So we´ve done a lot since we last wrote. We went to the not so exciting town of Latacunga where we met our friends Dan and Emily and celebrated Kev´s birthday with some pizza and beer. After perusing the impressive (and really cheap) Saturday market, we headed to the tiny indigenous village of Quilotoa. It is located at the top of an extinct volcano and there is a beautiful green lake in the crater. The elevation is approximately 4,000 meters and it was super cold. So cold that we had to have a fire in the little stove in our room in order to not freeze to death! It was nice to be cold after two years of summer. We stayed at a little family owned hostal that was run by a Quichua family. It was interesting talking to them and learning a little about their customs. Spanish is their second language which sometimes made communicating difficult as we spoke better Spanish than some of the people. We hiked part-way around the lake with Dan and Emily and went to the even tinier village of Ponce where they live. We met a lot of people and they were all so nice and polite. The little kids all shook our hands, something we never saw in Honduras. It was nice to see a totally different kind of Ecuador and get some nice hiking in.
From Quilotoa we went to Baños, a town in southern Ecuador. It is a very touristy town with the main attractions being hotsprings and outdoor adventures like rafting, bike riding, and hiking. We rented bikes and rode down ¨la ruta de las cascadas¨. It was mostly downhill much to Shannon´s delight since every uphill almost killed her. We rode about 12 miles past lots of waterfalls and even took a cable car across a canyon and over a waterfall. We ended our ride in Río Verde at Cascada Pailón del Diablo. We hiked down to the impressive waterfall which we could view from a series of balconies built into the cliff. We were close enough to get wet and were able to walk behind it after climbing/crawling through a crack in the cliff. It was pretty cool.
We then headed to the colonial city of Cuenca where we checked out all the old churches and buildings. At this point we have been to so many colonial towns that they all start to look the same so we didn´t spend much time in Cuenca. One of the best parts was the bus ride to Cuenca. We rode right through the middle of the Andes and it was beautiful! The mountains were so tall and the valleys so deep. Everything was very green and the mountains were covered with farms that made them look like patchwork quilts. It was a breathtaking journey and we even saw a beautiful sunset over the mountains.
After Cuenca, we headed to Perú. It took us a day and countless buses and cabs just to get to the border. It was one of the most complicated borders as we had to get off the bus about 4 kilometers outside of town and the actual border to go through customs. The bus driver forgot to let us off and we ended up having to go back once we got to town (after Shannon yelled at him he let us go back for free). We then had to take a taxi to the border and another to the Peruvian customs located 4 kms on the other side. It was ridiculous. We actually ended up getting so frustrated at slow, not so friendly people that we got out of a bus refusing to pay because the driver was so slow and wouldn´t tell us how much it cost or whether we would make it to the next town in time to catch our next bus. Shannon kind of lost it and yelled at him too (Latin America is wearing on us). We finally made it to our bus right before it left and spent 21 hours on it to get to Lima. We then spent another 21 hours on a bus to Cusco. It was a really long three days but at least the buses were comfortable and we made it in one piece! The drive through all of northwestern Perú was desert, desert, and more desert. We went through lots of mountains from Lima to Cusco but they were not nearly as green and beautiful as the ones in Ecuador.
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