Visitors in Quito!

In Which, We Climb Way Too Many Stairs

For those who don't know, my parents came and visited us for two weeks at the beginning of March, and we had a BLAST!

I hadn't seen them since they left for the retired life in Puerto Rico in October 2014. That's the longest we've ever gone without seeing each other face to face! 

Reunited and it feels so good - even at 3am!

John and I were both super excited to show them a little slice of this beautiful country, and where better to start than in Quito? We were pretty familiar with all the tourist things to do, so getting around was fairly simple. 

The first Saturday we caught the market in Otavalo, which was, as always, phenomenal. Dad made out with a sweet hat and Mom picked up some coasters. She later regretted not picking up a few other things, but we'll probably make one more trip up there before we leave anyway.

That night we met up with our friends David and Carmen for dinner in La Ronda, a tourist district with lots of character and LOTS of food. Also plenty of live music and drinks, which was exactly what we were looking for.

La Ronda

The next day we ended up walking to the Basilica, which may or may not have involved me taking us down (and up!)many flights of stairs. My dad has both knees replaced and bad hips, so that wasn't the greatest plan ever, but he was a trooper and we got to see a lot of really great views of the city from some of the towers.

Panoramic view from the front of the Basilica - you can see El Panecillo!

Monday was probably our longest day, just in terms of being out and about. We had the driver of the hostel we were staying at take us to Mitad del Mundo, El Teleferico and El Panecillo, all in one day. 

We were pretty exhausted after that, but it was definitely worth it. Mitad has finished up their major construction projects, and they've got some lovely museums about the French geodesic missions to Ecuador to find the middle of the world as well as an AWESOME miniature model of El Centro Historico of Quito.

El Teleferico was a really fun adventure as well. While it was nice and warm down in the city, by the time we got up to the edge of the valley we were all glad to have jackets and sweaters, because it was COLD!

Just a veeeeeery small portion of Quito

The views were amazing and they had several hiking/biking trails as well as advertisements for horseback riding, so we may need to check that out again as well.

Finally, El Panecillo, or, that little lump of a hill in the middle of the city with a giant statue of a madonna, known as the Woman of the Apocalypse. The description comes from Revelation 12:1-18.

We were able to climb up (on the inside) to the top of the pedestal, which offered more great views of the city. Along the way they had explanations of how and when the statue was made.

Tuesday morning was our time to rest and relax, and then we packed up and left for Ambato around 1pm. 

While exhausting, I thoroughly enjoyed everything we did, even the stuff John and I had done before. It's kind of fun to hit up areas you've already been to as a tourist again, this way you can find a bit more in-depth information or new angles of seeing things. 

Up next: our trip to Tena and the tour up and down the Napo River! This was definitely a highlight of our trip, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone considering the foothills of the Amazon here in Ecuador.

Coming Home

In Which, We Plan to Return

Yep, it's true. We've decided to come home. 

We were initially thinking just to visit in June, but after looking at travel costs and considering several other options, we've decided to simply make our final return.

We'll be planning on coming back sometime in the beginning of June, most likely within the first 10 days or so. We'll hopefully be housesitting for some friends for a week or so, and then, when they return, we'll move over to John's grandparents' house for a few days.

THEN, the plan is to visit my parents in Puerto Rico for a month. If you follow me on FB, you'll know that they recently visited us for 2 weeks, so we'll return the favor. 

When we return from PR, we'll settle back into our house and basically start afresh with all the things we've learned while living in Ecuador. 

We have a couple posts waiting in the wings regarding our Mindo trip (back in January) as well as lots of photos from the trips we took while my parents were here, so look for those in the coming weeks.

Mama T, when we went to Banos

Getting ready to canoe down the Napo River outside Misahualli!

In the meantime, we're still making the most of our time here, with possible trips to Quilotoa and the beach (again!) in the mix. 

Either way, we plan to enjoy the rest of our time here to the fullest.

Taking a little look-see...

Just as an FYI, don't get less than five hours of sleep when you have to work a 10-hour day. I fantasized about taking a nap yesterday but totally whiffed on it and then ended up missing my 10:30 bedtime later on. Needless to say, I'm running on fumes right now and there isn't enough coffee in my office to keep me running much past 3pm...

ANYWAY. On to more interesting things than the back of my eyelids. You may have noticed in the last post where I mentioned we are taking a two week trip to Ecuador in order to kind of scope out the area. Well, that's happening in three more days. We leave Atlanta this Thursday at 6:30pm and we'll arrive in Quito (the capital of Ecuador) around 11:30pm.

In case you were curious, flights to Ecuador aren't as expensive as you might think. Depending on time of year and where you leave from, they can run from about $1000 to $1400 total round-trip for two tickets. Ours ended up being a little more pricey than normal because we had specific criteria. I have to work Thursday morning, so we had to have a flight leaving in the afternoon/early evening. John gets nervous about flight connections, ESPECIALLY international connections, so we wanted a direct flight. We wanted to be home early on Thanksgiving so that we could spend at least a little time with our families, so we needed a flight returning before 8am.

All of this added up to about $500 more than what we would have paid had we bought plane tickets like we normally do -"What's cheapest?"

The plan is to fly into Quito and acclimatize for a few days. Quito sits at over 9000 ft above sea level, making it the highest national capital city in the world. So, acclimatizing is a necessity, especially since Simpsonville, SC sits around 860 ft above sea level. Holy popping-ears Batman! Note to self: bring gum.

Quito has over 2.2 million people living in it and is, as I mentioned earlier, the capital of Ecuador. It's actually quite a modern city and has many of the first-world amenities that we're used to, so we're anticipating that it will be a great jumping-off point for us. One interesting little factoid about Quito is that it's one of the longest continually occupied cities in the Americas, and I think it's the longest continually occupied capital. Talk about history.

We plan to be in Quito for a few days getting to know the city as well as visiting the surrounding areas to the north. A few cities we hope to visit include Cotacachi, Otavalo and Ibarra. At roughly 90 miles away, Ibarra is the furthest of those cities from Quito. These cities are known for their local markets, where they specialize in leather and woolen goods as well as a variety of local produce.

After a few days in the north, we plan to take the main highway south towards a city called Cuenca. On the way we hope to check out Ambato and Banos. For the enquiring amongst you, we plan on using public transportation to get around. Buses and taxis are ubiquitous all over Ecuador and they are cheap, which is the song of my people.

Cuenca is considered the cultural capital of Ecuador, and it is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With a lively arts scene and markets galore, 'El Centro' is kind of the heartbeat of the city. Think Downtown Greenville, but bigger. It has a population of about 330,000, which puts Greenville City to shame with its 60,000.

We plan on staying in what are called 'hostals.' It's not a hostel, although those are available. This is more like a smaller version of a bed and breakfast. Many Ecuadorians open their homes and rent out extra rooms to travelers, creating an extra source of income for themselves and allowing people like John and myself to see the country from a local POV. Currently, we've book two hostals - one in Quito for when we arrive, and one in Cuenca. Everything in between will be an adventure, which is sort of panic-inducing as well as exhilarating. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this aspect of it, so I'll let you know as we go along how well it works out (or doesn't).

So that's where we're at for now. We plan on updating the blog with LOTS of pictures while we're gone, and John might even get on here before we leave to tell you how excited he is to be taking pictures with a GoPro Hero3+ and the whole saga about getting one that actually, you know, WORKS.

If you have any other burning questions about WHY we're doing this, take a look at the first post. If you still have a plethora of questions after that, feel free to ask in the comments or hit me up on Facebook. We're more than happy to talk your ear off about all the thoughts that have gone through our little brains as we came to this decision about changing our life.

Have a Happy Monday!

V