Mucho Menor, Si! Es Hecho en Ecuador!

I haven´t updated this travel report in a while and a lot of you start asking themselves if I am still alive, I can assure you yes I am.

For today I am going to start off with some typical Ecuadorian experiences caught in “one-liners”.


Mucho Menor, Si! Es Hecho en Ecuador.

“Much worse. Yes! It is made in Ecuador.”

- This stands for the overall quality of Ecuadorian products and the build quality of for example their buildings and the wiring for the electrical system are a lot of tomes just dangerous and
scary.


Mi Corazón

- “My Heart” – is part of every major hit song in Latin America, so if you don’t hear it in a song, you know automatically it wasn’t a hit.


In Quito, try to cross the road at the regular crossings for pedestrians, not that people will stop, but it will be easier for the ambulance personnel to find you if you do get hit.


“Jugos (Fresh fruit juices) are widely available in every Latin American country and are made from about everything that could be fit through an extruder, including lawn clippings, fresh fruits or the operators fingers.”


Rain-forest – Definition, Forest where 90% of the time it rains (a lot) in a public vote in decide it not to call it mosquitoforest… for some strange reason.


On Friday nights especially the Mariscal area of Quito feels a bit like an open sewer, and it definitely smells like one.


“You know where it’s made”

- Expression commonly used when Ecuadorian products fail, break down, malfunction or are at the brink of breaking down.


Si! Tenemos baños con agua caliente…

“Yes! We do have bathrooms with hot water” but meaning, if you are lucky your water won’t be ice cold.


So Enough jokes about Ecuador. What you are here for, is to know what I have been up to the last two weeks!

Liga siempre Liga, Liga es dentro mi Corazón

So once again we went to a soccer match, this time in the stadium of Liga, (the FC Barcalona or Real Madrid of Ecuador) The stadium is impressive and the fans are even more impressive as they just keep on singing the full 90 minutes! So to get there we had to go to the other side of town and since there was no time left to go by bus we took a taxi. As you must know every soccer match on a Sunday is to be played before 4 ‘o clock in the afternoon as then they can still sell alcohol to people as by law it is prohibited to sell alcohol on Sunday, except for soccer matches, there they can sell alcohol until 4 ‘o clock. So we had to leave the house at around 10 and still how carefully we planned and waited for no one, we were still a bit late. But we found a taxi driver who could speak English, call his friends and take us to the stadium with 3 taxis, this guy even got us the tickets for the match, and after a walk of about 10 minutes we were getting in line to get into the stadium which always takes quite long here in Latin America and while the match was already under way there were still thousands outside waiting to get in, including our group of 11 people of course. So while vendors try anxiously to sell you all kinds of products before you get in to the stadium other people try to cut in line, others ask for money to still buy a ticket and else they will kill you they say and the police is patiently waiting for things to get out of hand. So when we were finally in the stadium we had to start looking for a spot, not an easy task as the average Ecuadorian doesn’t know what personal space is and so they stand shoulder to shoulder, cheek to cheek arm to arm and so on. So we decided not to walk to far into the crowd and do that after the first half when people would move to different locations. Meanwhile also inside the stadium Vendors were selling cigarettes, beer, hotdogs, umbrella’s and many more. So even though we didn’t have the best spots in the stadium we could still fully enjoy the stadium exploding with the first goal! They pretended like they already won the match and only had to play 5 more seconds. But the atmosphere in general was great! After the match we tried to get a taxi back to the Mariscal which wasn’t easy especially as everyone seemed to want a taxi, so after we took the bus for a bit, we decided to take a taxi at another station.

Trout, Cocktails, Ladiesnight

So as every week on a specific day it is ladies night, where the ladies drink for free and after a certain hour there are also boys allowed in the bar, so I decided once more to make my already famous trout again, with lime herbs and white wine in the oven in little tinfoil packages. So after and during this nice meal we were also drinking some nice Cuba-Libre which (rum-cola with a lot of ice and an extra squeeze of lime). Interesting fact, the Cuba Libre came into existence because of the American liberation of Cuba, and a typical Cuba Libre is made with Cuban rum and American Cola, nowadays it is very hard to make a Cuba Libre in either Cuba or the United States, as both Countries boycott each other’s products. So after a couple of these Cuban-American Concoctions we decided to follow the ladies to the bar, but not too long as the next day would be another day at work. Which turned out to be another night in the Attic, which is the bar which is closest to where we live and which we can hear through the wall of our bed-room on any given day except for Sundays. So after a good night it was time to get to bed again and enjoy some sleep.

Jungle Canopé, “Colibrí”, Wet wetter.. Yves

So after Ladies night and another few days of work or not all work because the office was still redecorating, it was Friday evening again, and basically weekend, first we wanted to go to the Otavalo market and to the Mindo rainforest, but gradually the group decided that we only went to Mindo, Mindo is the closest Rainforest/Clowdforest from Quito it is about 2 hours by bus and it is not proper jungle yet but it comes very close to that. So there we went on Saturday morning, in the taxi to the North bus terminal, we had a taxi driver who played very bad German music “Ein Zwei Polizei”… und so weiter.

When after a pretty crammed but comfortable bus ride we arrived at Mindo we first had to find a Hostel so we ended up in the Bambú Cabañas. Where after dropping off our stuff it was to the butterfly gardens for all except for the Swiss girls who had already seen it, so when we arrived we first arrived in a garden with a lot of humming birds of which I tried to take some decent pictures, but as they are fast as lightning and move in all different directions they are not easy to capture on picture at all. For a short while I observed them as they are absolutely beautiful and the way they can keep still in midair is totally amazing to see, although they don’t do that for more than 2 seconds in a row, just a little bit too short to set my camera, focus and take a decent picture. But as you can see in the pictures section of this travel report I managed to get some shots of! After hanging around with the butterflies it was time to head off to see the butterflies. A woman with a very American accent came to give us a short tour of the butterfly farm and explained in short that they harvested butterflies to preserve their population and that butterflies go through 4 phases, egg, caterpillar, Chrysalis (hanging from a tree looking like a natural leaf), and adult butterfly. After some live examples and the short explanation it we could stay in the butterfly garden for as long as we wanted and we took some pictures of the butterflies, but what I actually really wanted to do was to take a good picture of the hummingbird which were just outside of the butterfly farm.We saw a lot of special butterfly species, but the ones that stood out the most were the biggest ones with the size of the palm of an adult man’s hand these butterfly weren’t small and it looked as if the major population they were harvesting there was this species.

Next, we went back to the hostel by a typical Ecuadorian taxi, a pickup truck where we for a change were allowed to sit inside. Normally it is requested for guests of these kind of “taxi’s” to sit in the back which they have slightly modified Ecuadorian style to accommodate passengers, most of the time. So after we picked up the Swiss girls, we went on to go “Canopy” which means as much as strapping yourself into some climbing gear, attach pulley and a safety line and fly over the jungle attached to a zip-line which is connected to two trees, one on a slightly lower point in the jungle. Even though I didn’t really trust this at first after the first 2 cables I really got the hang of it and started to really enjoy it. The views are just great, and you get a real sense of freedom whilst flying over the jungle like this especially on the longer cables where you can’t see the end because of the fog. Even when I forgot to brake/they forgot to tell me to brake on a fast cable it was still okay at the end, we all got gloves with a special brake pad so we could hold down on the line and brake. And this adventure went on for 10 cables where everyone was allowed to try different positions I preferred to stick to the normal position as the other positions required the instructor most of the time to get kind of physical with you. As mean while it was raining a lot already we were getting drained, at first I thought my raincoat would be able to block much of the rain out, but this just isn’t a European rain cloud, this is Ecuador, and in Ecuador it means that the rain doesn’t stop. So after the “Canopy” we went back to the Hostel, or Robin and me not directly because we were sent down to the village to get some nice ant warm pizza’s. So after we returned and ate our pizza we could finally also enjoy “warm” shower and nice dry clothes. After this we drank a few beers at the bar of the Hostel and then returned to our nice 6 person bamboo apartment.
So the Next day it was time to put back on our wet clothes as we knew we were going to get wet again as I went “Tubing” With the girls, which boils down to 6 old inner tires from trucks bound together and let’s go rafting. So with this adventure you were bound to get wet from the beginning, but it was so cool to do, once again we went into the typical jungle taxi and drove over bad roads towards our destination somewhere a bit more up the river, the whole time a dog was running alongside the truck and I already thought why is that dog following us, when I got the answer that he/she was also going with us into the river and swam most of the way. First I thought they made a joke, but once on the water I saw that the dog indeed swam behind us, and did some part of the journey in land. As the river wasn’t that deep this time of year we got stuck in river a couple of times but this only made it more fun.

After we safely returned to the point where we got dropped off in the first place, we went back to get Robin and went to the jungle to see the waterfalls. So after a 20/30 minute ride up the slopes of a mountain we got to the starting point of our waterfall/jungle adventure, we had to step into this quite dodgy looking cable cart style transportation which could be best seen as something straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. To fare us across the canopy once again to get to the really rainforesty part of Mindo. We got out of the cart and walked straight into the rainforest, where we saw the biggest earthworm I have ever encountered in my whole life, see the picture as well. And we walked through these paths on the lookout for a waterfall when I realized they had put up signs along these paths in the jungle to show you where the waterfalls were. After a nice hike and seeing some other interesting bugs, caterpillars and a lot of plants an green we came to this waterfall which wasn’t that high but still amazing to see, you just can’t compare it with watching the rainforest from the comfort of your own home. To the big rock next the Ecuadorians had attached a fine ladder which went about 3 stories or 10 meters up to where you could swim in the river and go from an improvised slide. So after the most dangerous stair climb ever as the stairs weren’t that safe for my feel, but at least they didn’t give way yet, we reached the top.

We payed some Ecuadorian guy $3 to take a swim and go down the slide which was a bit more up the mountain, there was also a platform for jumping off but we couldn’t use it as “the water was too low” and so they directed us to an even more dangerous place for if we wanted to jump down, namely in the middle of the waterfall. After the crazy Ecuadorian guy jumped after saying it “es más o menos seguro” meaning it is more or less safe, he came back up telling us it was “un poco peligroso ” so I decided not to do it, as the stairs still seemed a little bit safer. After these great experiences and it was raining full on again it was already time to leave the jungle head back to the hostel to put on some dry clothes for the last time and to get the bus back to Quito. But not before, when we were waiting for our taxi we could see what the Jungle could really be like, it started to rain like it had never rained before. When our taxi arrived and he saw we were totally soaked (even though we could wait for him in a dry place) he directed us to the back just as usual. This is the point that we think we can’t cat soaked any more and we see new waterfalls spring into existence all the way down from the mountain where it almost turns into a river and I start questioning myself out loud if it wouldn’t be better to had an amphibious vehicle on these roads…..

Hasta Luego y disfruta mis fotografías



Oh and just because the Video Upload doesn't really work, I have put a video on youtube for you guys from one of our drives through Mindo: Just follow the link below!

http://youtu.be/sKHh1EJCeec