Heading south to Peru

After finishing the language course in Cuenca, packing our stuff and saying goodbye to friends and our hostfamily we´re heading down to Mancora on the north coast of Peru. It´s a little town with nice beaches and pretty good waves for surfing. Yay! We´re planning on staying there for 2 or 3 days and then start the loooong journey down to Arequipa to do some hiking and camping at Colca Canyon (the deepest canyon in the world) and then move on to Cusco to see Macchu Picchu. It´s going to be a hell of a journey... I estimate about 30 to 35 hours on the bus.

I wasn´t feeling that great during the last couple of days, had a throat infection, stuffed up nose and a bad headache but the thought of being able to chill at the beach (and some antibiotics) made me get better right away ;)

I probably won´t be able to update my blog anytime soon cause but I´ll try my best.

My favorite place in Ecuador so far...

Went to Cajas National Park with Nige, Bjoern, Maggie and Giddy (two Kiwi´s)last Saturday and it was absolutely STUNNING!!! It is such a weird but beautiful place! There is over 250 different lakes and all of them sort of look the same which makes it really easy to get lost there. Before we went we heard from several people that visitors die there all he time. GREAT! That´s so encouraging! ;)
The park is huge (about 29.000 ha) and there is nothing else apart from a little information centre at the entrance... no huts, no park rangers, no rescue system... nothing! Since it´s so high (the elevation ranges from 3000 to 4500m) it gets really cold and foggy at night (sometimes the fog rolls in at midday already) and chances you survive once you get lost are pretty small. People basically freeze to death there. On top of that they don´t really have realiable maps of Cajas so most of the time we were more guessing than knowing through which area we were hiking. It was loads of fun though. We hiked for about 6 hours and had the most beautiful weather you can imagine.
We all got back with a slight headache (from hiking in high altitude) in the evening which unfortunately turned into a pretty bad one in my case. Two aspirin made me feel better the next day. Oh well, I guess we´re just not made for exercising in the Andean region.

Apart from that we´ve been visiting a guy in Cuenca who has his own guitar-workshop. He makes the most beautiful guitars I´ve ever seen - they´re all handmade and just amazingly beautiful! He puts so much work into every little detail and it takes him up to 3 months sometimes to finish one single guitar. If you´re ever in Ecuador and thinking about buying a guitar,let me know and I´ll provide you with his contact info, this is definitely the place to go!!!

We also visited some local markets in Gualaceo and Chordeleg on Sunday which was really intersting, especially the animal market. It made me sort of sad though to see how they treat the animals there. Not that pretty!
There´s some pics from the markets on my picture-webpage if you want to see more.

Eating cuy and being back at the hospital!

This is what we had for lunch two days ago:




´Cuy´is the Quechua word for Guinea-pig (Meerschweinchen) and apparently a specialty in Ecuador. The Ecuadorians only have it on special occasions and it´s quite expensive. We saw people selling the guinea-pigs (alive) on a market close to the school. It´s pretty weird to look at them crawling around in those little baskets knowing that they´ll end up on someone´s dinnertable. Uuuaaah!!!
The way they prepare the guinea-pigs is pretty gross too. First they break their necks to kill them (some of them are still alive afterwards though), then they pop out both of their eyes and drain the blood out through the two holes (very few of them are still alive at that point but not for long anymore) then they dip them in boiling water to get the fur off and then bake them in the oven.

It didn´t taste all that great and I definitely wouldn´t want to have it every day but it was an experience.

Yesterday we went out to a restaurant to have dinner and a couple of drinks with some friends after the Salsa class. When we left Nigel had a bit of a stomachache, but it didn´t seem too bad and we headed off to ´La Mesa´ to go dancing. I went to the bar at some point to get a couple of drinks and when I came back I found Nigel unconscious on the floor and a whole bunch of people crowded around him. It was pretty creepy. Especially since this is the second time he passed out since we got to Ecuador (first time was on Cotopaxi). He only passed out for like 20 seconds but hit his head on the way down and looked really pale afterwards. The funny thing was that the people at the club thought he passed out cause he was really drunk (which wasn´t the case). We took him back home with a taxi and then went to the hospital this morning to have him checked. The doctor said it was probably just because the stomachache got really bad and said that he seemed ok.
I hope this doesn´t happen again soon. It´s already scary when there´s other people around to help but I´m freaked out by the thought of hiking together somewhere in the middle of nowhere and having Nigel pass out again.

We´re probably just gonna take it easy again this weekend, going to Cajas and doing a one-day hike. No more extreme-experiences for me for at least the next week!!! ;)

News from Cuenca...

Spent my second week here trying to memorize a whole bunch of new vocabulary and sentence structures (gosh - it´s so much to learn!!!), drinking Mojitos, taking more Salsa-lessons and dancing the night away at ´La Mesa´, a cool new Salsa-club we found. The people there, mostly locals, are craaaazy!!! The way they dance Salsa is just not from this world! Of course we can´t keep up with them, but it´s still fun to dance a little or just watch them doing their crazy spins and bouncing off the walls.

We went horseback-trekking this weekend which was awesome!!! We drove to this place a bit south of Cuenca, got the horses ready and then got to enjoy some awesome views of the surrounding area. We went up this mountain (on really steep, small and slippery trails) and then got to ride along the mountain ridge and came back down after lunch. The loop we did took about 4 hours and now my butt is hurting like hell after some wild and crazy galloping where the 4 horses tried chasing each other. It was loads of fun though!

From Ecuador

The guy who went with us, Fernando, has his own little farm in the countryside and told us a bit about the work he is doing. He´s trying to be as self-sufficient as possible, growing his own fruits and vegetables and selling his own products (dried fruit, jerky and other stuff). It sounded really interesting and we might go and stay with him for a while and help out at his farm when we´re done with our language course in two weeks. I think it´d be really interesting to see and experience what the life in the Ecuadorian countryside is like... how the people live, work etc. We´ll see what happens. Maybe our plans to go to Peru are gonna get postponed for now.

Ingapirca & first camping-experience in Ecuador

We went to Cañar by bus this weekend and from there to Ingapirca, some old Inca-ruins. It was really interesting to see how the people used to live and how modern and progressive some of the things they did were.

I was also trying to chase some Lama´s that afternoon which didn´t work out that well. Everytime I got close to them they took off... too bad.

Afterwards explored the surrounding area searching for a spot to camp. We found a really nice place but had to cross a river to get there. I slipped on a wet rock and me including my backpack with all my clothes, tent, sleepingbag went for a little swim... SPLASH!
No big drama, it wasn´t that cold at night and the important things like my sleepingbag didn´t get completely soaked. Lucky me. We were more worried about the fact that we didn´t know if we camped in the complete wilderness or on someone´s property. The next morning after we woke up and packed our stuff we realized it was the land of some ecuadorian farmer who tried to get us off his land by sending his dog who was barking like crazy after us!

Taking a cab home from the bus terminal in Cuenca was really irritating since we know now that the ride costs 2$ and not 5$ (it´s what they charged us when we first got here)... They rip you off so easily and even if you tell them that this is not your first time in Cuenca and that you know how far it is and how much it costs, they´ll come up with these ridiculous prices! Argh!!!

Riobamba-bamba-bamba, Nariz del Diablo & first week in Cuenca

After our exciting trip to Cotopaxi we found out some even more scary details from the two Swiss-girls that helped us up on the mountain. Apparently the guy who took Nigel down to the car said that he passed out on the way down... pretty scary! Especially cause the Swiss-girls (very experienced alpinists) told us that 60% of the people that get to the stage were they pass out don´t make it!!! I guess we both just realized afterwards how serious it was.

After another 3 days in Quito we took the bus down to Riobamba. The guys at the bus terminal that sell tickets are really irritating!!!! There´s a whole bunch of different bus companies operating on the same routes and of course everyone wants to sell their tickets to you. There was one guy who was especially keen on winning us over. It was incredible how many times he could say the word ´Riobamba´ in one breath. I don´t think I could say it half the speed he did. I got really annoyed after a while cause he wouldn´t even let us compare prices but would just yell ´Riobamba-bamba-bamba´into my ear!

The ride took about 4 hours. From there we hopped on the Devil´s Nose Train, the most difficult trainroute in South America. It takes 7 hours and you get to sit on top of the roof (gets kinda uncomfortable after a while) and enjoy the scenery. It was amazing cause you get to see so much more than if you´d just sit inside the train. The ride goes through massive canyons and there´s lots of indigenous people (especially kids) standing along the way waving and waiting for the tourists to throw down candies or lollipops.

Once we got to Alausi we took another bus (5 hours) down to our final destination for the next 4 weeks: Cuenca.
Cuenca is so much nicer than Quito! It´s an old colonial town with lots of nice buildings and churches. It also seems much more European than everything else I´ve seen in South America so far.

The hostfamily we´re staying with is really nice. The mom, Ruth, is such a character!!! She´s super cheerful and kept talking to us even though we didn´t understand a word at first. Then there´s Manuel, the dad, and Jose (17) and Juan (23) the two sons.
We have our own room with a private bathroom which is really nice.
The food we eat at the family is decent but it took a little while to get used to it. Cheese with honey isn´t a thing I´m used to having for desert, but oh well... different culture!

Another thing I´m still struggling with is the fact that you´re not supposed to put toiletpaper in the toilet but in a little basket next to it. The waterpressure of the drainage-system here is so low that it would get blocked up right away! Not a great thing to happen!

The spanish is coming along well. We just finished our first week of clases and it´s a lot of fun so far. The school also offers all kinds of activities outside the normal clases. Nigel and I are learning how to dance Salsa which is fun but hard if you´re not born with the South-American-hip-swinging-thing! :)

We´re planning on checking out Ingapirca (some old Inca ruins) on the weekend and do a bit of hiking and camping in the Canar area. Should be fun to get out of town for a bit...