GoneToSee

A few random thoughts on my trip.  First.  I was surprised by the number of single women traveling either by themselves or with another woman.  I saw more women with backpacks then I did single men.  Most of them were European and most were in their 20’s or early 30’s.  On my Galapagos cruise there were five single women: two in their 20’s, 2 in their late 30’s and one about 60.  The older lady didn’t fit the mold of a backpacker.  When she was off the boat, she stayed in more luxurious hotels according to what she said.

I visited with a number of others at various hostels I stayed in.  All of them indicated they had not had any trouble but they used their common sense and didn’t venture out much at night.

That leads me to #2.  Most of the travelers I encounter were from Europe.  The owner of the hostel I stayed at in Otavalo was from Cleveland and had come to Ecuador in the early 80’s with the Peace Corps.  He married an Ecuadorian woman and after his Peace Corps service was up they returned to Cleveland.  In 1998, they moved back to Ecuador and bought the hostel.  He told me that he sees many more Europeans than North Americans.

His feeling is that most American young people come out of college and are anxious to get a job and start a career.  They are anxious to buy a house, get married and start a family and have different priorities than the Europeans.  That may be part of it but Europeans that are working get more time off than Americans.  Most twentysomethings in the US don’t get 4-6 weeks annual vacations as they do in Europe.  Most employees at American companies aren’t allowed to take more than two weeks at a time even if they’ve been with a company long enough to get 4 or 5 weeks of vacation each year.  There were two couples on my cruise that were in their 20’s and were in the process of taking a one year trip.  Even traveling “on the cheap” you need money to do that.

Number 3.  Most older Americans I met were traveling with a group.  I never encountered them in hostels or on the local buses.  They spent more on a more luxurious cruise, better hotels and chartered buses.  Most of the other Americans I met that were close to my age or older, I met at the airport with their group leader getting their boarding passes and taking them through check-in.  I met two ladies who had booked their cruise more than a year in advance.  One of the ladies told me their trip cost each of them $8,000 but that included a night in Quito in a hotel.  Whoopee! I spent just about half that and was gone for 4 and a half weeks.  I saw the same wildlife and snorkeled in the same ocean.  The food I ate and the bed I slept in probably wasn’t quite as nice but…

Number 4.  I never felt threatened either on the local transportation or on the street.  I was warned by numerous people, including the police in Quito, to wear my backpack on the front and not to show off my more expensive cameras.  And I didn’t.  I used a point-n-shoot in Quito but everywhere else I used my bigger Canons without fear.  I didn’t go out much or very far at night.  I stayed pretty close to the hostels.

Speaking of the buses,  I’ve heard the local buses sometimes referred to as “chicken” buses because you could look back four rows and expect there’d be someone with a basket on her lap and a couple of chickens in it.  I never saw that.  I did see one lady get off the bus and when she got her parcel from the baggage compartment, it had two chickens in it that she had bought or traded for at the animal market.

The buses was also a source of captive market for local vendors.  During a 2 hour bus ride you could expect at least three vendors to board the bus and offer chips, ice cream, powder for coca juice or, in one instance, a cure for colon discomfort.  At least that’s what I thought the package said.  My Spanish isn’t very good, though.  The vendor would work the aisle for a mile or two and then exit, cross the road and ride the bus coming from the other direction back to his original starting point and do it all over again.  I had some nuts and some ice cream but stayed away from the fritada…fried pork and hominy in a small plastic bag.

I visited with a lot of nice people.  Most of the travelers I talked with were from Germany, the UK, a few from Sweden and the Netherlands and a couple of Swiss.  Most of them spoke pretty good English.  We had some Canadians, Swiss, Australians, Germans and two other North Americans from Michigan on the cruise.  I met a group of 19 college students and their professor from Oklahoma State on an airplane and some high school students from California who were planting trees while I was in Mindo.

Basically, I think I planned well for this trip.  I had debated whether to take a backpack or a wheeled suitcase.  I took the wheeled suitcase and while I felt like I was cheating and not a true backpacker, which I wasn’t, I did like carrying just my 25 lb camera backpack and pulling my suitcase.  A couple of times I had to carry the suitcase but generally not very far.  Half of my suitcase had additional camera gear since I needed it for my tripod and my bigger lens.  I was able to get my laundry done about once a week which was fine.  Not once did I have to beat it on a rock by the side of a stream although I’m not sure one of my laundries may have done it that way.

I wouldn’t have been upset if I’d had a little more luxury but I prefer traveling more often and to more places and for me that means doing it the way I do.

I was fortunate to see some incredible wildlife and birds in the Galapagos and in the rainforest.  I didn’t see everything and someone is going to say, “You didn’t go to such and such?  You missed the most important place in Ecuador.”  I saw what I wanted to see.  I’m glad I went and I’m glad I’m back home.

I hope you’d enjoyed my journey and my photographs.  Any suggestions you have that would make future editions better would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Every Monday at 11am is the changing of the guard at the Palacio de Gobierno, the presidential palace in the Plaza Grande in Quito.  I walked about half way from my hostel to the Plaza and, when I realized I wasn’t going to make it on time, I hailed a taxi and got there about 15 minutes before the pomp and circumstance began.

Promptly at 11am,  President Rafael Correo comes out onto the balcony to oversee the spectacle. That’s him in the center of this picture waving to the crowd.

The guard moves into place.

The band plays the national anthem and everybody joins in.

The flag is raised on top of the Palacio de Gobierno and everybody cheers.  The ceremony leads to the passing of the ceremonial sword.

The changing of the guard lasts about 30 minutes.  Little schoolchildren had back to the bus for the return trip to school.

And President Correo makes one last trip to the rail to wave to the crowd.

I wanted to take a tour of the presidential palace but didn’t for two very good reasons.  One, all of the tours for the day were already booked and second, they are in Spanish.  I did get up on the first balcony to take one picture looking out to where the crowd had been.

I took a leisurely walk back to the area of my hostel.  I ate lunch at an outdoor patio cafe, and then the hostel owner called me a taxi for a 15 minute $6 ride to the OLD airport where I caught a bus for an $8, hour and a half ride in bumper to bumper traffic to the NEW airport.  The taxi ride directly to the New Airport is $25 and takes about two hours depending on the time of day.

My waiting for my departure last night, I visited with a photographer about my age who was in Ecuador looking at possible places to retire.  He was taking his newly gathered information back to his wife in Florida where they’d narrow the location possibilities before making another trip to Ecuador.  He told me he could find a nice, fully-furnished apartment with a pool and utitilties for $400-$500 per month.

My flight left Quito on LAN Airlines at midnight and arrived in Miami about 5am.  I even got dinner at 2am with wine, beer, soda or juice included.  I had a three hour layover to clear Immigration and Customs and the headed home on American Airlines.  I was back in Dallas about 10:30am.

I’ll have at least one more posting on some other aspects of the trip tomorrow.

I made my March Madness picks last Wednesday while in Mindo.  I might as well have made them in Spanish in the dark considering where I’m at in the family group standings as I write this Sunday afternoon.  Even Ashley who had picked K-State to win it was knocked out in the first round and she’s ahead of me right now.

I also ran across a picture I took from the third floor balcony of a hostel on the corner of the Plaza de Ponchos in Otavalo on the Saturday of the market.

What this doesn’t show is all the booths that are set up along most of the side streets that enter the Plaza.  This is the group that is usually there Monday through Saturday with extra ones in the street.  It is, by far, the largest market I saw.

Anyway,  I arrived in Quito yesterday, Saturday, about noon.  I got a taxi from the bus station to a location in the Mariscal Sucre section that had been recommended to me by a couple of young ladies I met on a bus who were from the UK.  The first hostel I tried had only one room left and and it was on the third floor way in the back.  I declined and went across the street to the Posada Jasmine.  After checking out the room, I took it.  Twenty dollars a night including a hot breakfast and Wi-Fi.

My room is in the center first balcony, green door.  This hostel is okay but it’s probably my least favorite of the trip.  The Wi-Fi is good as long as you don’t disconnect.  Then you have to make a trip to the office to have them re-boot.  Eventually, we’re up and running again.  I’ve got to have something to complain about.

After getting checked in yesterday, I took a walk around the neighborhood and had a late lunch at an Equadorian restaurant up the street.

It’s a quiet street.  I get a key that opens three locked doors before I get to my room.  Outer gate, front gate and front door and then another key for my room.  In Mindo, I had a key for the outer gate, in Otavalo and Cuenca someone was on duty and buzzed you in whenever you showed up.

Lunch was a ceviche de cameron.  Shrimp Ceviche.  It’s kind of a cold soup with onions and shrimp and a lime juice soup.  Very good.

The side dish is  fried banana strips and what looks like the left over kernals from a bag of popcorn.  They were crunchy but not hard like the leftover popcorn.

This morning breakfast was a scrambled egg, a pancake, toast, a banana and hot tea.  Then I headed to Old Town to take a self-guided walking tour.

Because today was Palm Sunday the Plaza Grande was crowded with people.  There was procession of muscians and dancers that led the congregation into the largest cathedral in Quito, La Compania de Jesus.

The cathedral is almost next door to the presidential palace.

I had been warned several times to not take my big camera out in Quito so I took a minimalist approach.  I took a small day pack with my guide book, my English/Spanish dictionary, a map of Quito, a bottle of water and a small, point-and-shoot camera.  I slung it over my back and headed out.  In front of the cathedral, a local policeman (there are both federal police and local police here and private security at some locations, as well) stopped me and ask me if I spoke English. He suggested I wear my backpack in front and not on my back. Apparently, their are thieves that will slash your back and run.   I thanked him and moved on.

This part of the city is regularly closed to traffic on Sundays as bicyclists take over many of the streets from 8am to 2pm.  On my way back toward my hostel, I went through several city parks. Most are filled with families out enjoying the day, vendors selling food, artists selling their work and vendors selling all kind of blankets, hats, etc.

I had taken a taxi to the Plaza Grande this morning but I walked all the way back to my hostel but stopped at a sidewalk cafe for a snack.  I didn’t stay long since it was beginning to look like the regular afternoon rain was on its way.  I made it back before the rain came.

Tomorrow is my last day in Quito.  I’ll head to the airport about 6:30.  My flight is at midnight and I connect through Miami.  It’s a half hour taxi ride to the old airport where you catch a bus to the new airport.  That ride is about an hour and a half.  The other option is a $25 taxi ride straight to the new airport.  It’s about 50 kilometers east of Quito.  But before that I’m going out for one last look around the city.

I arrived in Mindo on Monday afternoon.  In order to get to Mindo, which is two hours west of Quito, from Otavalo, you have two choices.  You can take the same bus back to Quito that you came to Otavalo on which takes you to the Carcelen bus terminal in Quito.  Unfortunately, you can’t get a bus to Mindo from that terminal.  So you have to take a taxi to La Ofelia terminal or…  You can take a different bus from Otavalo to Cayambe about halfway to Quito, wait for a bus that goes to La Ofelia and then connect to a bus that goes to Mindo.  That’s what I did. Also, if you take a bus from the new airport, you have to go to the old airport and then take a taxi to a different bus terminal to go anywhere else.  I’m not sure why you have to go to the old airport since it isn’t operating.  But you do.

None of the bus terminals I’ve seen are enclosed buildings.  Here’s the bus terminal at La Ofelia.  At least it’s covered from rain.  The others I’ve seen are just open lots or street corners.  A bus will pick up anyone that flags it down anywhere along the highway and will drop anyone off anywhere they want, as well.  So far, I haven’t spent more than $2.25 for a two hour bus ride.  The rate is approximately $1 per hour.

I left Otavalo at 11:30 and arrived at La Ofelia in Quito about 1:45 after changing buses in Cayambe.  The next bus to Mindo was at 4pm.  Arrived in Mindo about 6pm and was dropped about a block from my hostel.   It’s the Hostel Caskaffesu.  I believe this is the nicest hostel I’ve stayed in anywhere.  It’s $16 a night.

It has a restaurant that serves dinner and a nice courtyard and Wi-Fi in the courtyard and restaurant but not in the rooms.

This was my room.

It had a private bath and hot water.  What only my room in the Galapagos had that none of these have is a TV.  Which wouldn’t do me any good anyway since it’s all in Spanish.  There’s also no heat in any of the hostels I’ve stayed in and air conditioning only in the Galapagos.  All of the other locations have been at 4,000 feet or better so you need blankets.

Monday evening I met a 29-year-old Israeli, traveling on a German passport and living in Scottsdale, AZ.  We hit it off so on Tuesday he and I went to the Mariposas de Mindo, a butterfly farm.  It’s a little smaller than the one I’ve visitedt in Niagara Falls, Ontario but we actually got to see a butterfly come out of it’s cocoon as a butterfly.  They had lots of interesting butterflies.

What I enjoyed more was the 20-30 hummingbirds that were working on feeders just outside the butterfly farm.  I spent about a half-hour shooting pictures and then went back Thursday with my long lens to shoot some more.

After the butterfly farm, we stopped at a roadside restaurant with one table and some bamboo swings in front of the counter.  I had a veggie burger and some Mora juice.  That’s blackberry juice with a little sugar.  The mora ice cream is pretty good, too.

Tuesday, Aviv, the Israeli, had met a couple from Washington State on another tour and we all got together for dinner Tuesday night and decided that Wednesday morning we were going to this Reserve to see and hopefully, photograph the “cock-of-the-rock”.  It is a very colorful bird and puts on this show every morning at 6am, rain or shine, to try and attract a female.  In order to be in place at 6am, we arranged to have a taxi, a truck with a flatbed on the back, pick us up at our hostel and drop us at the beginning of the trail.  We are told it will be muddy so we arrange through the hostel to borrow boots.  We have headlamps and small halogen flashlights.  It is totally dark.  We get to the trailhead at about 4:30 and start walking.  It’s about 5:45am when we get to the Reserve lodge where two volunteers live for 3-6 months at a time.  From there it’s another 30 minute uphill climb.  By the time I got to the location, I WAS WHIPPED.  To add insult to injury, we saw two of these birds and through such thick tree branches that only one person got off a shot and about all you could tell was that it was red.

Sorry, no pictures of this event from me.  My camera was safely packed away in my camera bag on my back while I tried to stay on my feet as we slid through the mud.  The return trip to the road where another taxi was going to meet us in about an hour and a half was worse than the trip out because it was mostly uphill.  There were places where the mud was so thick it nearly sucked your boots off.

When you start a trip like this you don’t expect everything to be perfect so I write it off as an interesting experience.  I thought I’d earned a heart attack on this trek and, for a while, I thought I was going to have one!  Luckily, I was back to normal in about 24 hours although my left knee didn’t bend to well the rest of Wednesday and into Thursday.

One of the other things that Mindo is known for is chocolate so last night I took a tour of a chocolate factory in town.  We tasted cacao beans straight from the larger cacao shells.  You suck on them and they don’t really have a chocolate taste.  The beans are fermented and if they are going to make chocolate bars they leave the cocoa butter in it.  If they are making cocoa powder the fermintation process separates the cocoa  butter off.  They’ll use the cocoa butter with some sugar, milk and vanilla and make white chocolate.

The fermented beans are laid out on a large screen on 2×4’s in a green house-type structure for several days.  The redish-orange things on the right are peppers.  They are trying a mixture of chocolate and pepper.  Not to my liking.  By the way, this is dark chocolate only.  No milk chocolate in this process.

Then a fan separates the shell from the pure cacao.  I tried some 100% chocolate.  It is extremely bitter.  You may have seen chocolate bars that say they are 85% or 77% or 67% pure.  They add sugar to taste.  Some lesser grade of dark chocolate has fillers added so Hersey’s Dark Chocolate isn’t pure.

Another product they have is BBQ sauce made of chocolate and ginger.  Very tasty!  They have a small restaurant there and I stayed from dinner.  Pork chops with chocolate/ginger BBQ sauce.  I couldn’t leave without a few samplesl  The owner of El Quetzal, the chocolate company, is from Ecuador but has lived for a while in Michigan and he told me he speaks Spanish with an American accent.  He also ask me if I’d heard of the scores from the first round of March Madness.  I hadn’t so he pulled them up on his computer and we talked about the upsets.  He has Louisville in his pool.

Tomorrow I had for Quito and the last days of the trip.  I’ll be back in Dallas on Tuesday but won’t be back to work for another week.

More to come.

It was a 35 minute flight from Cuenca to Quito.  It took two hours and $27 by cab from the airport to the north bus terminal in Quito.  From there it took two hours and $2.20 from Quito to Otavalo.  The bus stops whenever a passenger signals that he/she wants off.  They stop for people to get on, too.  There is a bus driver and another guy who works the aisle collecting the fare and helping folks off and on.  The bus barely comes to a stop.  It’s more like a rolling stop.

I walked about 6 blocks to my hostal, Rincon del Viajero.  Room is a little smaller than in Cuenca but it’s clean and breakfast is included for $14 per night….including hot water.

This is the street front and the inner courtyard.  My room is straight down this corridor and to the right…#3.

That’s my room in the center of the picture on the right.

It’s about three blocks to the Plaza de Ponchos where a regular group of vendors are set up seven days a week.  At the end of the day, they load of their goods on their backs and move them out.

Friday night a large stage was set up in the middle of the street and beginning about 4pm the bands started playing.

I had dinner at a Chinese restaurant (I know, I’m in Ecuador) and didn’t recognize anything on the menu so I went with one from column A and one from column B.  I got a side of rice, chicken in a sauce with peppers, mushrooms, onions and a vegetable yet to be determined.  Price $3.  It was filling and good.

On Saturday, the market takes over all the streets around the plaza and a number of side streets, as well.  The regular vendors are on the Plaza and the street vendors are only here on Saturday.

As I move through the crowd, I’m offered ponchos, blankets, gold jewelry, food, hats and just about anything else.

Even as they are trying to make a sale, the ladies are often still working.

While everyone wants you to buy their goods, no one is pushy.  A simple “No, gracias.” usually does the trick.  And like everywhere else in Latin America, everything is negotiable.  There are also food stalls set up around the plaza.

Aren’t those the largest limes you’ve ever seen?

Market day is a day that every one comes to down and you have to bring the kids, too.

After lunch I grabbed a taxi and went to the top of a large hill I guess you’d call it to the Parque Condor.  They told me at the hostal it was about an hour walk or $4 by taxi.  I’m really glad I took the taxi.  The Parque Condor is a rehabilitation center for birds of prey…hawks, eagles, condors, etc.  They are all inside wire but I don’t recall ever seeing a condor before even in a zoo.

Their wing span is 6-7 feet.  One of the guides did a flight demonstration with a female, juvenile bald eagle.  This one, actually.

Today, Sunday, I took a bus north to Cotacachi.  It’s about a half-hour ride for 25 cents.  It’s market day in Cotacachi and one of the things they’re known for here is their leather goods.  The market is similar to the one I showed you in Cuenca.  It’s largely indoors and has all the fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, grains, etc. that you see elsewhere.  The leather goods are in shops on the main street.

Men’s leather jackets, made locally, ran $125 – $160.  I’m sure there was more expensive and cheaper ones but if you were paying cash the price was negotiable.  Leather hats about $18-$20.  Men’s wallets $7-$10.  Sorry ladies, I didn’t price purses.  I wandered through some of the shops and the market for a couple of hours and then caught a bus back to Otavalo.

Tomorrow, I’m leaving for Mindo for a few days.  I’ve reserved a hostal there for $16 per night breakfast included.  There is an Italian couple here that I think is going to travel with me.  We have to be in Quito in time to take the 4pm bus to Mindo.  It’s about 2 hours west.  We’ll leave here around noon.

An interesting side note.  Yesterday, there was group of young people in the office when I was leaving for the market.  When I ask them where they were from one said she was from southwest Missouri.  Later I ran into them in the market and I ask where in southwest Missouri and she said, Monett.  I asked her if she knew a coach by the name of Jerry Hudson and she said, “Oh, my God.  He was my high school track coach. He and his wife go to my church.”  Well, I told them he was in my high school graduating class.  It’s a small world.

More later.

I’ve enjoyed my two full days here in Cuenca.  It has been listed as the most inexpensive place in the world to retire.  The thought crossed my mine when I read that but it crossed it pretty fast and was gone.

Cuenca is a city of about 420,000 people and with the outlying area the population is close to 750,000.  It’s about the size of Buffalo, NY, if my memory serves me correctly.  I arrived Tuesday evening about 7:30 and found my way to Hostal Macondo.  I had made a reservation via email while sitting at the Quito airport.

It’s located very near downtown.  The place is pretty nice for $35 a night including taxes and a continental breakfast.

It’s secure.  The front door is always locked and the folks who run it speak English enough to deal with all the visiting foreigners…US, Netherlands and Germans are the ones I’ve met.

Wednesday morning I arranged for a city tour to get the feel of the place.  The guide picked me up at 9am and then we picked up two young girls at a nearby hotel.

Anyway, it was just the three of us.  Our first stop was La Turi.  An overlook for the city.

Then we drove around the city looking at neighborhoods and various buildings.  Following that we headed to the Homero Ortega Panama Hat Factory.  You see, Panama hats aren’t made in Panama.  They are made in Ecuador.  They got the name Panama hats because they were originally sent to Panama to be sent around the world.  Thus, because they were shipped from Panama they became Panama hats.

Anyway, the hats are made by ladies in the rural areas and come to the factory to be finished.  In a museum area of the factory, they show the steps the hats go through to become finished…from being made by ladies in the rural area who probably don’t look like the young lady in the museum.

The edges are rough when they arrive here but are trimmed, ironed, bleached if necessary to become whiter, dyed if necessary and laid out to dry.

Not only to they make hats, they make purses and they’ve even made a wedding dress including the flower bouquet.

All made from palm leaves.  Hats made here range in price from $25 to $1050.  They come in a variety of styles but the most common are those seen on many of the people around town but especially, the ladies.

After the hat factory tour, we hit a couple of cathedrals.

The second one is the new cathedral and the alter is made of wood and covered in gold.

We also visited the Museum of Modern Art.  That didn’t take me long to move through. and then we did a walking tour of downtown and visited one of the Mercados.

Last night, I went to dinner at a very interesting place.  Well, the place wasn’t as interesting as the menu.  (Okay, Ashley, you can stop reading this to Alex.)  You see my grandson has a pet guinea pig and that’s what I had for dinner.  You have to call an hour ahead of your reservation for it to be prepared.

If you’ve ever had roast pig, the skin tastes like “cracklin’s” and the meat tastes a lot like dark meat chicken.  So I told my daughter in an email, that “when Zebra dies, we’re not going to bury him, we’re going to grill him.”  Don’t tell Alex!

This morning when I went for breakfast, there were two juices to choose from.  A berry juice and a Babaco juice.  It was light colored but I’ve never heard of babaco so I asked.  This is what it looks like.

The inside is a lot like a melon.

Anyway, this morning I headed out to shoot a lot of the flavor of Cuenca in the downtown.  Here’s an assortment of pictures.

I also spent a lot of time wandering through this market.

Finally, there is a hummingbird that resides at the hostal.  It seems to be pretty comfortable with people and lets you get very close.  I have two shots of it.  One on a metal rail and the other on its nest.

I leave tomorrow morning for Quito and then a couple of hours by bus to Otavalo.  I expect to be there three days and will have something new soon.