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Hi All,
The real travelling has now begun… 8 hours sitting in an uncomfortable bus driving on a bad road with loud Ecuadorian music! And we found out Lonely Planet was right when they said not to sit at the back of the bus as you spend more time airborne than you're actually sitting. But the amazing views of the landscape and the I-pod on 10 do make up for it. Before this bus journey it still felt like a normal vacation, but now we are starting to realize that we are traveling.
Before we left Quito we visited Mitad del Mundo. The official Mitad del Mundo monument is built 150 meters north of the equator. Oops! Guess they didn't have GPS in the 18th century. Good thing there is GPS now and the new museum is built right on the equator line. We did all sorts of funny experiments like balancing an egg on a nail. Please try this at home.
After we left Quito (without having been robbed) we had two excellent days of mountain biking. The first day was really spectacular as we cycled downhill from the Cotopaxi volcano. Even after spending a few days in Quito getting used to the altitude (2850m), at 4600 meters you notice that oxygen is quite essential. I felt like I was back on a package of cigarettes a day. So we quickly put our helmets on, grabbed our bikes and rushed downhill. It is impossible to enjoy the magnificent scenery when you go down a bumpy road on a mountain bike, but what an adrenaline rush! The second day we were at the Quilotoa crater, a huge green lake that was formed by a massive eruption of a volcano bigger than the Chimborazo*. After a nice day of mostly downhill cycling we took the bus to Baños. There we had a nice and relaxing two days in a eco-hostel run by an aussie and a kiwi who had lots of tips as they traveled in South America for years. We rented a quad and checked out the waterfalls in the neighborhood, very cool and unfortunately also very wet. It started raining, so we got completely muddy, but that made the lava heated swimming pool even better.
After Riobamba and the devil´s nose train ride (= mass tourism) we visited the city of Cuenca with very nice colonial buildings and a relaxed atmosphere. And as Sunday is a day were really nothing happens around here, we decided to make it another bus day and head of to Loja.
Loja is our last stop before we go to Peru. So we thought a last hike in the Podocorpus park would be the best way to enjoy the great landscapes in Ecuador. The famous cloud forrest and the very green scenery could have warned us, but obviously they didn´t. So again we ended up completely muddy and soaking wet, but this time we also almost got blown of our socks. After a hot shower and a cup of tea we can still say Ecuador was great, but it is time to move on so ....
... till the next blog from Peru!
* A mountain in Ecuador which is the closest to the sun in the whole world. So measured from the center of the earth Mount Everest is not the highest mountain, but the Chimbarazo is. This because the world has an egg shape. Yes we learn a lot while traveling ;o)
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