I chatted with my brother on the phone the other day, and realized that an entire month has passed since our Ecuador trip, and I had not shared any specific details of our trip with the majority of my family. Seriously?! Life is crazy busy, and I really love looking at these pictures and wanted to share them. I won't narrate too much, but thankfully kept a journal while there so I can remember all the day-to-day adventures we had. So enjoy the pictures!
First off are a few pictures from R's time there with the other students. We just did an exchange of all our photos and while looking through them found these gems. The first collage is a canyoneering adventure that looks awesome, and the second is showcasing their amazing karaoke talents. Pretty funny stuff I tell ya. :)
Our spring break just happened to fall on the week directly following R's rotation down there, so we tried to take advantage of that and B & I went down to visit our hubs. It was nice to have good friends there to have adventures with!
Our first morning there with R & J's host family. Really nice people.
Our first day we toured the city of Quito. Saw beautiful cathedrals and fun older areas of the city, along with a gondola ride up to a mountain for a bird's eye view of the city. Beautiful!
Everywhere we went it felt like we were charged more for being tourists. Made us laugh every time. :)
We met up with some wonderful people that my brother knew from his time in Ecuador serving a mission for our church. They were incredibly generous and drove up all the way up to Papallacta to see these amazing hot springs with us. One of which (the one where R's dipping his feet in the water) was practically boiling it was so hot. Ridiculous! My favorite part of it all was just getting to know these good people and hearing them share stories of my brother as a missionary.
We definitely stayed busy, visiting six different cities (Quito, where R lived for the month; Papallacta, Mindo, Guayaquil, Puerto Lopez, and Otavalo). This was the first time R and I had traveled within our travels - does that make sense? We rode buses daily, and have fond (or not so fond) memories of cramming in with a thousand of our best friends or sweating bullets because the only windows open were the ones right next to us gringos and it's 100 degrees outside! We'd ride buses in town, buses to new towns, and buses out of town. Let's just say that it feels good to not have to ride buses anymore (and to have toilet paper, but that's a different story).
Obligatory pictures on the Equator line (which isn't the exact equator, but it's fun nonetheless).
From Mitad del Mundo we took a bus to a mountain town called Mindo. Small and nestled in a small area surrounded by gorgeous mountains. We had fun watching the HUGE rain storms - I've never seen rain like that and I'm from WA, catching truck taxis, following our guide dog around, zip-lining, drinking lots of yummy juice, visiting a butterfly conservatory and watching lots of hummingbirds, and swinging in hammocks at our hotel listing to the rain on the roof.
Seriously the coolest drink stand ever. Loved the swings, but the drinks made it even better. I will have dreams for the rest of my life of the juice. It was that good.
From Mindo we went back to Quito, caught a flight to Guayaquil, and met up with my sister-in-law's family! Plans changed a bit and we weren't able to stay as long as we would have liked, but I am really grateful that we got to see them even just for a little while. C & B showed us around Guayaquil a little bit, visiting the temple and the Malecon, and fed us delicious food and homemade juice that night and the next morning. It has been so neat to know and love this family. They are kind, generous, good people. They always make me feel like I am apart of their family, and went out of their way to help us. I love them! Thank you Sanchez family!
We caught a couple buses out to a beach town, and had a stop in this random town along the way where we made some local friends. :)
We stayed in Puerto Lopez which was to die for. So beautiful, and the hotel was perfect. This little iguana was our friend perched right on the planter-box outside our bathroom window. He hung around for the day, then we saw him at a different spot in the gardens the next day. We were basically best friends by the end of our trip.
Puerto Lopez was called a "sleepy fisherman town" in our little guide book. And it seriously was wonderful. This was the scene in the morning when all the fishing boats brought their catches in. They would haul buckets and coolers and nets full of fish to trucks parked on the sand, and then drive them to these cleaning stations up farther north in the town. It definitely feels good to order fish at a restaurant and know exactly how fresh it really is! (not that I'm a big fish connoisseur by any means, but I can still appreciate it)
This basically captures why this spot was our favorite location ever. R and I are total beach bums and we loved swinging in our hammocks at the beach in such a secluded remote town. We read our books, talked a lot, walked along the beach, chased sand crabs, swam in the ocean, shopped around the town a little bit, and played games in the hotel's main house which was open to the evening breeze by the water. Absolutely perfect. We totally want to go back there again.
We left the day before Carnival started, which was nice because it was still a very quiet town while we were there. As we walked through the town to get on our bus we could see all the preparations for their big festival and were glad that we were missing the crowds! We went back to Guayaquil just in time to catch our flight back to Quito.
Our last full day in Ecuador we went to a city called Otavalo, which is known for our Saturday Market. I've been there before, and I swear it has multiplied since then. It is huge and so fun. I LOVE walking around seeing all the textiles and colors, crafts, paintings, clothing, the beautiful native Indian dress, everything! Loved it.
All in all, a wonderful vacation. Words cannot define how good it felt to be with R again after being apart for so long. It was marvelous to have so much "just the two of us" time to play together, and so fun to see all the wonderful sights and think about how much our kids would love them - maybe someday they will!
Seriously, the best spring break ever. Loved it.
