Ecuador

After returning from the Galapagos, Josh and I headed to Cuenca, Peru. Cuenca is considered the prettiest city in Ecuador and it didn't dissapoint. The cobbled streets are lined with interesting and beautiful colonial buildings. We spent most of our time there roaming the streets and peeking into churches. One of our highlights, however, was visiting a Panama hat museum and manufacturer. The famous Panama hat, is more accurately called a "Monte Cristi" hat and it is not from Panama at all, but from Ecuador! It was called a "Panama hat" by gold prospectors heading to California during the gold rush. It was faster for prospectors from the east to travel by boat down the east coast, through the Panama canal and up the west coast to California than to travel over land. When they were heading by Panama, a popluar purchase was a Monte Cristi hat from Ecuador. That's how they got their current name. Anyway, Cuenca is famous for their Monte Cristi hats. They are made with a type of soft straw, woven by hand and then hammered on a wooden mold to make the classic shape. The prices varied depending on how fine and tight the weave was. Josh found a hat that looked great on him so we bought it for a steal.

After Cuenca, we headed for Baños. Baños is a fairly small town, about 2000m in elevation and pretty much right on a volcano. Because of this, they have geothermal hot springs ...and don't worry, the volcano hasn't erupted for about a year or two! Josh and I had a really enjoyable time there hiking in the hills, riding bikes to explore the many, many waterfalls in the area and soaking in the near-scalding waters. We stayed there an extra day or two to wait out a referendum that was taking place in Ecuador at the time, but finally we had to move on.

From Baños, we took the bus to Quito, the capital of Ecuador. We picked a cheap hostel at random in the Mariscal district where most backpackers stay. The streets were lined with trendy restaurants and bars. The most interesting part of Quito has to be the old city. The colonial buildings and churches would rival those of Europe, I'm sure. We toured the sites, museums and churches and my favourite things were the Santa Catalina convent where the nuns live in isolation (even from eachother) but make soaps, creams, wine and elixers for sale and climbing up into the bell tower of the San Fransisco church. I had to go on my own because Josh is afraid of heights but I took the camera to capture the view from the top. The climb started up narrow stairways but eventually declined to ladders with unevenly spaced rungs. I climbed and climbed and was eventually ABOVE the bells in the tippy-top of the spire. There wasn't even a floor here but some chicken wire stretched over some beams. I balanced on the beams and carefully removed the camera from the case so I could snap a picture of the great view. Click, click -nothing. There was no battery in the camera! Oh well, I'll just have the picture in my mind. On my way back down, I had the (mis)fortune of being IN the bell tower when the clock struck 5! I was startled to say the least and a little deaf.

We had an amazing time visiting the Galapagos islands. We started our trip with an 8-day sailboat cruise visiting several islands. After that we went to Isabella island (the largest) for 5 days.

The wildlife in the Galapagos is superb. On many of the landings we encountered newborn sealion pups who were just opening their eyes. At other sites were we able to swim with juvenille sealions, and on Isabella two played with us the entire time we were snorkelling. And when a white-tipped reef shark swam nearby, one of the sealions chased him away! These two pups loved floating up to our masks, blowing bubbles in our face, and then swimming away. On Isabella we also "discovered" a sheltered bay that had about 20 resting green sea turtles at low tide. On Santa Fe we snorkelled with a school of eagle rays and several turtles. At a few sites we swam with sharks.

Perhaps the two most interesting animals on the islands are the giant tortoises and the marine iguanas. It is believed that both floated to the islands on debris, and with no predators the tortoises grew to great size while the iguanas turned to the sea to feed on algae and seaweed. The tortoises were hunted to extinction on most islands (first by sailors and then by Ecuadorian colonists and introduced species). Three species of the giant tortoises are extinct while Lonesome George is the last of his species. On Santiago island Charles Darwin complained about not being able to set up a tent because the soil was undermined by so many iguana burrows. Today the land iguana is extinct on Santiago because feral goats destroyed the soil and out-competed the iguanas.

Birds are everywhere, with the most famous being the Darwin finches. These tiny birds have different sized beaks depending on their niche. There is even one that uses cactus spines to pick bugs out from under the bark on trees. The most amazing thing is that none of the animals are afraid of people. The boobies got their name from early sailors because they could just walk up to them and club them to death.

Click on any of the following photos to see more of our other photos from the Galapagos. Descriptions of the photos explain things better than I can do here.

After descending from the chilly Andes, we decided that we needed some time in the sun. Unfortunately, coastal fog covers nearly the whole Pacific coast of the continent for much of the year. The exception is Mancora, which for some reason has year-round sun. We shacked up in a cheap hotel $13 with a pool (yay) and took surf lessons the second day. It wasn't too difficult, but that's because our instructors had on flippers and were giving us a good push. When we rented (smaller boards, the only available) in the afternoon, things weren't as successful.

So the next day we switched to boogie boards, the waves were much larger, and we had more fun. Other than enjoying the beach all we did was eat lots of fresh seafood--including ceviche (fish cooked in lemon juice).

We then headed to Guayaquil, Ecuador to book a Galapagos cruise. In the three days before our flight (to the Galapagos) we went to Puerto Lopez where we were able to see humpback whales. They come up here to mate every year and the males breach over and over again to impress the females. It was awesome.

Click on the whale photo to go to our flickr site. We have the Galapagos photos there but haven't had the time to write about it yet.