Only 22 days left!

Last weekend was pretty low key – I finally crossed some Quito activities off my list! On Friday morning I woke up and the sky was perfectly clear, so I went to the Teleferiqo with my friend Liz. It’s basically a tram that takes you up the mountain where you have a great view of practically the whole city. You can hike to the peak of Volcan Pichincha, but it’s really best if you go with someone who knows the route, so we decided just to make a quick visit. On our way back home we walked around a bit and found an area with a bunch of cool artesan shops. Later that day I went bowling and saw Clash of the Titans, which I really liked! On Saturday the student that I tutor in English invited me over for lunch as a thank you, and we went to Mitad del Mundo. It’s a pretty touristy spot, but you can’t come to Quito and not get a photo with the equatorial line! On Sunday I did homework all day, as it’s getting near the end of the semester and I have lots of research projects and essays to complete! This past week I finally took some very belated pictures of my house here and my service learning, so I’ll put those up to!

Teleferiqo:

Mitad del Mundo:

The school I volunteer at:

My house:

(we're on the very top floor that you can barely see...)

The life of a study abroad student: 18 hours of travel for a 36 hour visit to Cuenca!

This past weekend I went to Cuenca with my friend Liz. Cuenca is Ecuador’s third most important city and it’s the city I drove through with my host family on our way back from Loja. It’s very different from Quito and I really wanted to spend a little more time there. Despite the fact that it’s 9 hours away, we decided to take a short weekend trip. Overnight buses are awesome for trips like this because you don’t lose any time traveling! Although it’s unfortunate if you don’t get much sleep. On the way there, however, I slept surprisingly well. We arrived at around 8:30 am, checked into our hostel, and found a great little organic breakfast place. We packed our bags for the day, including PB&Js for lunch with the stuff we had bought at the grocery store in Quito, and set out with the intention of hitting all the main spots in the city in one day. We first went to the Museum of Pumapungo. Although we knew it was the most important museum in Cuenca, we didn’t realize just how huge it would be. It encompasses everything from religious art, to archaeological artifacts, to ancient ruins, to informational posters about the history of Ecuador, informational posters about every indigenous group in Ecuador, life-size figures displaying various aspects of indigenous life…you get the idea. Although it was interesting, it was never-ending. Despite the fact that we were afraid we wouldn’t have time to do everything we wanted to do, we couldn’t pull ourselves away prematurely. We finally got through everything (I think….there were a few more floors, but we’re pretty sure they were just archives) and went outside to eat our lunch.

We quickly passed by some other ruins that were right nearby, and decided to forgo another museum we had considered since the first one we went to was so comprehensive. We started walking toward the main part of the city. The size of Cuenca seemed perfect to me – not too small, but small enough to walk to most of the important places. We arrived at the Parque Calderon, which is where I got out to take pictures when I stopped through with my family. We went into the New Cathedral, which was gorgeous. It has blue ceramic domes that can be seen from all over the city. After that we were tempted by some delicious ice cream, which we ate in the park. We walked around a little more and tried to find a ceramics store that I had seen in my guidebook, which unfortunately was either closed or nonexistent. We made our way a few blocks down to the Plaza San Francisco, where there is a little street market. We also passed a flower market on the way there. We briefly walked though and continued on to the Plaza San Sebastian. This one was very quiet and peaceful since it’s a little bit out of the center of the city. Unfortunately it seemed as though there was no way to get in to see the church. Although there were certainly a ton more churches to see in Cuenca, we decided we would rather do some of the other things on our list. We stopped by the shop of the most important Panama hat maker, and then we wandered into a market that had about 120 vendors of all different types of handmade crafts. I did some of my gift shopping! At that point we met up with another girl, Charlotte, who my friend Liz met through her volunteering in Quito. Charlotte’s from England and she’s taking a gap year before college. She volunteered in Quito for a while, and now she’s using the money that she saved up over the past few years to travel around Ecuador. She happened to be in Cuenca at the same time, so we met up! She was so incredibly sweet and I’m thrilled that I got to meet her. The three of us took a cab out to the lookout of the city, which was beautiful. We stopped into this workshop/ceramics store that was really beautiful. Unfortunately it’s a little more high-end and expensive—not the kinds of things I would want to pack in my suitcase and risk breaking on the way home! We headed back to our hostel and got cleaned up for dinner. We decided to go back to the place we got ice cream, as we had noticed that the food looked good. It was, although not exactly typical Cuenca food. By the time we were done it was getting late and we were pretty exhausted. We headed back to our hostel and got to bed with plans to get up early and head out to Cajas National Park.

In the morning we packed some more PB&Js, grabbed a quick breakfast, and got a bus that would get us to Cajas in about 45 minutes. At the entrance we got a map and the ranger recommended a route for us. Within the first 5 minutes we were absolutely captivated and knew we didn’t want to leave. It ended up working out perfectly that we took a slightly different route than intended and ended up hiking for about 6 hours instead of the anticipated 3. We were never lost from the trail…there were just a few times where we thought we were somewhere different on the map. The scenery was incredible though so we really didn’t mind, and the weather was perfect! We were over 4,000 meters, and it was pretty chilly at the beginning, but the sun made it really nice a little later on. We were surrounded by hills, mountains, and lakes. At one point we walked through a polylepis forest (they call it the paper tree because it’s used to make paper), and it was so incredibly cool. It’s hard to describe, but the color, texture, and shape of the trees just gave it a really cool feel. Basically the whole day I felt like I was in a magical fairytale land. On our way back we met a really nice Irish couple that had already paid a cab to take them round trip to and from Cuenca, so they gave us a free ride back! We had plans to leave on the bus that night, and luckily our hostel owners were incredibly nice and let us store our stuff there all day even though we had already checked out. We went back to change our clothes and found a good burger place for dinner (somehow when we go out to eat here we always want non-Ecuadorian food…) After dinner we walked around the plaza a bit to kill time. Around 10pm we headed back to the hostel, picked up our bags, and got a cab to the bus station. Unfortunately it was wasn’t as easy to sleep this time, but still much better than taking a bus during the day. I thought I would have passed out after our long day, but after a brief nap I was wide awake. It didn’t help that they kept the radio on all night (I think most buses do that and we just got lucky on the way there). We picked up some more people at around 4:30am, but I think I managed to get a few hours of sleep somewhere on either end. I came home and went to bed for a few more hours, which was lovely. Overall it was a short trip, but I had a great time and I’m really glad we decided to go!

Spring break in the galapagos...could I get any luckier?

Ok, I promise I’m going to try not to slack too much on this blog as the semester picks up. I’m sorry to keep you all waiting on possibly one of the most exciting posts – Galapagos!

We arrived at the airport at 8am on Thursday. We were all incredibly excited, but couldn’t believe that trip had come upon us so quickly. I was especially excited to go because we had spent a few class periods in Environmental Diversity learning all about the history of the Galapagos, the geology, the incredible flora and fauna, as well as the tourism and the environmental problems. We passed our bags through a special security check to make sure we weren’t carrying any organic materials (introduced species is one of the biggest problems there). The plane ride was pretty easy – 40 minutes down to Guayaquil, where we waited about 30 minutes for others to board the plane, then an hour and half to the islands. As another precautionary measure, they sprayed all of our bags with some kind of disinfectant while we were on the plane. It was interesting. We got off in Baltra, which is a tiny little island attached to Santa Cruz, and is pretty much home to just the airport these days (although there used be a US military base there during WWII). We met the tour guides that would be accompanying us for the rest of the trip. We made our way to the water, where we took a boat across to Santa Cruz. The sight of the turquoise water was incredible, and the hot weather made me want to do nothing more than jump in with all of my clothes on. On the short boat ride over we saw our first of many sea lions and pelicans. We dropped our stuff off in the hostel and ate lunch at a place called Restaurante Chocolate (yes, they serve yummy chocolate desserts). We got back on the bus and went to visit Los Gemelos, which are giant twin craters in the earth. There used to underground lava that formed lava tunnels and made it’s way elsewhere, leaving a giant underground gas bubble. When the earth eventually cooled it completely collapsed, leaving these giant craters. It was pretty cool. Afterwards we got to climb through one of the giant and completely natural lava tunnels. At one point we literally had to crawl in push-up position to get through. Afterwards we went to try to see some giant turtles in the wild, but unfortunately they weren’t around. However, they do have two giant turtle shells that you can climb into and attempt to lift yourself up like a turtle. It’s really hard! Most of us tried it and it was pretty funny. That night we returned to Restaurante Chocolate for dinner and made our way around town a bit. A small group of us finally did some karaoke, which has been a goal of mine since arriving in Quito. We sang some pretty funny songs, and were joined by a group of excited British ladies for our finale number: “My Heart Will Go On.”

The next day we had breakfast at 6:30 and made our way to the Charles Darwin Science Station. We saw tons and tons of giant turtles and iguanas, as well as the endemic Scalesia and Opuntia cacti (it was exciting because I had just done a presentation on them). For those of you that don’t know, endemic species are those that only exist in the Galapagos and nowhere else in the world. That’s pretty cool – especially considering that almost 100% of the reptiles and 70% of the amphibians in the Galapagos are endemic. After the visit we got on a boat to head over to the next island, Isabela. The ride was about 2 hours, and although I sat outside and enjoyed the breeze (with lots of sunblock), I still felt a little seasick. When we arrived we dropped our stuff off at the hostel and went to another place with lots of giant turtles. We took a walk through the Humedales (one of Ecuador’s many ecosystems), which was basically a long wooden bridge through some trees growing in water. At the end of the path, we arrived at the beach for our first swim. We swam for a while (the water was perfect) and then walked to another spot, which was a much calmer inlet at the end of another wooden walkway through the trees. We had dinner, then wandered around town for some ice cream, and headed down to the beach to look at the stars.

The next day (Saturday) was my favorite day of the trip. We got up early in the morning and took the bus to the higher part of the Island. Isabela is the largest island in the Galapagos and it has 5 volcanoes. We went on a 6 hour hike around one of the volcanic craters, and learned that’s it’s actually the second largest volcanic crater in the world. We finally made our way out the vegetation and came across an area that was completely covered in lava from the 2005 eruption. There were some holes in the earth and it was really cool to see all the lava and the colorful rock. We made our way back to the bus, stopped at a really nice place for lunch, then got ready for snorkeling! My favorite part by far was swimming with a giant sea turtle, but I also saw a sting ray, a sea lion, and a lot of other cool fish. We headed back in the boats as the sun was setting, and got a far away look at a bunch of penguins on the rocks (yes, there are penguins in the Galapagos!).

The next morning we took the boat over to Floreana. We went on a short hike in the pouring rain to see some pirate caves and the water collection system for the island. Water in the Galapagos is a huge problem – there is an extreme shortage and what they do have is often contaminated. We had lunch and then went on another snorkel adventure. We saw a lot of cool fish again, but my favorite part was when we swam into a small bay and saw a baby sea lion! The guide said it was about 3 days old. We got back on the boat to head to San Cristobal (we didn’t stay the night in Floreana). On the way there we saw a bunch of dolphins! We checked into our hostel, where I shared a 4 person palatial room. One of the beds was huge and could probably fit 4 people comfortably, but it was only for 1 person! The bathroom had an enormous walk-in shower. It was quite luxurious. We headed out for our final dinner, which was probably fish—we had a lot of good fish on this trip. Oh and on the way to dinner we stopped on the boardwalk where there were a TON of sea lions sleeping on the beach….and the benches. It was so cool! After dinner we walked around town a bit, ate some ice cream, and got some souvenirs.

The next morning we went to the Interpretation Center, which basically has a lot of posters explaining everything you need to know about the Galapagos. We stopped on the beach briefly and saw a sea lion up close, then got on the bus and headed to the airport. Overall the trip was really incredible—we wanted to stay longer!

Last weekend I stayed in Quito. On Friday I had a fieldtrip to the zoo in Guayllabamba (which is about an hour from Quito), the botanical gardens, and the vivarium. Although I’ve been to several zoos, this one was cool because nearly all of the animals are native to Ecuador. My professor is very knowledgeable, so he taught us a lot. We returned to Quito and grabbed a quick lunch, but as we were walking to the Botanical Gardens it started to pour. Since we were wet, we rushed the visit a bit, which was ok because I already visited with my family. We walked down the street to the Vivarium and saw a bunch of cool snakes and frogs.

On Saturday I got up early and headed down to Cotopaxi with some friends. Cotopoaxi is the volcano that I saw from the airplane, so I was really excited to see it from the bottom. Also – it’s the highest active volcano in the world!!! So cool. (Don’t worry it’s dormant). We took the bus, which let us off at the entrance to the park. They have tons of little trucks that make the run up to the parking lot area, which is about an hour and a half ride. Although it was cloudy, the ride was beautiful. From the parking area it’s about a 45 minute hike up to the refuge, but it’s incredibly steep and sandy, which makes it a bit difficult. We stopped in the refuge for a bit, then continued another 20 minutes to the glacier. Unfortunately it takes a lot of training and experience to summit the mountain, but it was still a great experience. On the way back our truck driver took us to see the laguna and the Cotopaxi museum. We caught the bus back in time to get cleaned up and go out to dinner! It was a good day. Unfortunately I spent the day Sunday doing homework and studying. The semester is starting to pick up! I’m heading off to Cuenca in a few hours, but I think that’s going to be my last big trip of the semester. Sad…but I still have a ton of things I want to do in Quito, so I’m looking forward to that! The one thing I’m not so excited about is that is seems the normal Quito weather has finally arrived. It’s been raining almost every day! Although that’s what I had originally expected, I’m glad we had abnormal weather for three months or I don’t know if I would have come to like Quito as much as I do!