Cuenca

Three friends and I decided to skip class on Thursday and Friday to go to the colonial town of Cuenca in southern Ecuador. We took a night bus from Quito on Wednesday night. The bu ride was about nine and a half hours. Cuenca is a really cool city. It's much more European than Quito and churches are absolutely everywhere. They have a cathedral that's almost completely made out of marble which is pretty sweet. In our first two hours there we visited 6 churches and one gun shop that was attached to a church. We decided to have a thanksgiving lunch. Since we are in Ecuador, I figured guinea pig made more sense than turkey, so I split one with one of my friends. It was better than the one I had in Latacunga. In the evening, we challenged a group of Ecuadorians to a soccer game. It was fun, although we did end up losing.

On Friday we went to Parque Cajas. Cajas is one of the most awesome places I've been to. It's a huge park with loads of lakes, mountains, and trees to climb. We sort of stayed on the paths, but spent a good portion of the day going cross country and blazing our own trails. There were occasional llamas along the way as well. There were some sweet forests with little rivers going through. We also found a cave, so we went spelunking for a while, which was as awesome as it sounds. At the end of our hike, it started hailing.

Saturday we went to some old Incan ruins called Ingapirca. They were kinda cool, but not as impressive as I had hoped. According to my guide book they were one of the top ten things to do in Ecuador. While they were sort of impressive, we only had two hours to see them, and 5 hours in bus to get there and back, so I did not think it was worth it. However, after having seen them, I only need to climb Cotopaxi (which is planned for in two weeks) and then I've done all ten so that's pretty cool. We took the last bus back home at 9 in the evening. We had to leave Saturday night, because today is the Ecuadorian Censo. The Censo is their census and is really stupid. Everything is shut down and you have to stay in your house all day. Nobody is allowed outside. Supposedly you can get arrested or fined if you are outside your home. Why? I have no idea. It might be to make sure that you're not hiding anyone who's not supposed to be there, but seeing as I was asleep when they came and didn't check, it's not very effective. Anyway, I'm just stuck inside all day so I was catching up on sleep. I got back at four in the morning with the night bus we took.

Ingapirca

The cathedral in Cuenca

Pichincha

This was a pretty eventful week although I didn't actually leave Quito for the first time since early September. Thursday was the first leg of the semifinal of the Copa Sudamericana. Liga was playing against an Argentinian team called Independiente. Tickets are hard to get so a couple friends and I decided to go super early to get them. By super early, I mean that we woke up at 5:30 so we could leave the bus station at 6. We got to the stadium around 6:30 and there was already a pretty long line. The tickets didn't start being sold until 9. Once they started selling tickets the line moved pretty fast. The game itself was tons of fun. It was raining the whole time, but was still really cool. Right before our team was about to come out, two guys came up to us and told us they were going to shoot off fireworks in front of us when the team would come running out. When we asked why where we were, they pointed to the ground at a giant X that was painted right at our feet. Unfortunately, some security guards stopped them, so we didn't get to shoot off fireworks. We were given flares though so that was exciting enough. We ended up winning 3-2.

On Saturday I got a group of my friends to climb Quito's volcano, Pichincha. We took a cable car partly up and then had to hike from there. Although everyone claims that there are roving bands of barbarians waiting to mug tourists at the top, we still decided to go. The hiking was both fun and difficult. The altitude made it pretty hard. It was a cloudy day so we were hiking through clouds. The summit of Pichincha is 4680 meters. It got cold pretty fast, and soon we were hiking through hail. There was also snow around which was cool. Unfortunately, it started thundering while we were hiking, so we figured it probably wasn't too safe hiking through the clouds during a thunderstorm. We did press on to the summit, but we only stayed briefly, and then hurried down. The total hike took about 5 or 6 hours.

Random Pictures

This is the crowds at the quarterfinals of the Copa Sudamericana. We won 1-0

Me being healed by the Huacas at Mama Negra

I didn't actually use the fork and knife

We had Pirate Week on campus one random week, so they built a sunken ship into our pond.

This was before the round of 16 game. Fans climbed the fences and shot off fire extinguishers. We won 6-1

Sigsipamba

I finally made it on my second Andinismo trip this weekend. The trip was to Sigsipamba, which is a rock climbing location, so I was pretty excited. Originally a friend of mine was going to come as well, but he couldn't make it at the last minute. So when I got to the meeting place, it turned out that there were 12 Ecuadorians and me. Before we went rock climbing, we went walking along an abandoned railroad track which had been made into a nice path. We walked about 15 kilometers along it. It was pretty cool. It went through some tiny little villages. There were also tons of stray dogs. Eventually we got picked up by some of the other guides, and we drove to Sigsipamba from there. We had to go along some very rough roads on the way there.

The climbing was pretty cool, but we couldn't go often because there were lots of people there and it got cold pretty fast. I also don't know how difficult it was. They use the French climbing scale in Ecuador, and I'm used to the American. When I asked them what the difficulty was, they told me it was absurdly high, although climbing it wasn't bad. So either they rate them differently here, or the conversion is different than what they thought. We then drove to our campsite which was cool. There were lots of rabbits there which the Ecuadorians found very exciting. One guy mentioned that he had only seen three in his life. The campsite was next to a forest that looked like a miniature Fangorn Forest so that was pretty sweet. We grilled at night. The guides made a little charcoal pit and the Andinismo professor brought a huge slab of meat. We also had some bread so we made sandwiches. They were pretty delicious.

It rained at night, so we weren't able to boulder (climbing without being attached to ropes) because the rocks were wet. I was a bit disappointed, but the alternative ended up being much better. We drove to a small town and took another long walk. This was at another part of the abandoned railroad. There was much more nature there though. We got to walk through old abandoned railroad tunnels which was really sweet. On the side of the path were gorgeous canyons and valleys. Eventually we got to an old railroad bridge where some of the guides had already driven to. They were standing there with harnesses on and ropes attached to the rails. They then told us that we were allowed to rappel down to the bottom structure of the bridge and then climb back up to the top of the bridge. The bridge was 150 meters high, so there was quite a drop. I ended up doing it, and it was really fun. When I got to the top, some old guy was walking by and told us to be careful doing that. Apparently 68 people have died doing what I just finished. If nothing else, this experience in Ecuador has made me feel pretty bad ass.

At the bottom of the bridge

Climbing up

Rappeling down

One view of the surrounding valleys

An abandoned railroad tunnel

Galapagos Pictures

Great Frigate Bird

Baby sea lion chasing a land iguana

If you don't like this picture, you have no soul.

Island of Floreana

Obligatory Blue Footed Booby Picture

Mama Negra

On Saturday I went to a small town a hour and a half South of Quito called Latacunga. The reason I went was because on Saturday they have their biggest celebration called Mama Negra. Mama Negra is pretty much a mash up of everything they can possibly celebrate with Catholic and Indigenous elements. From what I gathered, the main point is celebrating a virgin, (I assume the Virgin Mary but I'm not completely sure) who protects the city from Cotopaxi's (the most famous volcano in Ecuador) wrath. They ignore all the times that it was destroyed and celebrate the times it wasn't. Anyway, somehow Mama Negra comes in who is a guy dressed up as a black woman. But my guide book assures me that this isn't racist at all.

Anyway I left Friday afternoon with a friend of mine, whose host family was going. He has a host brother who owns an apartment there so we could crash there. We spent Friday evening walking around Latacunga exploring a little. We then went to a restaurant where I finally had cuy. Cuy is guinea pig, which I had been looking forward to eating ever since I knew I was going to Ecuador. I actually went on a cuy eating binge this week. Thursday night was the first time I had it, but it was only a quarter of one, and the head was not there. On Friday though, we made sure to order the entire thing. It was amazing. We had the whole thing on a plate, teeth and all. We took the obligatory pictures (I didn't have my camera, but when I get his pictures, I'll be sure to post them). Then we had it cut in pieces and ate it. It's impossible to use a fork and knife so we had to use our hands and barbarically devoured it. The meat was very similar to duck, just a thousand times better because it was a guinea pig. After eating nearly everything, we only had the head left. Naturally we had to finish it off. I ended up eating the tongue and eyes as well, although Thomas, my friend didn't want to eat those in front of his host mother. The Ecuadorians at the restaurant watching us were amused with our enjoyment of the guinea pig.

We went to the Mama Negra festival the next day shortly before 11. It was a parade, but it was pretty much the best parade I've ever been to. People were dressed in different costumes, mostly indigenous and they would dance around the whole time. Thomas's host mom had friends who had a house right next to the street where the parade was taking place so we had a good view. The parading people would just give alcohol to everyone and it was pretty sketchy, but fun. Also the friends of the host mom would give us plenty to drink. The favorite drink there was watered down whiskey which was kind of disgusting. The paraders had several multicolored drinks which were bright green, purple, red, and blue. They tasted pretty nasty actually. Towards the beginning of the parade, I was looking in one direction, and all of a sudden got dragged into the middle of the parade. I was surrounded by "huacas". Huacas are witches who are all dressed in white. They proceeded to poke me with deer antlers, blow smoke onto me, shake leaves all over me, and chant. When I thought they were finished, I got aguardiente (really strong sugarcane alcohol) spit all over me. Then I had to drink from a bottle of some type of alcohol and gave them 50 cents. So now apparently I'm healed and will have good luck. It was pretty cool. Besides the huacas, another cool thing of the parade were the cuy wagons. Cuy wagons had some poor guy who was carrying a whole roasted pig on his back along with roasted guinea pigs, chickens, and rabbits. There were also bottles of alcohol attached to the roasted animals. Other cool paraders included people who painted their faces black and would go up to people in the crowds and yell what I think were Spanish jokes at them and then have them drink from their alcohol. Some paraders also gave us chicha, which was the best tasting thing they served us. Chicha is a traditional fermented drink in the Andes. By the end of the parade I had made a lot of friends with several different people there including a policeman named Martinez who was trying to keep order. He was doing pretty good with his duty, although another police officer was forced to drink some of the watered down whiskey by some persistent Ecuadorians. All in all it was a pretty cool experience.

Galapagos

I just came back from the Galapagos Islands. It was really one of the most amazing places I've ever visited. We left Sunday morning and flew to Guayaquil. After a layover there we flew another 2 hours over the Pacific to the Galapagos. When I got off the plane I saw a guy chasing an iguana off the runway. That was a pretty cool welcome. Then we got in a bus and drove across the island. The airport is on an island called Baltra which is pretty much a boring version of Arizona. It was really not what I expected. However, we drove to a crossing where the water was incredibly blue. It was like I was in the middle of one of those fancy beach screen savers. We took a ferry across where I saw a brown pelican flying around. The tour group gave us a really cheesy booklet with a checklist of animals to cross off. Naturally I decided that it would be a great idea to fill it out. We then took a bus on to a Galapagos tortoise reserve. There were tons of tortoises because it was mating season, so they were walking along slowly. They were really impressively big. It was super cool because I had remembered watching videos of them in school but I had thought at the time that I would never actually see them. We then went to a research station named after Darwin with more tortoises. I thought it was ironic that they named a tortoise breeding station after Darwin, because Darwin spent his time on the island eating tortoises. Anyway, it wasn't as exciting as seeing them in the wild, but we did see Lonesome George, who is the last of his specific species of tortoise. We also walked through a lava tunnel which was pretty much the same as any tunnel.

After all the tortoises we walked through the town where we could buy overpriced tourist stuff. Then we took a dinghy to our cruise ship, the Coral I. The cruise ship was amazing. We had a jacuzzi (although it was never on), a bar, and the rooms were pretty nice as well. Unfortunately I kinda got seasick so I took probably an unhealthy amount of motion sickness pills and felt a bit better. There were some Germans on the boat as well so I spent some time talking to them. It was really embarrassing how much Spanish got mixed up in my German, but I got it under control. The boat rocking was nice for sleeping though, so I slept really well.

We had to get up at seven on Monday and had breakfast. We disembarked at Isla Espanola. There were tons of crabs on the rocks. Then we saw some sea lions which are a lot cooler in person than anywhere else. When we kept walking we noticed that sea lions were absolutely everywhere. Since they don't have any natural predators on the islands, they don't have a fear mechanism, so you can walk really really close to them and they don't care. Watching them walk was hilarious as well. There were also tons of marine iguanas there, which were fairly big and very colorful. There were also lava lizards. I also saw my first blue footed booby there which was super exciting. Then there were also albatrosses and frigate birds. There were also some Nazca boobies, which weren't nearly as exciting as the blue footed boobies. We then returned to our boat and had lunch. We got snorkeling gear and then returned to a different beach where we went snorkeling. Unfortunately there wasn't a very good view where we were, but since I didn't really know what I was doing, it was good to practice a bit. There were sea turtles swimming around though so I could see them without snorkeling. The beach was also full of sea lions. At night there weren't any clouds, so I spent about an hour and a half star gazing. There was an amazing view because there aren't many light distractions in the middle of the Pacific.

During the night we sailed on to Isla Floreana. We walked around and saw lots more sea lions and crabs. We got to a lagoon but none of the flamingos were there. We got to a different beach where there were sting rays. We got to see them and one actually touched me. It only stings you if you step on it, so I was ok. There were hundreds of them floating close to the beach. Then we got to go snorkeling again. I knew what I was doing this time so I got to see a lot more. There were tons of tropical fish swimming around. I also saw a sea urchin. The highlight though, was that I got to see an absolutely gigantic sea turtle feeding really close. Then a sea lion started playing with us, so it swam all around us. It was really awesome. We then returned to the boat and had lunch, and then we had the option of going on a dinghy around this island or to go deep sea snorkeling. I went snorkeling again, and it was absolutely worth it. Apparently there was a shark right beneath me, but I didn't see it. Everyone else did though, so I have witnesses that I swam with sharks. My toe was bleeding at the time as well, so I'm pretty hardcore. There were lots of tropical fish again, including a really green parrot fish. I saw an octopus. Everyone was freezing, but I had rented a wetsuit, so I was really warm. It was a really good investment.

After that snorkeling adventure we had a short break and then headed to another part of the island where there's a mailbox. The mailbox is actually a barrel and stems from a pirate tradition, where sailors would drop letters in it and hope that someone who is heading back close to their home delivers the letter for them. Now it's a tourist attraction where tourists do the same thing. There was a soccer field close by where our crew was playing soccer. So we watched them for a bit and then headed back to the boat. I had befriended the waiter on the boat so I talked to him for a bit to practice Spanish. I then spent some more time stargazing.

That took us to Wednesday which was also our last day in the Galapagos. We came to Isla Seymour. There were tons of birds here. And sea lions, which are still awesome but everywhere. There were also huge land iguanas. The main attraction here were the frigate birds. There were two types, the great frigate bird, and the magnificent frigate bird. Frigate birds are the ones with the big red pouches for those who don't know. They were nesting and flying around so that was super cool. There were also loads of blue footed boobies. We then returned to the boat and took a short ride to the island of Baltra to return home. I spent the last trip on the top deck and there were frigate birds flying right over top of me. One was literally close enough that I could have grabbed it had I stood up. Unfortunately my camera died at this point so I couldn't take any pictures, but it was awesome.

We got to the airport at 11 and we were all sad that we had to leave. However, they told us that the plane was delayed about a half hour. Next thing we knew it was delayed until 3. Then until 4. I got sick of waiting at the airport so I went for a walk. Unfortunately they built the airport on the most boring island in all of the Galapagos. Like I said earlier, it's just a really boring version of Arizona. There was nothing at all except cacti. We finally ended up leaving at 4:15. I didn't think I'd be glad to leave the Galapagos, but after five hours of waiting in Baltra, I was pretty glad to get on a plane. I'll post pictures later, I don't have time to upload them right now.