Blogs from Centre, Ecuador, South America - page 99

On Sunday, November 13 I got up early and caught a bus out of Chugchilan headed for Latacunga. I was comfortable for about five minutes. Then a mother and her horrendously carsick child demanded the seat next to me. I endured four hours of vomiting and screaming. After the Dominican Republic, its nothing new, but still as annoying as ever. In Latacunga I changed buses and headed for Baños, a small tourist town famous for its hot springs. It sits on a massive volcano. In fact, four years ago the Ecuadorian government evacuated the entire town because volcanologists (is that really a profession? I should check that out before I go back to school) said it was about to blow. It never did, but you can see what chaos it would have caused by checking out ... read more

Hi everyone About 2 weeks ago, i went to Riobamba with the rest of the school to go on the devils nose train ride. Riobamba was pretty quiet and hasnt much to do with the best place in town for food doubling as the best nightclub. However did find an ecuadorian rock bar? Apparently ecuadorion rock consists of a crooner belting out cheesy love songs. We found that the train was not running from riobamba and that we would have to pick up the train from Alausi. Bit gutting as the best bit of the journey is between riobamba and alausi. Anyway after getting up ridiculously early to catch the bus for the train we arrived in alausi at about 9a.m. For the journey along the devils nose everyone sits up on the roof of the ... read more

So, we finally arrived safe and sound in Quito. Met the peeps who will be our truck mates for the next 8 weeks. A really nice bunch, pretty much all of them are on career breaks and 5 of 15 are accountants. What a percentage! So a lot of green, yuppie style travellers let loose on South America! Went to the equator on the first day, this was one of the things I (Becky) really wanted to visit, for some reason get excited about the fact that you can balance an egg on the head of a pin there (as the gravitational force is exactly equal on the equator and so pulls the egg down). After a bonkers bus ride where each bus we got on terminated about 3 stops on, and we had to find ... read more

Sadly, we only had one night available to spend in Banos. Once again, I wish I had more time to explore and visit a location, but it was nice to visit nonetheless. The way people described it previously, I had expected a town dominated by hotsprings, etc., but I was pleasantly surprised by the number of parks and natural areas around the town. Too bad we didn´t have time to explore them more, but we did see plenty of other tourists preparing for, or heading out on some wilderness adventure tours. With our limited time, instead we took in some of the local comforts: a 1 hour full body massage, followed by the spa in the hotel. One of those things that felt a little ridiculously indulgent at first, but was definitely relaxing. Mike had an ... read more

Yo! It´s Tuesday night and we´re back at the archaeology sites for the last week...this past weekend was full of adventure. Saturday we all took a quick trip to the town of Sicalpa (home of the arch sites and also the hole Sarah fell into) to visit one of our worker friends for lunch. He had promised to have us over in order to show us how to make Aji (a-hee....a hot salsa) and the peanut sauce which they put over potatoes. The Aji was made by pounding or grinding chilies and tree tomatoes together in a mortar (man, we really have to get one of those things when we come home - "No Nick, we CAN´T bring one home from Ecuador"), and subsequently adding water onions and cilantro to taste. For us Aji is the ... read more