Blogs from Ecuador, South America - page 647

Today Brenna, Ami and I hiked -- crawled, rather -- up a steep, cobblestone street west of Carolina Park to the Fundación Guayasamín, a museum housing some of Guayasamin's work as well as his collection of pre- and post-colonial artifacts. Once inside the museum grounds the sounds of the city vanished and as we walked between and within the buildings it was as if we were miles outside Quito. We viewed the pre-colonial (500 a.c. - 1500 d.c.) artifacts first -- a hundred or so stone clay pots, figurines, bowls and few sacrificial altars. It made me wish my Spanish was better so I could both understand our museum guide and ask her questions as my knowledge of pre-colonial Ecuador is limited. The artifacts were fascinating nonetheless. From there we moved onto Guayasamín's work. It was ... read more

Hola! Finally put pics on. As you might see from last entry theres a pic of the poeple at school. We´ve lost Chris and the Swedes, they´ve gone to the jungle/rainforest. There is a difference but cannot remember what it is. Ok to keep everyone filled in. Friday finished school and the remaining students at this point everyone except the swedes grabed a cab to the central bus station. Slightly dodgy place but semmed alright until Liz discovered her purse got knicked bummer but mainly lost cards which can be canceled. 4 hours later and few dollars poorer we arrive at banos - named after the towns thermal baths. To put at as ease the drive decided to put a very dodgy version of the texas chainsaw mascre on the bus tv. Got to banos, found ... read more

After finishing the Inca Trail it was time to get a move on, the original plan was to go to Nazca to see the Nazca lines, however, all of the buses were full on the day we needed to travel, also the weather was very unsettled and we were worried about arriving there and being holed up for days waiting for a clear day so that we could take the flight. We decided to not bother with Nazca and instead bussed our way straight out of Peru into Ecuador. This turned out to be a mammoth journey, we spent a total of 56 consecutive hours on buses, only stopping for an hour here and there at various bus stations to change buses along the route. Ecuador wasn't exactly our favourite country, it's quite beautiful but a ... read more

At 6:30am the captain awakens us with his soothing voice for our wake-up call. I almost felt like I had to go to work until I realise we are on a ship. Today was the day we were to finally see the Blue Footed Boobies. They look so pretty in pictures I have seen. After breakfast, we sat in the lounge waiting for our group of Frigates to be called. Our guide for the morning excursion to FERNANDINA was Deliah. We had a dry landing and walked on PUNTA ESPINOSA that has a lava field. Fernandina is the youngest and most western of the islands and has 5 volcanoes with one being the most active volcano of the Galapagos called La Cumbre, which is in the center of the island. After landing, we walked through a ... read more

Sunday swung back and forth from slow and easy-going to hectic and hurried. We slept in, gathered our stuff together at a leisurely pace, and then Ami went downstairs to ask the hostal owner if it would be possible for us to leave our stuff at the hostal during the day. When he came back upstairs he informed us that not only could we not leave our stuff, the owner was going to close up and leave at 10 am. Well, that certainly lit a fire under our butts. We gathered up everything and hit the street in search of breakfast and somewhere we could leave our stuff. Breakfast consisted of munchies from a bakery, and we ended up leaving everything at a hostal kitty-corner to the hostal where we had spent the night. From there ... read more