South America

Below are some pictures from the last week in Arequipa and hiking down in Colca Canyon

Arrival in Arequipa

View of Arequipa

On the way to Colca Canyon we stopped for a night in a small town called Chivay. In this area much of the mountain has been ¨terraced¨
I was told yesterday that much of this work was done between 800 and 1300 A.D. I didnt take this picture but it was the best I could find to show the terraces.

Here is a view of the Oasis that we were hiking down to. Believe it or not this picture was taken after we had already been hiking down for about an hour. The Oasis was over 3000 vertical feet below the town were we started out that afternoon.

This is what it looked like at the bottom a few hours later.

Picture of Scott hiking back up the following morning around 8:30 AM

Scott and I with our bamboo walking sticks. Some of you liked the camel shadow picture from Morocco a few years ago so I though I´d try it again.

And we thought we were the only ones with a party box. This guy had his own... although it was pumping out static rather than killer techno beats.

Below are some pictures from the last 2 weeks:

These are some of my friends from Quito. They grew up in the Galapagos Islands but came to Quito because of their band....Arcabuz

As I mentioned earlier...here are the Sharks that were caught off the coast of Manta. This is the picture I got yelled at for taking.

The next 4 pictures show the different stages of the shipbuilding I talked about.
In the first picture you can see one of the men using a chain saw to shape the logs.
I thought this was pretty amazing.

Here are a few pictures from the cliffs above the beach....near Puerto Lopez along the coast of Ecuador.

Ramon, Andy, Scott, Fani, and Gina in Puerto Lopez

The main attraction near Puerto Lopez was whale watching. I was skeptical beforehand but the guide came through and Scott got some good action shots (see below)

Back in Quito, I decided to sleep on my friends floor (the guys from the band Arcabuz) this time instead of heading to a hostal or back to the family I had been living with before. One of the nights we celebrated the 25th birthday of another friend.

My next move was a flight to the coastal town of Manta where I would kill some time before meeting up with Scott in 3 more days. It turned out Manta sucked and I only spent one night there. The one night I was in Manta was right after the huge ¨terremoto¨ (earthquake) in the south part of Peru. I was watching the news and remember the guy talking about a tsunami and wondering if I needed to take off for high ground. I never saw anyone freaking out so I just went to sleep. In the morning I wandered around the beach checking out the fish market and the ship construction. There were lots of small sharks that had been caught and I was soon surrounded by 5-7 local fishermen after I took a picture. I just said I was sorry and they left after they had some confidence that I wasnt there to turn them in (I guess its illegal to catch that type of shark). The ship building was really cool too. They were literally building large fishing boats right on the beach. There was a guy next to the boat shaping logs with a chain saw before they were to be attached to the frame of the boat.

That same day I was on a bus south to Puerto Lopez where I would meet up with Scott. Scott updated his blog site and you can check it out here....

http://sgoolsbey.travellerspoint.com/

Look for the UPDATE FROM SOUTHER PERU entry for a summary and some pics. Scotts blog covers the last week of travels along the coast of Ecuador and then into Peru. Right now we are in Arequipa planning our adventure around southern Peru. We will be in this area (Arequipa, Lake Titicaca, Cusco and Macchu Pichu) for the next 2 weeks!!!!

Send me an e-mail if you have any comments or questions!!!

After the last post I decided to leave my friends and head to the Jungle town of Tena solo. The bus ride was only about 2.5 hours and I met a guy on the bus who walked around with me for awhile and ended up showing me a good hostal (which also runs trips deeper into the jungle as well as white water rafting trips). The next day I decided at the last minute (1 hour before departure) to go on the Class 3 white water rafting trip. We had 2 boats and the trip turned out really great, far above my expectations. I was in the boat with the more interesting guide. He was always pulling stunts like jumping out of the boat onto a rock in the middle of the river while we looked around wondering how he was going to catch up with us before the next set of rapids. However, he was able to catch up in plenty of time. Sometimes he would have people sit on the very front of the boat with their legs hanging over the front for the smaller class 2 rapids. One of the girls on the boat got tossed too many times and she was scared so the guide sent her to the other boat where the little kids were riding. The whole trip took about 8 hours....5 of which were on the water.

I stayed in Tena for another night and met up with a German guy and we went out to the bars. It turned out that he was headed back to his volunteer post in the Jungle the next day and it sounded very interesting. I managed to arrange a very cheap one night stay in the Jungle near where he was staying. I didnt pay for the whole guided tour so I just wandered around a few of the paths solo in the morning. When I returned to the ¨Cabana¨ one of the guides told me that I had to hurry back to the main road if I wanted to get back to town. It turns out there were 2 problems. 1) The local public transportation system was not running because of a strike. 2) The long distance bus from Tena back north to Quito was not running due to a large landslide that blocked the road. I hurried back to the main road and the owner of the hostal picked me up in his truck just as the jungle guide had promised. After that I had to catch a bus back to Quito via an alternate route that was about 3 hours longer than I had planned.

Lago Quilotoa

After the Lago Quilotoa hike with friends from Spain

Spanish friends and local kids at Lago Quilotoa

Riding rented 4-wheelers near Banos

Local kids in the Jungle community of Serena

Same Kids

Checking out the Napo River before heading back to Tena

Jungle Cabanas

So I never added details about the trip to Mindo by bike but I´ll have to do that later because I´m in a town called Banos now and internet is about 3 times more expensive than I´m used to.

Since that last post.........

I relaxed in Quito for a few more days and went to my friend´s concert on Thursday night. That was really cool. The only problem was I ordered a Cuba Libre (Rum and Coke) as my ¨free drink¨ after paying the 5 dollar cover. The coke part was fine but I think the alcohol wasn´t Rum. It tasted more like rubbing alcohol and was painful to drink. For a few days I thought my throat was damaged. From now on I´ll stick to beer where I know what to expect.
I stayed in Quito through the weekend. Friday night was great because I went out with friends to all their favorite bars. Saturday night was boring and I just wandered around and then went home to pack up my things, I wanted to finally get out of Quito on Sunday morning.

On Sunday I took a bus to Lago Quilotoa, which is a crater lake in the mountains about 3 hours south of Quito. On the way to Lago Quilotoa I met 3 people from Spain (actually Catalonia....like all people from Catalonia, they were quick to tell me that Catalonia is NOT Spain). I´ve been hanging out with them for the last 5 days. One of the first days, we hiked around the crater lake (Lago Quilotoa) which took about 4 hours. I have quite a few pictures that I´ll post when I´m able to. After we finished there, we took a bus to Banos and have been here for 3 nights so far. The first day we rented mountain bikes and rode approx. 62 km from Banos to Puyo. The bikes were pretty decent GT bikes with front suspension and only cost 5 dollars for the whole day. It was a good ride because we passed many waterfalls along the way and as we progressed we could see the ecology change from mountains to jungle. The ride took about 6 hours and then we took a bus from Puyo back to Banos. The next day we rented 4-wheelers and rode up and down 2 different mountains around Banos. One of the quads we rented was pretty good and really fun to ride on the stone/dirt paths up the mountain. The other one had some serious problems with the alignment and/steering and was very hard to control at speed. It was pretty dangerous to go any more than 30 mph. Overall it was fun and it only cost about 30 dollars for 2 quads for 2 hours.....so not too bad. The Catalonians are going on a jungle tour tomorrow and I´m trying to decide if I´m going to go with them on the tour from here in Banos or stick to my original plan of heading a little farther into the jungle to a town called Tena and getting a tour from there.

To be continued later.........gotta go.

Sorry that its been over a week since my last update...........

So I´m back from my bike trip to Mindo.
I don´t have time to update with all the details but here is a bit of info and a few pics. The rest should be up in the next few days.

Day before departure:
Starting to get sick
Front wheel of my bike has a bad bearing/hub and the brakes are not that great
Had to borrow baby toys to modify my ¨hard as a rock¨ bike seat.

Post Trip:
Amazing trip.
Made it to Mindo in 11 hours with a few long breaks.
30+ MPH downhill sections were great.
Approx. 60 percent down hill and 40 percent uphill.
¿One dead guy? found in ditch.
Lots of strange yellow mucus coming out of my eyes.

READY TO GO

BIKE SEAT MODS

AT THE EQUATOR

ROAD DOWN THE MOUNTAIN

FINALLY MADE IT

HIKING NEAR MINDO