weeks around Ecuador, we will join a Hillcrest Baptist Church Mission Group in Quito for a week in the jungle of eastern Ecuador. I hope you can enjoy some of our trip by following us in this blog. I will try to post a daily entry with some photos, each and every day. I probably won't be able to post anything the week we are in the jungle, since I don't think we'll even have electricity, much less internet. Look forward to posts from Quito, Mindo, Latacunga, the Quilotoa Loop, Banos, Cuenca, and Otavalo. You can find them all on any decent map of Ecuador. See you soon, ... read more