South America

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

Its Monday afternoon and I´m about to start my second week of Spanish class.
The weekend was pretty decent. On Friday I just hung out with Gabriel, the only other chico in the house that I live in. We just went to eat and then had a beer back at the house.
On Saturday afternoon/night I had some miscommunication with friends and we were not able to meet up. I was supposed to call them to confirm our get together but I didn´t realize that so they never came into town. I didn´t know where my other friends were so I decided to go "downtown" solo and check it out. I was just goint to walk around for an hour or so then head home. Instead, I ended up seeing some friends of friends who were headed to a concert. One of the guys is in a different band so he knows a lot of people and was able to get me to the front of the line without much of a problem. There were 2 bands playing. The first one was some sort of Rasta band from Colombia. They were pretty good and threw in some cover songs by Bob Marley during the show. The second band is supposedly pretty famous in the underground rock scene here in Ecuador. It was really fast and reminded me of 311 in some ways. They finished about 2AM and we were about to leave when a DJ stepped up and started spinning some drum and bass. It was pretty good and I got some good excercise between 2AM and 4AM dancing. After that I wandered around the street with some people and then caught a taxi back home.

On Sunday I met up with I girl I met on couchsurfing.com and we had lunch. The other purpose of our meetup was to discuss a potential adventure next week. She is big into mountain biking and had told me earlier that she could get one of her friends to loan me a nice mountain bike for a few days and we could ride to another town called Mindo. Its supposed to be very unique because its right on the fringe of mulitple different ecosystems (mountains, jungle and costal I think). I think the ride is about 100km but a lot of it is downhill since we are on top of a mountain right now so I should be fine. The plan is to leave here next Sunday or Monday. Ill update on the status of that later.

Tomorrow for dinner I´m supposed to meet up with some dude who just motorcycled around South America with his girlfriend. I´m sure he will have some really intersting stories.

Later,
Andy

Well....
I just finished my first week of Spanish class last night and everything is going well. I understand quite a bit of what my house mates say and I can basically communicate my ideas. I´m sure I sound like a caveman because I don´t know how to turn all the verbs into the correct tense....but I can get my point across.

Like I said before, the food is incredibly cheap here. I just had lunch which included popcorn, a large bowl of chicken soup, some exotic juice and a plate of rice, veggies and beef (like very thin steak).....and the grand total with tip was ............$1.50....crazy. Most days for lunch I stop at this middle eastern cafe and get a Flafel pita sandwich with a side of rice and lentil beans.....grand total.....$1.00.

I bought a used local cell phone for $20 so I can call friends and its good to have for an emergency. If you want the number, send me an email and let me know. It might even be possible to send me texts through the internet for free...I´m not sure though. Actually I have 2 phone numbers because here in Ecuador there are 2 major cell phone service providers. Porta and Movistar are the names and its very expensive to call from Porta to Movistar. My phone came with a Porta SIM card and then today I bought a Movistar SIM card for $5 that even has a few dollars of credit allready on it....most people use a pay as you go system here....no contracts.

I´ve met quite a few people here and its not that uncommon for me to see people that I know while I´m walking around town....kind of funny after only one week. So the plan for now is to stay here for another week and keep taking Spanish classes with the same guy. I also need to learn how to Salsa dance. Sounds funny but the people here are insanely good at Salsa dancing and its pretty fun. I went to some Salsa bars the other night with the people I live with and I was really amazed. I´m told that knowing how to Salsa dance for girls is like knowing how to play soccer for boys here. They grew up with it, now its instinct.

Send me an email if you have any questions. I don´t really know what to write about in these blogs so if you have suggestions please let me know.

Later,
Andy

Yesterday I decided to check OUT of The Magic Bean hostal and find a new place to crash. I walked around most of the day just checking out the city again. I made it all the way down to the Old Town and went into the Secret Garden hostal. Its a nice place that has cheap dorms and an amazing view from the roof top terrace. I decided not to check in there because it´s so far from Mariscal where my Spanish classes are. Instead I just hung out there for an hour or so trying to read a spanish newspaper and enjoying the view. On my way back to Mariscal I stopped to check my email and found an e-mail from some people looking to rent out one room of their apt (I had sent them an e-mail a few days ago based on an ad I saw in an internet cafe). I called the their house and had some serious trouble conversing with the people that live there. I decided to go look at the place around 6:30PM and grabbed a taxi. Their house is about a 15-20 minute walk from the tourist ¨Mariscal¨area and I was in a hurry since it was going to get dark soon. To make a long story short I went up and checked the place out and told them I would live there. 25 minutes later I was back with my bag setting up shop in their house. I have my own room and its $5 per night. I can use the kitchen, washing machine, etc. To be honest I´m not too sure exactly how many people live there. I think 4 + 2 little ninos. One of the people is a 28 year old engineer who speaks decent english. The other 3 are sisters, between the ages of 15 and 30 something, none of which speak English.......so I hope this living arrangement will help me learn Spanish a little quicker. The engineer has a car and he was running me around town so I could eat and pick up my bag, so that was really cool.
Today is Monday and I´m just relaxing until my first Spanish lesson starts at 1:30.

Later,
Andy

Quito from 4,100 meters

Quito Park

Me at 4,100 meters above Quito

Everything has been going well here in Quito the last few days. On Thursday I wandered around the Old Town and the University. I have some pictures that I´d like to post but I need a new cable to connect my camera to the computer. On Thursday night I meet up with a local that I met through couchsurfing.com and we had a beer. I´ll probably meet up with him again soon. I spent a good portion of the day Friday doing some research on the local Spanish Language schools. I visited 2 of them and now I just have to decide which one I want to attend. The plan is to start early next week. Typical cost for one on one Spanish lessons is approx. 6$ per hour. Thats for a program where you dont have to commit to a certain number of days and you can schedule the lesson time whenever works for you. Thats a bit expensive but I need to start learning Spanish quickly so I think I just need to get started rather than worry about saving a few bucks. I may even try a different school for the 2nd week just to see what works best for me. Last night, Friday night, I met 2 American guys in my hostel that just finished a 2 month long volunteer program in the jungle region of the country. Their task was to improve the water for some small amazon communites and they built many rain water collection tanks themselves over the last few months. Their tales of life in the amazon are amazing. Some of the communities required them to hike for 5 to 6 hours off the road to be reached and one required 9 river crossings at waist depth! One of the guys even had to eat monkey soup.....which had a monkey arm sticking out of the bowl...

Thats all for now....
Andy

Yo,

Just wanted to let you guys know I made it. Flights were fine. I met a nice woman and her son on the plane. She is from Quito and gave me her cell phone number in case of an emergency. Then when her husband picked her up at the airport they gave me a ride to the area where the hostals are. People are so nice. So far, Quito looks cool. My hostal is right in the middle of an area where there are tons of bars and nightlife. Time to go check it out.........................

Thanks for all of your help while I was getting ready for this trip. I really appreciate everything.
Andy

FYI...internet access is less than one cent per minute.....nice