Tena

Our next stop was Tena (pronounce it however the heck the you like, I heard at least ten different pronounciations from the locals alone). Tena was pretty much just an entry point for our jungle tour. So, as planned, we got there, found an arguably good tour agency, spent the night, complained to each other about the accommodations, and set out for the Amazon.

Something of note: Tena was built at the junction of two medium sized rivers. About two months before we got there, a heavy rain increased the water level in those rivers by over twenty feet and flooded the entire city. Workers were laying down brand new cobblestone streets on their main avenue while we where there. Laying them, hunched over, by hand, in the rain; it did not look fun...at all!

Casa Luna

On our last night in Banos, we went up to a little cafe that literally hangs off a cliff looking straight down on the little town, and had an early dinner and watched the sun set. It was another one of those awesome experiences that we are so glad we got to enjoy.

A funny thing: right at dusk, from afar, the soft glow of the electric lights make it appear as though there is hot lava flowing through the streets. Which is quite fitting, as Banos sits directly below an active volcano and is evacuated frequently.

Stairway to Heaven...

...or at least a shot at heaven, as the odds of surviving a walk down these stairs seemed slim.

Rio Verde

After a few hours of coasting and pedalling, we arrived in Rio Verde, not a town so much as a dirt road and a river. But the river produced some amazing waterfalls, and we hiked down to a very rickety, very high, very scary Indiana Jones bridge to get a great view of some of the falls. In the end, we paid a taxi-truck three bucks to take us back up to banos with our bikes.

Banos Bikes

One of the other things we planned to do, and did, in Banos was ride mountain bikes from Banos to Rio Verde. Essentially, coasting from the Andes to the Amazon. Well, it was not all coasting, I'll tell you that. But, I knew what they meant when they said "all downhill," because I now speak South American altitude, thanks to our Colca Canyon guide et al. Regardless, I'm not that adverse to exercise--especially in this form--and the trip was as it one might think: once in a lifetime!!

Banos Zoo

The animal prison, as I mentioned, was tucked into the side of a mountain, not so much just outside of town, but rather, just accross the huge gorge that ran along the edge of main downtown. The ride there and back, and the general layout of the facility were way more impressive than the prisoners on display. Which of course = you had to be there, but I'll post pics of the cute and strange animals anyway.

Where Were We...

...oh yeah, Banos, Ecuador. One of the very first things we did in Banos before we fell super-duper ill, was rent a gocart. It was the perfect vehicle in a perfect town for a driver like me. You know, one who likes to get completely lost before really knowing where he is? We took it for a few wrong turns, saw parts of the little town we never would have seen--like how part of the town is actually ready to pour its self off a hundred foot cliff, like one of the waterfalls that surround it--and then made our way up to the zoo.

More pics of the proposal weekend

Engaged!!!

It's official. She said yes!!

She never saw it coming, and it went better than I could have hoped. We arrived at the the San Jose, Costa Rica airport two days ago to a private car (on the plane, I lead Nikki to believe we'd be on public transit). We were driven to the Tabacon Resort, a 5-star volcanic thermal spa in the middle of the rainforest at the base of the Arenal Volcano. Nikki was surprised to say the least, just at the resort, but I was super surprised when they told me in private that they had upgraded us, for free, to the six hundred dollar a night honeymoon suite. The next day, yesterday, July 30, we took a private tour of the volcano and the largest waterfall in the area. When we got to the bottom of the waterfall, one of the tour guides (there were two just for us) directed us to a private platform with an amazing view of the waterfall. I handed the guide our camera and asked him to take our picture. Right after he snapped the shot, I turned to Nikki, read a prepared little something, got down on one knee, and popped the question. All the while, the guide with the camera was snapping photos like mad and the other guide was popping an ice cold bottle of wine... in the jungle. We spent an hour laughing, crying (yes, I cried during the question), and screaming while basking in the moment, as the guides took pictures and poured wine.

If it sounds like bragging...it is. I am the luckiest person in the world to have such a perfect Pickle to spend the rest of my life with. And it's a good thing I started saving $25 a paycheck into a "secret ring account," two years ago to buy the ring, so she could be completely surprised (again, bragging, but that took patience).

Do NOT Go In There!!

By the way, as opposed to the wet/cold/hotbox thing at the Loop, we believe it was our cooking the first night in the hostel that made us ill. Sadly, I think we even knew it as we ate.

National Lampoon's: Banos Vacation

"Ecuador's premier resort town" (Moon Handbooks), Banos was one of the destinations in Ecuador that we were really looking forward to. ATVs cheap for rent, multiple mineral hotsprings, self guided bike tours 20 kilometers downhill passing multiple waterfalls, an active and beautiful local volcano to view from different sites reached by multiple hiking paths, affordable guided tours to the vocano on horseback, an animal prison..er, I mean zoo (the locals here call it an animal prison) set into a steep mountainside only two minutes outside of town, white water rafting, canyoning, jungle tours, bungee jumping, parasailing, waterfall repelling, rock climbing...you name it, it seems Banos has got it. And our hostel: big room with a big bed, night stands on either side, each with lamps (that's a big deal in the hostel world), hot shower, good tp and plenty of it, big window with waterfall view, rooftop patio with wi-fi, $1 pints of cold beer on the honor system, well known for the best breakfast in town (and cheap!), and an amazing bakery downstairs that keeps the place smelling of...well, of whatever the heck their baking, and it's always good.
Okay. There's a downside to this of course. We've been here three days and have done almost none of it. We've been sick and have been laid up in bed for most of it. Don't worry, we're fine, and the upside is that, thankfully, we packed extra days into the itinerary, and I couldn't think of a better place or a better hostel to be laying low regaining our strength in. So, hopefully in a few days you will be reading about the bike trip we are doing tomorrow that we booked for last friday, and we'll be leaving here ready for a nice four-day trip into the Amazon, with our immune systems kicked into overdrive.
The name of the Hostel, for those heading to Banos: Plantas y Blanco. It's the name of the bakery too.
I recommend taking in a movie and early dinner at Casa Hood for great atmosphere, good food, and poor service.

Ya Can't Git Theah From Heah

When we talked to the girl who "handles the tours" at our hostel in Quito, and mentioned that we would probably head to Latacunga to get info on the "Loop" situation rather than book one of her tours, she matter-of-factly said that we would find no such help there, and that Latacunga was a farm town with nothing in it. What a weird thing to say. I suppose it would be like some one from Boston saying that you couldn't even get a decent meal in the Upper Valley, VT/NH, because it's all cows and marijuanna up there. Turns out, we found a great hostel with super friendly and helpfull staff, who, instead of trying to sell us on a tour, just answered all of our questions and offered free information on different ways to access/approach the loop. Big ups to the Tiana Hostel in Latacunga, we mos def recommend. We found the Tiana by way of our Moon Travel Handbook, which has been so much more helpful than our Peru travel book from Insight Guides by Discovery Channel and was cheaper than the Lonely Planet option. I can now officially recommend Moon Handbooks (for Ecuador at least). But that's all the city was for us really, just a stop off point to gather info and move on. So, we did.

The Roof is on Fire!!

We finished the bone-chillingly wet hike around the lake before 4 pm, had an early dinner at the closest place with food, went back to our room, and begged them for some fire wood. The room we had there was by far the smallest we'd stayed in so far. Thankfully, however, it was only big enough to squeeze in a queen-sized bed and a small wood stove. We burned that thing so hot, by the middle of the night we were opening the window to let in the below-freezing natural air conditioning. But, for those hours in the beggining...boy, that heat was good and necessary. I'm afraid, though, that the severe cold and wet then extreme boxed heat may be what lead to our eventual, yet fairly sudden, downturn in Banos.

Sorry, no pics of the room. This stove was our temporary savior while the hostel owners chopped us up plenty of wet wood.

Beautifully Wet

We arrived at the lake, found a decent hostel on the rim, and bought some local scarves (it was so much colder than anywhere we had been in Peru, which was farther away from the equator and much higher in altitude...strange?!?). We put on our gloves, hats, and new scarves and headed out on our hike around the lake, not knowing what to expect, other than that it should take between four and five hours. I guess we could have "guessed" by looking around, but we just hadn't realized what this hike would intail. The path followed the actual rim of the lake, tracing the up and down every peak that surrounded it, taking us up and down about 500 feet a dozen times all on a two-foot wide path that went straight down 1,000 feet on either side. But I'm not complaining...yet!! About half way around, the sky decided the lake looked like it could use a refill. Slowly but surely, the rain began to fall harder and harder and harder, until we were soaked to the bone, with still an hour left in the hike and no where else to turn. Again, I'm not complaining...yet!! With about half an hour to go, following a guided group of three, we somehow, in the pouring rain, shimmied along a muddy five inch ledge for about twenty feet clinging with fingernails to the wet cliff in our face so as not to slip and fall down the 1,500 foot cliff at our feet. Now THAT I complain about!! Had there been a program, I'm sure that was not in it. But here we are to tell the tale. The lake was indescribably beautiful, and the first half of the hike was beyond exhilirating. But, as the weather remained dissagreable, we dicided to cut the big loop short by a few days, and about a 25 kilometers of hiking in the rain, and head back to Latacunga the way we came.

Let's go to the Loop!

One of the few things we absolutely knew we wanted to do in Ecuador was hike the Quilotoa Loop (QL)--or Latacunga Loop (LL) as some called it. After quite a bit of failed research, we realized that the best and only way to do this was to get to Latacunga and take it from there. Turns out that: those two loops are not the same, the best way is not necessarily on your own, and experience, not internet research, is the only way to determine these things.
Our original plan was to do the bigger loop (LL) which included the smaller QL, that treks the circumference of a great big high-altitude vocanic lake. As opposed to going with a guided tour, which seemed to be a pretty popular yet expensive option, we set out on our own to find our way. One not so tourist bus not so chicken bus later, we found ourselves in the back of a pickup truck flying up a dirt road toward the first hike, the QL.

Quito, Ecuador

When we arrived at our hostel in Quito at 8am, we promply paid for the room, closed the door, fell on the bed, and passed the eff out. It was a beautiful sleep in a not so beautiful hostel in a not so beautiful part of a beautiful city in a beautiful countr...it does seem like travel is a bit like being on a see-saw, huh, with all of the ups and downs? The ups and downs didn't want to stop either. Just when we were finding our city-sight-seeing-stride later that afternoon, it rained so hard that, in less than an hour, there were rivers running through the city where streets had once been. We decided to do the Quito sight seeing on the back end of our Ecuador loop, and headed out early the next morning for Latacunga.

On the plane again...Just can't wait to get on the ground again...

Aside from doing yet another over-nighter in the airport, the travel from Peru to Ecuador was painless. They even let us into their country with our snack food--which, by the way, Dad, included the Gorp you made us for the Cardigan Hike. Thank you, it has been just perfect, right when we need it :-)

Car Horn

The city of Lima is BIG and super busy, with millions of people on foot and in cars. There are traffic lights at maybe 5% of the intersections and no stop signs anywhere to be found. Instead, there are speed bumps at the intersections on the street that is mean't to yeild. Cars miss smashing into one another by millimeters constantly, and someone can be heard honking a car horn at all times The funny thing is, I think there are more accidents in the States than in Peru. Because here, you pay attention every second or you crash. Back home, everyone is blindly chatting on thier cell phone just hoping that nothing appears in front of them unexpectedly.

!!Feliz Navidad!!

Everyone knows I absolutely love Christmas. But, everyone should now know that Lima should be known for it's fantastic Christmas stores. I mean, this store's product was in such high demand, it needed an armed guard to stand duty out front.

BEWARE!! FOLLOWING IMAGES MAY CAUSE NAUSEA AND/OR TEARS

I'm not sure if you've ever had a pet guinea pig, but, groing up, I had many. Sadly, n South America, they're called cuy (cuee), and they are cooked and eaten by everyone!!



















We did not eat any.