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Published: December 5th 2006
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Hello Guys ...so much has changed in the last few days!!! A couple of days ago we crossed the equator, which is represented by a giant globe a couple of miles outside of Quito, it kind of represented the two sides of our trip...the first half being pretty damn busy and ending in the finale of Quito- Ecuador´s capital, which heaves with the weight of 2 and a half million people, and now we are staying two and a half hours west of Quito in a beautiful valley, encased in Cloud forest, wild orchids, the constant buzz of hummingbirds and really lovely chilled people.
Quito was great though, it was celebrating its foundation, so there were lots of free events and free concerts, and everyday lots of ´chivas´- colourful buses with a band on the top and many people dancing on the lower open decks of the bus, tromping through the city. New Quito or Mariscal is kind of geared towards the ´gringos´but still pretty interesting with parks and indigenous markets...we stayed in the old town, which has great colonial buildings, fantastic squares and thousands of churches. We stayed in the old town in a hostel called the secret garden,
so named for its fifth floor roof garden, with amazing views over the old city, towards the volcanoes that circum-navigate Quito ( they could go off you know!)
The trip to Mindo kind of balanced off some of the slash and burn farming, as its all pretty untouched, just deep wooded valleys filled with tropical trees and exuding a kinf of lush green freshness which we haven´t experienced yet, haven´t spent most of our time on the tropical coast - its great just to see green everywhere. The low grwoing trees are interspursed with great bamboo forests, which make you fantasise about flying through scenes of Crouching Tiger...
Yesterday we got whizzed up through the mountainside ...with a crazy driver whom i´m sure had been payed a lot of money to kill of the senior citizens whom were crouched in the outside bit of the truck! At the top much to my great delight we have to sit in a homemade type of box and be swung across a huge ravine, a third of a mile up in the sky, whilst we had a piece of wood to sit upon the lady operating the ´cable car thingy´just hang
onto the back. On reaching the other side we trekked through the tropical forest to reach an amazing waterfall, along the way there had been quite a few landslides, so we just had to hang onto root systems and not look down at the ravine below- anyway it was worth it!
Today has been more chilled and we walked up the valley with our adopted dog - buster 3 for a few hours to reach a butterfly farm...and spent the morning watching butterflies being born...pretty amazing. Especially the owl butterfly...about the size of your hand , one corner looking like the face of a snake and the middle of the wing looking like the face of an owl...my camera has given up the ghost for the past few weeks , which has been really frustrating, but fortunately decided to work today...so we have some great photos of owl butterflies eating of petes fingers.
For anyone that doesn´t know Ecuador does great juice...it comes in every size, shape and flavour - the Maracuyo family is amazing (the passionfruit family) we know them as dried up shrively things, that are pretty tasty - but over here...they come in sizes as
big of two rugby balls!!!! There is also granadillas, naranjillas, lots of papaya, pepinos, tomate de arbol (sweet tree tomatoes), zapotes´, guanabana´s and many, many more- but all freshly squeezed and very tasty.
Going have to say goodbye soon but first a little moan...AARRRGGHHHH - mosquitoes!!!!!!!! Why do they love me so much...i now resemble one huge big mosquito bite and am sustaining the lifeforce of probably two million mosquito families with my blood...pete is probably having serious doubts about who he married as I know resemble more of a blobby septic oozing swollen bite than i do my former self (ok I´m prone to a little exaggeration) - but has anybody any tips?
We´re off onwards tomorrow to spend 7-8 days near Otavalo (in the northern sierra / andes) staying at an indigenous community owned hostel whch should be interesting for music and maybe meeting some shamens to rid me of my mosquito´s!!!!
Hope all is well and happy back at home
much love to you all
pete and keri
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