travel week with michelle and eli!

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so the past two weeks have been crazy fun! lots of good stuff: baby bear arrived, new bear cage, travel week.
we started building the new bear cage, which was hardcore work! we were all covered in mud and cement, but it was a good time. it turns out that it is no longer for the bears but for the circus lions that were left in a cage in machachi. the other bear cage should be finished this week.
a baby bear was recovered from some men who were trying to sell him. he is only 6 weeks old and very fiesty.
the new monkey cage was finally finished and the older cappuchins are in there now. we also got a new coati which is getting along great with snots.
two mondays ago eli and michelle came to visit for 9 days! kyle and i took the whole time off except for one morning when we had them work with us. we did some cleaning and watering the cats. after that we stopped in latacunga and then we went to saquisli for the huge market. it was really awesome! the town is pretty small and quiet for the most part but thursday morning at 6am it really comes to life for the market day. we also went to the animal market which was very interesting. it is so unorganized and yet it is organized at the same time. i have never seen so many pigs, cows, sheep and llamas all in one place before.
from there we moved on to the quilatoa crater. it was a two hour bus ride just to get up there but i think it was totally worth it. the crater is an extinct volcano that filled up with water. the water is a beautiful emerald green and then it changes to a lighter green around the edges.
moving on, we went to baños. we did the dorky touristy chiva rides again but this time kyle did the bridge jump! the next day we decided to do different stuff. kyle and michelle went white water rafting and eli and i did some hiking. we hiked up this mountain that had a trail that was made to represent the pain that Jesus went through. i totally thought that i was going to be seein Jesus in the end because it was rough. through out the trail are little monuments that have pictures of the hard times that Jesus went through in his life, then at the end is a huge statue of the Virgin and baby Jesus.
After baños we spent the day in quito going to the equator and some of the fun stuff around the city.
next we went to cayambe, which is just an ordinary town except that it is the jumping off point for incan ruins and the national reserve. the incan ruins were a bit of disappointment because they were covered in grass. they do this to keep them well preserved. we saw lots of artifacts and found out lots of cool information. it was still worth the trip even if we only got to see the tops of the ruins. from there we went to the national reserve in coca where we met some of the people that live in the village there. the village is allowed to stay on the reserve as long as they don´t develop. everyone was very nice. we did a little hiking around the area but we rode in the back of a truck for the most part. we came back to quito for the last night to go to the market and we went to see the Virgin of Panecillo statue. absolutely gorgeous! you can see her from just about anywhere in quito but it was really nice to see her up close.

jam packed ¨vacation¨and now its back to santa martha for three more weeks!

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