Our reason for staying a whole week in Quito was that we were able to take cheap personal Spanish lessons at the hostal, and we thought that would be a good idea.  However, it just so happened it was Easter Week (Semana Santa) and in Quito they do some weird things to celebrate.

During the days leading up to Easter, Brianna and I would:

1. start our day off with Spanish lessons
2. take a walk around the city and stop for some cheap chinese food at a Chifa (we could both eat and drink for about $6US and walk out so full we would complain)
3. hang out with people on the patio at night with a few beers (or rum and yogurt) until we got too cold
4. watch Spanish versions of Passion of the Christ and other Jesus-based films while I tried to explain to Brianna the difference between God and Jesus and where babies come from…

Then came Easter day and we went to watch the procession, and that was scary for the following reasons:

1. thousands of people dressed in robes similar to that of a certain infamous racist clan (only in purple) walking slowly down the street while…
2. creepy church music blared through the city (that type of dark choir music they use in horror flicks)
3. people dressed as Jesus wearing real thorns and dragging real heavy crosses up the street
4. a scary blind guy with no eyes walking around asking for money (more like “moaning” for money)

and it doesn´t end there.  On the hill overlooking most of Quito there’s this statue.

so we start climbing up these stairs to go up to the top.  A local family on the way down tells us to take a cab because it’s too dangerous.  A man in the family points up, and then to us, and then makes the international “you gonna get murdered” sign by running his finger across his neck.

We ran into two other travellers and decide to all go anyway.  Nothing happened, except a little boy asked us for our cameras (really).  He didn´t have a weapon, and he was only 6 years old or so, so I beat the shit out of him.  When we got to the top we got a good look at the statue….

an angel holding a chain which is attached to an alligator/turtle/dragon beast which she is standing on while it lays on top of the world

Makes as much sense as thousands of purple dwarves running through the streets, but I liked it.

and this is scary too…

Quilotoa (IPA [kiloˈtoa]) is a water-filled caldera and the westernmost volcano in the Ecuadorian Andes. The 3 kilometres (2 mi) wide caldera was formed by the collapse of this dacite volcano following a catastrophic VEI-6 eruption about 800 years ago, which produced pyroclastic flows and lahars that reached the Pacific Ocean, and spread an airborne deposit of volcanic ash throughout the northern Andes.^[1] The caldera has since accumulated a 250 m (820 ft) deep crater lake, which has a greenish color as a result of dissolved minerals. Fumaroles are found on the lake floor and hot springs occur on the eastern flank of the volcano.^[1]

I would agree with that.

We were a little confused on how to get there on our own, and we never bought the Lonely Planet guide to Ecuador, so we went with a guide.  It was worth it for us.  However, if you’re ever in Ecuador and you want to do it on your own, it’s pretty easy.

• Go to the town of Latacunga
• Catch a bus to Zumbahua (at the terminal)
• Pay somebody to take you up to Quilotoa in their truck

It’s that last step that made us think we wouldn’t pull it off, but once you’re in Zumbahua, if you don’t look like a Latin American, there will be plenty of people offering to take you up for a few bucks.

Anyways, the day we went happen to coincide with main market day (Saturday I think) as well as a big political rally of some sort, so it helped to be in a vehicle with our guide instead of trying to get through the madness ourselves.

The road to Zumbahua.  People were everywhere because of the political rallies.

The market in Zumbahua.  We ate some red bananas but I don’t have the pictures up…

Traditional-isms and sheep.  We ate some red sheep but I don’t have the pictures up…

A couple shots from with drive up:

It’s easy to get down, but because of the elevation it’s pretty tiring to get back up.  Some people pay to be taken back up on horses.  We were too cool for that but almost died.

This is what some of the trail looks like.  The blurry white thing in the corner is the Chupacabra.

“Brianna, get a picture of me!  Brianna!!  Hey, get a picture of me!”

And this is pretty much what you get…

 This is me and our guide.  We went down so he could show me the bubbles coming up from the water.  Quilotoa crater is an active volcano and so it bubbles.  The water is undrinkable here because it’s full of abrasive minerals from deep down in the crust.

And of course there’s Alapaca´s up there and God knows what they might be up to.

In the town of Baños in Ecuador, the hip thing to do is rent a bike and hit the highway between Baños and Puyo.  Puyo is over 60km away, but most of it is downhill.  Along the way you see different waterfalls and sights.

Actually, that’s exactly what I wrote.  At that time I only had a video (check it) to post of one small part of the journey.  Now I have a few pic-tures online from Brianna’s camera and a little time to write about thangs.

So we’re actually in Arequipa, Peru right now and way behind on this blog.  I’m also drinking some cheap rum (15 soles – about $6 CAD) but I’ll do my darndest to recall the events accurately…

We were in Quito (Ecuador, the big city) hanging out for a week and taking Spanish lessons and then we decided to go to Baños.  We didn’t know much about it except that it had many hot springs and it was a popular excursion to rent mountain bikes and attempt to bike to Puyo (a nearby jungly city – about 65km away).

We didn’t arrive in Baños until the afternoon so had to save the biking for the next day, so, like most of our trip we began by walking around.  It tookabout 15 minutes for this guy to show up:

This guy was funny… and drunk.  He guessed we were Canadians (there has been tons of Canadians on this trip) and we started talking to him.  He works as a jungle tour guide and just wanted to hang with us and practice his English.

- Where you from?

- Soy de Canada, de donde eres?

- Canada!  Is cold, no?

- Si, mucho frio.

Unfortunately this the only level conversation we can ever get to with the locals, but the practice helps and they sure are patient.

Baños is surrounded by mountains and small waterfalls.  Our amigo took us to a spot where the locals can fill their water bottles up for free with fresh mineral water as well as wash their clothes.

You can walk up these stairs beside the falls.

Can you see how happy we are?  Notice our “thumbs up”.

We walked around a graveyard on the edge of town.  I thought this site looked like a an apartment building with mini balconies.  I would pretend to be a big monster.  Brianna wouldn’t laugh.

Here we are on our bikes.  Brianna is making a rude face and I am not impressed.  These helmets are mostly for show because they wouldn’t stay on our heads properly.

You’re not suppose to bike through most of the tunnels (there a giant signs telling you not too); except for one.  It’s a scary deal, because it’s fairly long and pitch black inside but all you can see if the bright light at the end (which starts as a small speck of light in the distance).  It’s really disorienting and you lose your sense of speed and distance.  We were lucky a vehicle didn’t come through while we were in the tunnel because they drive fast and there’s only a little room on the side.

And then you can stop and cross a bridge!  And we laughed and laughed and laughed…

You pay a dollar and go see a set of waterfalls where they’ve built a series of stone balconies that get closer and closer to the falls.  Brianna was so happy.

If we don´t make it back, this is the picture they’ll use on the news.

I climbed in a little cave that brings you even closer to the falls.  There is so much water in the air that it’s pretty much raining.

Here’s a shot of the cable car we rode in the video (check it).

Baños from afar.

Proof that God exists.  It’s right here, baby.

And when we got back, we nurtured our tired bodies with some fresh street guinea pig meat.

Actually, we skipped the guinea pig.   We probably had chicken and I probably washed it down with a couple of giant beers.  And we probably had mayo on our fries and got so full we complained about it.

Also, we never made it to Puyo, but we must have been damn close.  We made it farther than anyone else we met, but it started raining and civilization had been out of sight for some time and we hadn’t seen a bus for hours and there were weird noises coming from the jungle and Brianna probably had to take a poop… so we caught the next bus we saw back.

]]> http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/2009/05/17/ecuador-biking-banos-to-puyo-extended-edition/feed/ 1 http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/2009/05/04/ecuador-biking-banos-to-puyo/ http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/2009/05/04/ecuador-biking-banos-to-puyo/#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 23:00:00 +0000 rbosinger http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/?p=116 In the town of Baños in Ecuador, the hip thing to do is rent a bike and hit the highway between Baños and Puyo.  Puyo is over 60km away, but most of it is downhill.  Along the way you see different waterfalls and sights.  There’s also this crazy cable car you can take across a canyon for a dollar or two.  I’d like to post more about this when the pictures finish uploading, but I haven’t done an update for a while and have free access to internet so I thought I would post this video.

One of the major cool things to do in Colombia is the Ciudad Perdida trek.  It’s basically Colombia’s version of Manchu Picchu: an old civilization ruin on up in the mountains in the jungle from somewhere around 5th Century A.D.  It was only discovered in the 1970’s and for a while people were fighting over it before the government stepped in.  I think it’s only been safe to go up there since the late 80’s, but even since 2003 there had been some cases of tourists getting kidnapped.  It’s different now.  In fact, almost every backpacker we ran into in Colombia had done this trek or was planning on doing it at some point.  I think the only danger might be having a heart attack on the hike or going off the cliff on the crazy bus ride up and down to the starting point.  Anyways, we decided to do this because it’s much cheaper than Machu Picchu and less touristy and heard of (although it could very well become the next Machu Picchu by the way things were looking).  It cost us about $200CAD each for a 6 day, five night hike with guides that cook three meals a day and donkeys that carry out the hammocks and other essentials.  The only thing you carry is your backpack with clothes and camera and any hiking gear you’d feel that you want.

Check it – I have uploaded quite a few cool pictures of this trek since I did this post.  Check out my Flickr Photostream.

We got to see a lot of these types of views.

These donkeys are at least… two times as strong as I am.

This is one of several fruit stop points along the way.  There are also several places where the indigenous folk sell Gatorade from small huts along the way.  Unfortunately I would later lose the only pesos I brought along in a poker game and have no money for the sweet sweet electrolytes.

On the trek you see many real indigenous families who truly live off the land in this region.  These kids spent hours swinging around on this vine.  These people (as well as our guides) carry around a traditional sack of coca leaves and the alkaloid that activates them.  Im sure it takes the edge off the trekking.  These people often run around the trail barefoot and eat monkey.

We had to cross rivers.  It was pretty extreme and I craved a Mountain Dew.  This is an earlier picture, but by the end we just left our shoes on and walked right through.

There were ferocious beasts on the trail.  This picture was taken moments before I wrestled this vicious panther to it´s death.

This is what the camps were like.   This is the first camp and it´s the nicest.   You can actually buy beer and other drinks here and the locals even carried up a pool table.  The camps thereafter would not have such things.

A rather jungly view.

No jungle hike is complete without learning how cocaine is made!  For $10 extra a former cocaine-making-man shows us how it´s done.  My Spanish wasn´t good enough to understand everything he said, but luckily a member of our group translated some for us.

So from what I gather the process seems to involve getting some coca leaves and some gasoline and mixing it all up with other chemical shit in dirty buckets.

or you be Brianna and just start gnawing on the leaves.  Please leave a comment if you think she looks like a giraffe-girl.

Almost there… just got stir it up a little (but not too much – really he said you can ruin a whole batch if you don´t know the art of the ´stir´

and filter our the unwanted dont-get-you-high junk….

and we have coca paste!  This is almost the final product.  After this point they basically just need to dry it out (and do one last filter).  Apparently it was cool to roll cigarettes in it and smoke it or put it on your gums and let your face go numb.  I tried a little and immediately killed someone.

Brianna tried a little and started swinging around on the vine like the indigenous kids.

She then stole an assault rifle from the army, said “I´m taking charge, bitches” and demanded they go find more coke.

Jungle bugs.

And I´ll end this post off with a few shots from the top…

]]> http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/2009/04/16/santa-marta-and-the-lost-city-ciudad-perdida-trek/feed/ 1 http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/2009/04/11/cartagena-colombia-and-friends/ http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/2009/04/11/cartagena-colombia-and-friends/#comments Sat, 11 Apr 2009 23:40:11 +0000 rbosinger http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/?p=96 It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. In fact, we’re in Ecuador right now, but I haven’t done a single post about our times in Colombia.  Hold onto your pantalones…

We flew into Cartagena from San Jose, Costa Rica at about 11pm, and we felt a little uneasy about that because everyone still seems to think Colombia is very dangerous, even though we read/heard different. Either way, it’s probably never the best idea to arrive in a foreign country you’ve never been to that late at night.  We grabbed about $200,000 pesos (about $100 CAD) from the ATM at the airport and jumped into a cab.

The hostel recommended by Lonely Planet (Casa Viena) was full, so we were stuck to find another place to stay.  Luckily, two fellas who were on the same flight were put in the same predicament and we all walked down the street together to another hostel.

We would end up hanging out all week with these guys in Cartagena. Their names were Carlos and Pär (from Spain and Sweden) and they were a bucket of laughs. It also helped that Carlos spoke fluent Spanish.

These pics were taken on their balcony the last day we hung out together, so now everything is chronocologically out of whack.  Now I’m going to take you back in time…

Cartagena is an colonial style town.  Part of the city is walled in.  It’s probably one of the bigger tourist spots in Colombia, so we got hassled a lot by merchants, but we really liked it overall.  I wouldn’t recommend going to the city beach.  We got hassled so bad by people trying to sell sunglasses, necklaces, massages and seafood that we spent the entire time saying “No, gracias” and couldn’t even talk to each other.

Imagine this multiplied by twenty.

You try not to be rude, these people are just trying to make a living.  However, when the 50th guy selling sunglasses approaches you within 30 minutes of being at the beach, you just start to ignore them.

We went to Volcán del Totumo on our second or third day in Cartagena.  It’s basically a little volcano that spews mud instead of lava.  You get to jump in there and try and wiggle around in the mud.  It’s suppose to be therapeutic but it’s mostly just fun.

Afterwards you go down to the lake to wash off and standing in the water there is a group of local women to help wash you off.  They basically beat the shit out of you.  I tried to avoid it because I thought it would be awkward and they expect a small tip (which isn’t a problem, but we weren’t sure how many small bills we had on us) but she threw me into the water and ripped my shorts off and stuck her fingers in my ears.  She got me real clean.  It’s a really funny experience; Brianna couldn’t stop laughing (she also had her bathing suit ripped off).  It was almost the best part of the whole thing, so if you ever go, let the women clean you off.

… or you could be like Carlos and say, ´why the hell would I pay money to jump into a vat of mud?`

Our hostel was in the Getsemani area of Cartagena which is where all the backpackers hostels are located.  This is considered the grungier part of downtown Cartagena, but we liked it and it felt safe enough.  The walled city has high class stores and hotels and a lot of cruise ships stop off and let people wander around there.  There was a park right near to where we stayed (Hostal Real) that we walk through everyday as a jumping off point to go elsewhere in the city.  We saw giant iguanas and tiny little monkeys in the trees right there in that inner city park.

Some of these guys were a few feet long.  Next time I travel I think I’ll bring a small realistic looking figurine of myself to place beside the giant lizards, frogs and cockroaches in the pictures I take and and really freak people out.

Dogs find funny places to lay down around here.  Sometimes they´ll lie right in the middle of a busy sidewalk and just tolerate everyone stepping over them.  Every once and a while I´ll stop and check if they’re breathing.  So far, they always have been.  Dogs seem to have their on lives here in Central/South America.  They walk around town like they´ve got jobs and errands to run.  They even seem to stick to the sidewalks and obey traffic laws.  There´s also very few places that care if dogs come in or not.  You could be sitting having a beer at a small bar and a dog might just walk in… and buy a treat… a dog drove us to the airport in his taxi once… we paid him in Beggin Strips….. I´m lying now.

This monkey is eating a saltine that a man was feeding them.  I would have liked to have seen him eat a giant turkey leg.

After a couple days in Cartagena we decided to go to Playa Blanca.  This is a really nice beach near Cartagena that you can either get to by boat or by a series of buses, a canoe and then motorbike.  Although the latter sounds fun, without fluent Spanish it tends to be worth it to take the easier route.  Also, I think it only would have saved us about $5.

We walked to the harbor area at about 9 in the morning only to find out that the cheapest deal already left at 8:30 that morning.  Buying a legit ticket involved paying a tax, and even though it still wasn’t that expensive (about $15 for the boat ride there) we still wanted to go cheaper.  The thing is, once you’ve talked to other backpackers and find out that they managed to do something for $10, it’s hard to pay $15 even if the extra $5 doesn’t matter to you that much.

We bartered with the locals who were all trying to fill their boats up with people going to Playa Blanca.  They take a different route and don’t pay the tax, so it’s cheaper (we paid $10).  We got to leave from the big market/fishermans port instead of the harbor and take a small cargo boat.  We had to wait around for them to find people to fill the boat with, but they also drove there 3 times as fast as the big boat we would have taken.

The market we left from.  A man tried to sell me a Mach 3 razor while I sat in the boat.  I tried to explain to him in my best Spanish that my reason for having a beard had nothing to do with not being able to find the proper razor.  I laughed to myself as I imagined buying the razor and then desperately shaving my beard (and head?) in front of him leaving patches and bloody cuts.´Muchos gracias señor´.

The kind of boat we took to Playa Blanca.

is nice.

We slept in hammocks for about $3 a night.

The sun beat the shit out of me… and the rum…

Me y mi perra.

Ok, and here’s one more pic of Cartagena…

And now I’ll move on to the next post before this computer completely crashes on me…

We have made it to the other coast! The sunny and dry Pacific Coast.  We decided to go to Montezuma and the trip there was, well, bouncy.  Three girls from our last hostel in La Fortuna were on the bus so we travelled with them and were happy to have their company. It was a long 10 hour trip. Bus then ferry then bus again.  It was fine until the second bus.  That was so bumpy.  My boobs were flying every which way.  I had to hold them down with my arm.  We arrived safely in Montezuma around 10 pm and there were hundreds of people flooding the steets.  People were friendly and trying to give advice on which hostels might be available.  We soon noticed a pattern:  “NO VACANCY!”  We tried so many hostels with no luck and then finally, like it had just appeared out of nowhere, came this big hostel (Or as I call it the haunted house).    There was this old man, shorter than me, with one glass eye, hairy, with big glasses and wearing only heart patterned boxer shorts who greeted us.  It was like something from a twisted 80’s thriller.  He couldn´t remember a damn thing either.  The one girl and I checked out the place, decided it´ll have to do and came back to tell him.  He said he´d given it away already.  “Ya, to us!” we replied.  “No, no, it´s gone”.  After much explaining, he gave us the room (18 bucks per person, the bastard).  He then started going on about how he wanted to die and he´s too old and has had multiple heart attacks.  “Ummmm, okay, well good night then!”  We´re pretty sure we slept where his hired goons slept but, whatever.  We got a bed and that was good enough for us!  It was more funny then anything.  We did however sleep on our own sheets.  Keep the buggies at bay.  Lesson learned:  Don´t show up to an already touristy spot the week of spring break at 10 at night and expect to sleep anywhere.  Word.

P.s Speaking of spooky things, I did end up seeing a ghost in the haunted house that night.  It was disgusting. 

]]> http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/2009/03/18/bri-says-2/feed/ 1 http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/2009/03/18/i-lost-my-anus-in-puntarenas-costa-rica/ http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/2009/03/18/i-lost-my-anus-in-puntarenas-costa-rica/#comments Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:59:49 +0000 rbosinger http://ryanbosinger.com/southamerica/?p=89 On our way back to San Jose from Montezuma we decided to stay in Puntarenas (Poont-ah-ray-nuss) for a night, just for the hell of it.  Puntarenas in a post town, and most people would only come here to catch a ferry or boat to the Nicoya Peninsula and go to a place like Montezuma. 

It was a nice place, and felt a lot more authenticate than everywhere else we had been in Costa Rica.  The coastal towns in Costa Rica feel a little bit like a tourist amusement park.  We thought this might be a good experience before we moved on the countries in South America where there would be far less tourists and English speakers than in Costa Rica.

Not much else to say about that. 

We took a bus from La Fortuna to San Ramon and it climbed up and up and up. A couple times we were so close to the edge of the road overlooking a cliff that even when I looked directly out the window it looked like the bus was flying. I watched as the altimeter on my watch climbed from 100ft to 3600ft. We took some pictures out of the bus window that don’t quite capture this, but I thought I’d post a couple anyway.

So here’s how we traveled: La Fortuna to San Ramon (4 hours), San Ramon to Puntarenas (3 or 4 hours), a ferry to Paquera (an hour or so and about $2US per person) and then another 1.5 hour bus ride to Montezuma.

Here’s some pictures from the ferry:

We met some people from Toronto and the States. It was nice to have someone to travel with and to be with while we dealt with a crappy situation to come…

Word of warning: don’t arrive in Montezuma at 9pm on a Saturday during Spring Break (we didn’t realize) and expect to get a room.

This place was hoppin’. People everywhere drinking in the streets having a good time. It seemed to only options we had for a place to stay were expensive room that had jacuzzi’s and all kinds of things we didn’t want to pay for. We spent hours looking for a place to stay – and of course, for the first time since the start of the trip, it’s actually sweltering hot.

Twelve hours of buses and boats, hungry and hot, running around with all our gear trying to find a room in the midst of a Spring Break mega party.

Long story short, we find this place (for about $30…):

Now this picture actually makes this room look pretty good.  It wasn´t that the room was that bad, but the whole experience of getting the room was something else, and a little sketchy. Plus, there were places for $35 with private hot showers and access to jacuzzis (had we known about the busyness and booked, or at least got there earlier).  Bri will talk about the experience more in her next Bri Says.

We got out of there the next morning and we got to see how beautiful Montezuma actually was. The mega party was over and it seemed a lot of people had left. We moved to a hostel called Pension Jenny.

Here is a weird nightshot for you because it´s all I kind find right now.

Montezuma is on a beautiful beach, and it’s hot.   Some of the waves really beat the shit out of us.

An awesome free thing to do in Montezuma is to go check out the waterfall. The start of the trail was about a 10 minute walk from our hostel. It takes about 15 minutes to get to the first waterfall, and it´s an easy hike over rocks along the river.

Here´s me jumping off a massive ten foot rock! I wanted to jump off near the top of the waterfall (at least 40 feet or something), but the climb up along slippery rocks beside the waterfall looked too much to me like an early ticket back to Canada with a broken head.

Next we trekked up the steep path to the next waterfall (which turned out to be the top of the first waterfall where there was another swimming hole and another smaller waterfall). In the heat it was a good little hike.

Notice the sweat.

Behind me is the second swimming hole at the top of the waterfall. That empty space to the right of my head is where the water is falling off. I didn´t see anybody actually swimming in there, but I think people do. In fact, I think that girl behind me was going to but chickened out.

Oh snap… full moon, evil-eyed giant toad… it must be time for a… FULL MOON PARTY!

This party actually happened in Santa Teresa, which is about a 30-40 minute drive from Montezuma.  We found a guy who had a van and for 3000 colones (about $6), he would take us there at 10PM and back at 3AM.  Not a bad deal, a taxi would charge $35US one way.  We had a lot of fun, although it was really just a big temporary club set up on the beach.  We managed to sneak our vodka in in water bottles.  I walked out onto some rocks in the ocean to have a thought and a few drinks before getting into party mode.  Needless to say, I fell in the ocean on the way back.  I was soaked for the whole party, and of course I had decided to wear pants and a long sleeve shirt because I thought it might get cold (it didn´t).

TIme to start making our way back to San Jose; the date for our flight to Colombia was sneaking up fast.

We stayed up in that room.

This is the room.

The only thing we really did was go to the Baldi Hot Springs with a couple from England and Texas we met at the hostel. There´s two options: the free hot springs, and the pay ones. We chose the pay ones because it was raining and we heard the free ones could be a bit sketchy, plus we would split a cab with the couple. It cost about $20 each, but we spent all day there. They have many different pools with different themes.

We had enough rain and decided to hit the pacific coast where we had heard the weather was much more dry, and a lot more sunny. So off to Montezuma we went…