Blogs from Ecuador, South America - page 8

I am certainly not going to buy a Panama Hat while in Cuenca, the home of the famous and wrongly attributed headgear. They are indeed lovely and we have been to the Panama Hat museum as well as the famous Hortega y Hijos shop where the best quality hats are sold for $5000 which isn't worth translating into pounds, it's just A LOT. Apparently, the hats were worn by the workers who were constructing the Panama Canal and the hat was then christened Panama Hat when actually it should be called a MonteChristi hat which is a small town near Cuenca. It takes one person 2 years to weave one of the top quality ones so it certainly does not need to be squashed into my rucksack for a month and we are told that it ... read more

Presque un mois en Equateur, riche en aventures et découvertes! Arrivés le 29 janvier a Quito, une ville énorme,tentaculaire,qui s’étend sur environ 87 km, plusieurs millions d'habitants sur plusieurs collines, bruyante, polluée, et pleine de pickpockets! Le centre historique est plutôt sympa, truffé d’églises, notamment la magnifique Eglise de la compañía de Jesús, couverte du sol au plafond de feuille d'or, mais où il est interdit de faire des photos, et aussi la Basílica del Voto Nacional, avec sa vertigineuse tour des condors. Une belle randonnée dans les hauteurs de Quito vers la montagne Rucu Pichincha apres avoir apprécié la vue gigantesque du Teleférico, sans aller jusqu'au sommet à 4600m dans les nuages, mais tout de même bien essouflés a 4300m! Trois jours plus tard, nous partons en bus vers la jungle amazonienne: la selva. D'abord ... read more

So our blog spots have gone a bit wonky due to editorial problems (i.e. we've got in a muddle). The last blog should have appeared before the one before it but Pete was so traumatised by nearly having to find a new sourdough maker he was unable to write for a few days. Let me take you back to us waking up in Riobamba after our Chimborazo excitement and realising we had missed the bus to Alausi. We hot-footed it to the bus station to find it was CARNIVAL. We had failed to realise what a big thing Carnival is throughout Ecuador (as well as everywhere else in South America). Obtaining bus tickets is always a dark art. If you walk into a ticket office you are accosted by ticket sellers yelling at you through the ... read more

The final push.Today was the day when we were either going to conquer the Quilotoa Loop or it was going to conquer us. Even chances, slightly weighted towards victory to the mountain if you were a betting man. We were on our way by 0800hrs with 980m to climb before we reached the marvellous spectacle that is the Quilotoa crater….an ancient volcano that lost its top in an explosion of massive proportions, leaving a crater that is 250m deep and filled with greeny blue water. We had seen photos and it did look amazing. But first there was the small matter of getting up there. The first hour and a half was spent on a descent into a river valley through beautiful farmlands where every inch was cultivated no matter how steep the slope. We promise ... read more

Our first 2 days in Ecuador were spent at a great hostel in Quito (Hostel Revolution) getting used to the altitude and finding the central market for supplies and lunch. We decided not to have the potatoes and leather or the leather and booklet! We learned that the bus system of Quito takes a bit of getting used to….we were warned to keep each other and our other valuables closely guarded which seemed ok until we finally, after a couple of false starts due to nerves, managed to barge our way onto the bus which was soooo crowded that you had to literally throw yourself off the approach ramp which are built into the bus stops and onto the bus before the doors shut. At one point I (Jan) was on the bus but the doors ... read more