Hanging out in Otavalo

Hi! Niko here. it's FINALLY MY TURN TO WRITE THE BLOG! We took a looooooooooooooooooooong slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow ''express bus" from Latacunga to Otavalo. With Quilo in the belly. Unacceptable. We went to Otavalo because of the arts and crafts market there where  Kaia bought a tooth case(she lost yet another tooth!) a bracelet with a ring built into it, and a hairband used by Quechua, whose ancestors were the Incas.

I bought a Montecristi panama hat and bargained it down 13 dollars.





 Highlights of Otavalo were: Giant cheeseburgers, the best hostel we've had so far with chocolate pancakes and 3 hamacas (hammocks) (besides the super loud Danish tourists up all night long), water falls with mineral baths that bubbled like 7-up.  Bye for now.  Niko

              

        

Quilotoa Part II: A less typical visit to a gorgeous lake

No doubt, you are all wondering what the furry thing is in Kaia's arms down at the lake.  Stray dogs are hardly a novelty and few of them compel you to approach, let alone snuggle them. Not that this little guy couldn’t carry his own set of nasty diseases, but romping on the ridge of the crater with him that first evening made just as big an impression on the kids as the lake itself.

That travel size hand sanitizer has really come in handy and I'm not
 sure how many more times we can say "hands away from your face!!!"

He followed us everywhere for two days, around town, waited in front of the hostel. He even caught up to us half way down the crater the morning he went AWOL. Needless to say, we were all attached to varying degrees.  After inquiring around town, the consensus seemed to be that he wandered in from some other town. Nope, he wasn't one of their strays. Our minds started cranking:  Could we even keep him?  That’s just nuts. (the kids were naturally less divided on the issue). Clearly people expected to see him with us: "Where's the perdito?" if he wasn't in sight.


As we were waiting for the bus and struggling with our decision, the abuelo (grandpa) stopped by and we asked one final time if he was sure the dog didn't belong to anyone. "Oh, this dog?  Yes, my friend dropped him here but you can have him for $50". The look on the kid's faces was indescribable.They tried hard to hide it, but the sobs just wouldn't stop. Our first reaction was to say, "Hmmm, sorry, but yeah right". Instead, we declined the "offer" and Yvonne managed to ask him in her broken Spanish how his friend would like it if he came back from his trip to find his dog had been stolen.  "No problem", he said as he walked down the hill. ­­­

We (the parents) were pretty irritated and considered taking the dog anyway, but by now an earnest crowd had gathered around the bus.  The kids had tears streaking their faces, still dust encrusted from the two hour hike up from the lake.

The bus pulled up at the corner, and the dog didn’t help matters by following us as we loaded our packs. In the last minutes before the bus left, Yvonne's temper got the better of her and she hunted down abuelo. After some stern bargaining, agreed to $28.  The bus doors closed behind her as Yvonne boarded holding a little black dog and a tattered rope for a leash. Smiles and even a few cheers from the passengers greeted her as Niko and Kaia squealed with total delight and disbelief. 

The dictionary was completely useless.
Oh, and Stefan FYI Spanish for worm=Lombriz

Except for vomiting once on the bus…, “Quilo” settled right into the kids’ laps for the ride into Latacunga. We found a vet immediately upon arriving at the bus station and left with $9 in prescriptions for doggie bronchitis and worms.  He still needs vaccinations once he's healthy but otherwise was pronounced in very good shape for a 1.5 year old dog.

The staff and owners at Hostel Tiana had been warned of our arrival with a new family member and have been very kind to let our new family member stay with us.  And Quilo?  He’s great. Convalescing nicely, doesn’t bark, hates his medicine, sweet, loves mirrors, does everything he needs to outside, and seems generally happy adjusting to his new leash and life with his loco gringos.  He still follows the kids so close that they step on him.  Although it must be a change for him, we're feeling less guilty about the leash since it's so clearly unnecessary . 

In front of Hostal Tiana

Quilotoa: A typical visit to a gorgeous lake

This picture of Tungurahua helped us decide to go to Quilotoa.

After a bit of research on Tungurahua, we figured out that Volcanologists the world over are generally outraged that the Ecuadorian government still permits human settlement on its slopes, it's only a question of when...  It felt pretty ominous going to bed knowing that every volcano scientist in the world wants to come here because, yee-haw, she's ready to blow! Besides, there was no hope of hiking the ridge (see photo) to see the volcano up close because the weather turned out to not be any better. Since then, we've opted for the dead volcanoe version:  Quilotoa.

Lake Quilotoa is all that is left of a massive volcano that blew itself to smithereens 800 years ago…in other words, enough time ago for these parents. 

Pickup truck ride into the mountains

The combination of a few extra bucks to drivers for safe driving and kids-in-tow has made the typically hair raising segments of our travel down-right pleasant. The ride to Quilotoa was no exception.  I have to say, with kids, people seem more helpful and approachable than in our kid-free backpacker days; even breaking rules like letting dogs in hotels...oops, did I say dog?

So anyway, the little village of Quilotoa (at 4000 meters...that's the summit of Mount Hood, by the way) is pretty much in the middle of nowhere on a grassy, windswept landscape high in the Andes.  Upon arrival, there’s not much there other than a very chilly, treeless vista, and a few basic hostels run by friendly,  soft spoken (and totally business savvy) Quechua .  You look around at the starkness and think, "so where's the lake?", but a stroll up a little hill and the sight that meets your eyes is downright breathtaking.  I hope our pictures do it justice because it is simply stunning. Even more impressive when you realize that an entire mountain vaporized here just a geological eye blink ago.

At least that was the most impressive part for the grownups. For Kaia and Niko, the welcoming committee of puppies was.  One particularly affectionate "Benji-like" adolescent adopted Kaia and Niko on our walks and then cried outside our door long after dark.

         

We all washed our hands very well that evening...

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The next morning, as we prepared for our big hike down into the crater, our travel companion was no where to be found.

Despite heavy hearts and even a few misty eyes, the kids did great on the dusty 1 hour descent to the lake.

see quilotoa: Part II

Baños de Agua Santa

Spending a few days in Baños (referring to bathing, not the other thing) - an intimate and cared for tourist town which has everything going for it but for the fact that it is the shadows of Tungurahua, a highly active volcano. Town inhabitants have been evacuated three times in the last 10 years, and the hotel staff couldn’t recall when the last time ash fell (hmm, was it October 2010? Checking online shows it was actually April 2011). OK, so we’ll have to keep looking for a place to hunker down until we move to Cuenca in November.

         

End of the rainy season clouds kept us away from a hike to the top of a ridge overlooking town which also offers great views of the volcano, so we had to move to plan B.  Remember when we said that the kids would realize how uncool their parents are?  Well, today was perfect evidence of that:  Everything they wanted to do--Horseback riding up the mountain without helmets? No. Zip line which carries you 300m over the canopy to a height of over 80m (remember, m = ft x ~ 3). No. Cable car (basically a little basket held on one cable) across a narrow gorge 2 football fields above the raging water? No. Join the busses on the highway in a little go cart for rent? No.

Can you find Niko and Kaia?

So we settled on a spectacular bus ride to an awesome waterfall on the edge of the Amazon basin known as Pailon del Diablo on the Rio Verde.  Kids handled the hike to the waterfall really well, and even squeezed through a small passage to get a look behind the falls.  Came back to the hotel wet, hungry, tired, and happy (see video above).

Niko and Kaia also spent time today  adding an important sentence to their Spanish repertoire:

Quiero comprar una galleta por favor. ( I’d like to buy a cookie please).  Let’s focus on the important stuff, already, OK? 

In the Shadow of Cotopaxi

Hostel Tiana-roof access stairs with Derk studing map below

Soviet Madonna?

Cotopaxi and a Coke

We've decided to break up the trip to Banos with a stop over in Latacunga. Like most of these places on Avenita de los Volcanes, they seem to get wiped off the map every hundred years or so. Latacunga isn't due until next fall so we figured it was fine.  The hostel manager, Jose, turns out to have lived on the corner of Hennepin Ave. and Franklin Ave for many years and we had fun talking Minnesota.  They also had a spectacular roof terrace with stunning views of Cotopaxi in one direction and the Uber-Madonna-on-the-Concrete in the other. 



When you throw in a beer, it was all together pretty much breathtaking. 

Yvonne--10 minutes off the bus

 The fruit juices are a high point of the day--fresh squeezed and often completely unknown to our prairie repertoire.

Making Babaca juice

We had hoped to make a short 1 1/2 hour hike up to a glacier on Cotopaxi and maybe rent a canoe on a lake inside a dead volcano but the weather has been really uncooperative.  Instead, we're heading east to the village of Banos on the edge of the Amazon Basin in search of clear skies...and maybe a spa and massage...