Let me just start by saying its been a pretty eventful two days. Yesterday was spent shopping all day at the largest outdoor market in Ecuador then hiking to a beautiful waterfall, and today we hiked several miles to the top of Fuya Fuya volcano (Pronounced Pfuya Pfuya, like your trying to spit at the same time your trying to say it haha) and then biked down the volcano all the way back to our hostel in Otavalo almost 20 miles away!!. To be honest between the hiking biking and shopping I think the shopping took the most out of me....But it was therapy for Lyndz.
So starting back at yesterday, the town we are staying in is famous for their outdoor market esp. on Saturdays, very similar to the swap meet at aloha stadium, except everything is a dollar. You could buy anything from clothing to jewelry to hammocks to knives to whole pigs!!
It was amazing, and I wanted one of each, but unfortunately the backpack only holds so much! (Lyndz didn´t let that stop her, she emailed Jono who will be joining us in 2 weeks to let him know he would be sherpa-ing back all of her newly purchased goods.) After spending the first half of the day at the market, we hopped a cab up to Pechuga waterfall a few miles outside of town. It was pretty impressive but what took our breath away was the fact that Ecuador isn´t very sue happy, so there were kids literally standing on the slippery rocks about 60 feet above the falls just running around with the parents laughing. If these falls were in the states there would be like three guard rails you would have to hop over....not in Ecuador.
After returning from the falls, we were hungry and decided to make a full dinner out of street vendor food. First we started with what seems to be the local delicacy, a few slices of pizza with ham which were delicious! Then we moved on to the most impressive skewer of meat you have ever seen, sorry I ate it before lynz could snap a picture but it was nearly two feet long and had 4 different animals on it! After that we got the famous Ecuadorian corn on the cob which is BBQed right on the street, dipped in butter and slathered with what looked like cheese....simply amazing! oh and everything we ate came to a total of $3.00 :)
This morning our alarms were set for 7:30am and we were picked up at 8:00am for our volcano adventure. About 45 mins outside of Otavalo stands Fuya Fuya volcano at the top of a loooong winding narrow cobble stone road. We were the only two guests our guide had for the day so we were really exited to practice our Spanish on him. Before we could do that we had to help him unload the bikes from the back of the truck, walk them up a hill and hid them in a gully under some bushes where he proceeded to lock them up (in Ecuador ¨locking up¨involves about 4 feet of string about as thick as a shoe lace and several knots).
The base of the hike was at about 11,000 feet I believe and we had to hike to the summit which was at almost 15,000 feet, which wouldn´t be so bad if we were acclimated. After huffing and puffing and learning Spanish and teaching English to our guide for a little more then 2 hours we reached the top, to find about 50 foot visibility! Our guide told us not to worry because every so often the clouds would break for about five seconds and we would be able to get some nice pictures. Both lynz and I thought we heard him wrong or were confused with our translations but a few mins after that all the people at the top with us started yelling ¨the lake! the lake!¨and everyone jumped in front of cameras to get their picture taken, and in literally 5 seconds, the clouds had moved in again and you couldn't´t see a thing! This happened about 4 times while we were up there, and by the third time we were ready!!
The hike down was really steep and hard on the knees so naturally we were pretty beat by the time we got down to where we had left the bikes. After unlocking (untying) the bikes we started on the looooong cobble stone road back to town. If you haven´t already imagined let me paint a picture of what cobble stone roads feel like on your butt ridding a bike for 18.6 miles....its the equivalent of setting up a slip n slide on stairs and going down it....for two hours.
Tomorrow morning we pack up and leave or hostel and head down the the Pan American highway where we will stand on the side of the road (not at a bus stop) to catch a yellow bus with red letters that shows up once a day usually around 3pm...yeah that's literally the instructions we were given on how to get to the city of Banos. Banos is about 6 hours away but from what we hear its well worth the trek. We are looking forward to a lot of outdoor activities, natural hot springs and cheap massages!
We will update you all again when we arrive!
-Sean & Lynz
wow. good luck guys! cobble stone bike rides and private parts go together like pork chops and chocolate! hope your "lil guys" recover quickly!
ReplyDeleteI imagine the bus like the one in the movie Romancing the Stone (if you are old enough to remember that..) with all the locals and their chickens in cages going down this one lane road with cliffs on one side.
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