33 days in, and Ecuador opens up to Gappers

Hola tambien! (as you can already see our spanish is getting better - roughly translates to "hello again", i think..)

Welcome back to the second installment of the fortnightly Ecuador blog.

´Twas but a mere 33 days ago when we arrived in Quito, Ecuador. And since then we have travelled to the traditional Andean village of Otavalo, the chilled out little surfing village, which on the rare occasion kindly gives out food poisoning, of Canoa, and somewhere i am just about to tell you allllll about..

Montañita, the fourth stop on our tour of Ecuador. Yet again we jumped on an overnight bus to Guayaquil. We arrived in Guayaquil at around 10am in the morning, quickly purchased out tickets to Montañita, and went to the bus terminal and waited an hour before departing. Following further two and a half hour bus ride we arrived at our destination.

Despite the blistering heat and battling through sweat compromising our vision, we soldiered on to seek accomodation. After five minutes of walking across a bridge then back towards the beach, we found what was to be our accomodation for the next three nights, Hostal Kundulini (my understanding is that Kundalini is a form of meditation or yoga or something spiritual) - situated directly on the beach a two minute walk out of town (via la playa - playa means beach), it was the perfect place to stay. Due to the inconvenient check in time of 3pm, being it just 12:30 we decided to go into town for lunch. Following lunch we had a little wander around the streets and various stalls which swamped the gutters.

Montañita was chilled out, we did the normal touristy things one does when in Montañita - we spent most of our time on the beach tanning (Sam failed, she got burnt instead. And mich turned black), swimming, i befriended a nice Ecuadorian dude in the water and had a bit of a surf on his board, we constantly roamed the streets day and night buying whatever there was to buy. On Saturday night we went out on the town and danced to the local tunes, with some (just one) members of the group suppossedly making fools of themselves, despite successfully executing radical, classic, and quite interpretive moves to perfection, to which the locals popped their hips and raised their bushy eyebrows.

On the tuesday, we caught what we thought would be a two hour bus trip, which ended up being a five hour trip, to the hole i was talking about before, Manta. Eight hours passed and we arrived at home in Quito Wednesday morning, and pretty much slept all day.

Thursday marked a day that has been claimed to be "holy", so we ventured into the picturesque streets of the Old Town to have a wander around some chapels and museums which were, because of the day, "suppossedly" free to enter and explore (turns out they weren´t, hence the quotation marks surrounding the word "supossedly"). Our first stop was a chapel called Compañia de Jesus or something like that - a pretty ordinary looking monument standing outside of it, throughout my life i, and i am sure the other volunteers have as well, have been told "not to judge a book by it´s cover", well i did anyway. Turns out i shouldn´t have as the inside of the chapel was as gold as an American pimp´s teeth. The majority of the interior of the chapel was covered in gold leaf - every pillar every cross every jesus every whatever you can think of (except the pews and floor and windows and some of the jesus´). Although some people claimed it as a "marvel" to look at, personally i think that the gold could have been put to better use, like towards the splendors of nature or improving schools and whatnot. But hey, each to their own. Following the chapel (which we paid $2 for - why would they charge people to enter? Do they need to buy MORE gold to put in there...?) we went to an old hospital turned into a museum, which was sorta interesting, and also some parts of it were interactive which was a bonus (instruments and musique).

A wet, miserable, rainy Good Friday came along and we all ventured back into the old town to see the annual Easter parade, where 50,000 locals (and a few tourists) flog the streets of the old town to see floats with the likes of jesus and mary parading on around on them and purple clu-clux-clan dudes wandering around looking a bit freaky.

Before we knew it Saturday came around. Kate, Sam, and Mich went into the Carolina park to see what i believe to have been orchids and a butterfly farm, and whilst they were fluttering around in the orchids with the grown up caterpillars, Asta and I yet again went back to the old town to see the San Francisco plaza/chapel/museum, which was quite large and old and impressive. After the San Francisco we went to some markets in a parked named Parque Eljido, ´twas here where Asta and i bought two scarfs - one sporting blue and white stripes, the other the two glorious colours of the YELLOW AND BLACK. Fitting being the day Richmond beat north. But moving on...

Anyways...

Easter Sunday arrived with excitement due to our general understanding of Easter - devouring piles upon piles of chocolate bilby´s, lindt bunnies, caramel filled eggs, and various cadbury products. However to our disappointment, turns out Ecuador takes the more religious view on Easter, almost completely disregarding the importance of chocolate on this very day. Unbelievable. Nevertheless, with our chins up and money in hand purchased enough locally produced organic chocolate to satisy our cravings from the supermarket.

And that´s pretty much what´s been happening the past two weeks. We´re back at school and it´s the same as usual. And i think we´re going to Cotopaxi this weekend (a volcano overlooking Quito).

Oh, and in case you haven´t heard - a volcano (not nearby i think, is near a town by the name of Baños - which is coincedentally the exact word for "toilet". Nice town.) Jokes aside, Baños is actually a very nice town and we plan to go there, but probably not any time soon as the residents have been evacuated. We actually recieved an email from the Australian Embassy talking about it.

Alrighty then, that´s pretty much all i have to say, and again please forgive me for any spelling mistakes or grammar as i´m on a tight schedule.

So for now, from all of us...

adios.

p.s. GO TIGES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!