Ecuador! (more specifically, Cuenca and Loja)

So we did it! We made it to Ecuador! I can't believe our trip is more than half over already!!

Once we landed in Guayaquil, we headed over the bus terminal to catch a bus to Cuenca. The bus ride takes about 4hrs, but you can't beat the price! $8! And since our time is worth a lot less than our money these days, we were all for it. Plus, it's way more of an authentic experience...right...?

While in the bus terminal, guess who we found at McDonald's? (I will neither admit nor deny if I was ordering at the time.) Missionaries!


We were so excited to see them, and Patrick got a kick out of talking about all his old mission haunts. I told them all to go home and get married and bring their wives back on a tour someday :)

Anyways, 4 hours later, we arrived in Cuenca. it's a cute colonial town in the Andes.








Patrick had actually only been there once before, for a day, so it was a new adventure for us both. We wandered the town, ate at an awesome restaurant, Tiestio's, that had about 15 different sauces and side dishes for our meal,





Look at all that food! For just the two of us!!



and saw 50 zillion churches.





I still can't get over the number of churches in this country! There is one every block or so, sometimes even right across the street from one another! Oh yeah and we went to their Museum, but 80% of it was either closed or broken. There were some Incan ruins though which was cool (Cuenca was the 2nd largest Incan city, after Cuzco, Peru.





AND some real shrunken heads! Too bad we couldn't take pictures. But trust me they were suuuppeerr creepy.

Our hotel (Villa Nova) was decent, clean and the breakfast was good, but I can't seem to get used to how thin the walls are in these places! You hear your neighbors AND all the cars. I need to get better at sleeping in loud places. I'm a wimp who needs silence and darkness.

In all of the Andean cities there are these cute local ladies dressed in darling outfits. I tried to find where they buy their pleated skirts but apparently they are homemade :(



Anyways, after Cuenca, we got back on another $8/4hr bus to Loja!

Loja is where Patrick spent 6 months of his mission, so it was really fun to watch him remember the streets and parks and even some restaurants! We may or may not have eaten at his favorite Mexican restaurant, A lo Mero Mero, twice





and his other favorite, El Fogon once. Your memory is a funny thing, and Loja was not quite as "cute" as Patrick remembered. It was much more of a regular 'ol city, so after about 3 hours we had seen it all. We had to remind ourselves that this was not a place you would normally go on a vacation, but it was a fun place to come to reminisce.











Proof that nerdy gamers have no nationality :) this place was packed!

Since we still had a day left in Loja, we decided to hire a guy to drive us to Zamora, a town about 1.5hrs from Loja that is the entrance to the jungle in Southern Ecuador. The outskirts of the city has a National Park, Podocarpus, where Patrick had spent some of his free time on preparation days.

Our hotel hooked us up with Manuel (you want to go where? Hmm ok, I know someone with a truck, he will take you, just be ready at 8:30. Uhh...ok...). We weren't really sure what to expect, but excluding the fact that he had zero personality, and AMAZING photography skills,


Take 1. Nice pavement!


Take 2. Maybe just hold it a little straighter?


Take 3. I give up.

he had a clean truck and was very polite. It was a fun (albeit HOT) day and the park was full of gorgeous butterflies, amazing waterfalls and gigantic ants.























Zamora was a nice town, our five minute tour showed us the way to the gold mines,


the clock on the hill,


the town square





and the river walk.


Oh yeah! And some guys catching a snake.








On our way back, we stopped for lunch and Manuel lectured me on
a. Drinking soda (it's really bad for you)
b. Drinking anything cold while sick ( I'm currently suffering from Gripé, aka a cold, and apparently I was making it worse with my Sprite.)
c. Meat and processed carbohydrates. He only really eats salad. (Thanks dude. Glad I ordered the grilled chicken instead of the fried chicken, can't imagine what your opinion would have been on that one.)

So yeah, I was happy to get back to The (notso)Grand Hotel.

Side note: These Latins are not shy with their opinions! At one point in Cuenca, Patrick was accosted by some dumb old man who was trying to start a fight about Osama Bin Laden not really being a terrorist, luckily we just walked away.

We did manage to find the LDS church which was fun because Patrick got to show me all around inside.


He says it was the nicest chapel of all the cities he served in. It was definitely a nice building! Also, instead of the U.S. Standard basketball courts in the cultural hall, they have an indoor futball court!

We also saw the "door to the city"








and a park full of buildings representing other countries. I told Patrick it seemed like someone had gone to Disneyland in the 70s, and came back and tried to put "It's a Small World" all over the city. Kinda awesome, definitely weird.

And that about sums up it all up! Stay tuned for our awesome "night in the U.S." and the Galapagos!!!,

Amazon Rainforest

Patrick and I spent 4 days in the Amazon, about 3 hours (by speedboat) down the river from Iquitos, Peru.

The outfit we used, Otorongo Expeditions, is owned by a guy from NY who married a girl from Iquitos. He is extremely outdoorsy and the lodge is totally his dream come true. Definitely not mine, though! Haha. There was no electricity, hot water or refrigeration, so we were really roughing it! Four days was PLENTY.








So day one, we arrived and took a quick tour of the local market





Patrick's new dog. A Peruvian hairless.




( it was raining so we didn't get many pics), and then headed out to the lodge!




















After lunch, took a tour of our surroundings. It was amazing how many crazy things were within a couple hundred feet of where we slept every night!


Oscar, our guide, did a great job at explaining all if the medicinal benefits of the plants/trees and pointing out what insects were poisonous and in what way (Wayyy too many for my liking!)

Did you know termites are a natural mosquito repellant? Just cover yourself in them and then rub their dead guts all over. Nbd.





We were only brave enough to rub it in our hands. Chickens.


Fungi everywhere. Most are hallucinogens, or deadly.


Nasty thorns on almost all the tree roots!


Cacao pods. The seeds in side were surrounded by a delicious pulpmthat you chew off.

One of the coolest things we saw was a tree called Dragon's Blood.


If you cut it with your machete, there is a blood red sap that oozes out which you put on wounds or cuts to help stop bleeding, kind of like a liquid bandage. He had us taste it, and it was soo weird because it was definitely a liquid but it tasted super dry in your mouth.

We also saw a rubber tree, and the dried sap is just like rubber bands!


We found a few frogs and TONS of spiders.





Some armored millipedes, can you tell I am happy to have it crawling on me?

Crazy huge bullet ants. At least one inch long! Too many bites and you die. Awesome.


Also spotted, a teeny tiny monkey up in the trees called a Pygmy marsupial. Apparently it is the smallest in the world! So tiny, and so quick, that we didn't get a pic :(

We then had a break until dinner, where we played with the lodge pets, a crazy toucan


and some Macaws that reminded me so much of Grammie's Lanza! Their squawks sure brought back memories!


After dinner, we went in search of tarantulas


and Caimans (same family as a crocodile). Yes, we caught that in the creek right by our room!


It was seriously like something out of your nightmares. We were trudging through mud and spider webs, in the pitch black in search of dangerous bugs and animals. I kept asking myself, why did you CHOOSE to do this? Haha.


Some really cool, but super hallucinogenic tree frogs.





We were very careful NOT to put our hands near our mouths or eyes after touching them!

It is so hot and muggy there that it wipes you of all energy, and since there is no electricity, you are more than happy to be in bed by 9 each night (under your mosquito nets!)





Every day follows the same routine, an adventure after breakfast, back to the lodge until lunch, followed by a siesta (loved this part! I always want a nap after lunch and here that's all everyone does!) and then another adventure. Then you hang out in the hammocks


until dinner


and try to do an adventure that night (although we had bad luck with rain so only got to go out that first night).

Highlights included tons of cool birds,





Check out those nests!


troops of monkeys (impossible to get a pic, they move soo fast!), spotting 4 sloths (one with a baby on it's back!),


swimming in the Amazon about 500 feet from pink and grey dolphins(!!!)


piranha fishing





(for the record, Patrick caught one and I caught two, thankyouverymuch),

washing Patrick's hair with Amazonian shampoo





Visiting an ENORMOUS Ceiba tree





And visiting two local villages.





This is why Patrick wasn't allowed to eat pork on his mission. So sad :( poor little piggy.





I'm a brave eater, but not brave enough to eat prehistoric catfish cooked by a local...





At one village, this lady had the craziest pet! It is basically a huge rat.


Considered a delicacy in the Amazon, people think she is crazy for keeping it as a pet, but you can tell by her face, she loves this thing like her own child.



The best part? It lives in a diet of coke and crackers!


So bizarre.

It was neat to see the villages, but also sad. Most of the girls are mothers at age 12 or 13 and they often claim to be impregnated by the Pink dolphins (local legend) to avoid getting in trouble with their parents, so they are almost all single moms. The villagers eek out a living off of basic fishing and farming rice & yucca. Their houses are just one room huts on stilts


with tons of relatives sleeping in each one. But they take pride in what they have, and seem pretty happy.



We watched one family weave palm leaves for their roof.


They said that they buy big bundles of leaves for 10 soles ( about $3) and have to carry them 5 hours back to their houses!



We had some crazy rain



and some gorgeous sunsets.


Oh, and on our last day, before heading back to Iquitos, we trekked out to some enormous Lilly pads. I'm talking HUGE! Several feet diameter.





The underside is super thick, like kelp!


And stopped by a Sugar Cane rum plantation. It was pretty neat to see how the sugar cane is still pressed by hand. And we picked up some fresh sugar cane molasses to take home!





Usually, there's a horse instead of a human, but I worked just fine!



Overall, we had a fabulous time and would definitely come back to the Amazon! It was a great way to end our time in Peru as well. Next stop? Ecuador!!