giant tortoises, sea lions, iguanas, snorkeling with sea turtles, sharks and boobie-watching

oh my WORD the galapagos islands are amazing. it was a full eight days in the islands and it´s absolutely GORGEOUS there. i miss it... =(

so life on a boat while touring the galapagos islands is quite routine. wake-up, eat breakfast, go on a walking tour of an island, go snorkeling, head back to the boat, hang out/nap/chat/read/stare at the ocean, eat lunch, go on a walking tour of another island, go snorkeling, head back to the boat, shower, snack/hang out/nap/chat/read/stare at the ocean, eat supper, hang out/chat/shark-watch, go to bed, repeat. i had my bored moments here and there but considering i did that for a week, i´m impressed that i wans´t bored more often.

my highlights of the galapagos islands:

• i stalked a shark while snorkeling!!! it was a white-tipped reef shark that was about the size of me - so not huge, but they don´t get much bigger than six feet anyway. i really wanted to see a shark while snorkeling but wasn´t sure if i would freak out or not so i was quite glad that all i did when i saw the shark was yell, ¨shark!!!¨ into my snorkel tube and then followed it.
• i also stalked sea turtles while snorkeling. =) i was with three other people from my group the first time i spotted a sea turtle and all four of us proceeded to follow the sea turtle around. the funny thing is that we all found ourselves mimicking the sea turtle´s swimming motions - including when it popped it´s head out of the water to breathe. very graceful, peaceful animals. just goes with the flow of the tide. i also saw a few rays floating along the bottom - those are pretty, too. and i felt like i was in ¨finding nemo¨ at times because there were fish EVERYWHERE. pretty, colourful fish that glew-in-the-dark. yup, i just said glew. gotta brush up on my english before i head back to canada.
• i think most of the world´s population of sea lions live in the galapagos. it seemed liked they were EVERYWHERE. pretty sure they were on every island we visited. baby sea lions are SUPER cute. swimming with sea lions is kind of scary. i had one come at me with it´s jaws open, like it was going to bite me. i just tensed up, closed my eyes and waited for the pain but apparently it was just playing and had no intentions of biting me - or so the guide said. and adult sea lions are HUGE. pretty sure they normally get to be bigger than me so it was quite unnerving to see this massive mass of sea lion show up in front of you or under you while snorkeling.
• i got to drive a speedboat, a motorized raft/dingy, AND the boat we were staying on!!! we ended up speedboating to an island on the second day and it was a doube-decked speedboat with the driver up top. i was sitting in the back and kept looking up at the driver. the guy sitting beside the driver saw me looking so i asked if i could go up just to look and take a couple pictures. i went up and the driver offered me his seat and let me drive us to the island. that was fun. we also got taxied from the main boat to the islands via a motorized raft/dingy. they called them zodiacs. i was fortunate enough that the crew took a liking to me and so they asked me if i wanted to drive. i was conscientious enough to start with just me and a crew member in the boat but i was driving when the zodiacs were full of people by the end. that was fun. and there was one afternoon i was walking by where the captain sits to steer the boat (what´s the equivalent of a cockpit on a boat?) and saw the cook steering. so i just pointed and shook my head (thank goodness they understood my humour) and then he waved me in and let me steer. so i sat down and proceeded to take the boat off course. the cook was nice enough to let me try to fix it but he ended up having to step in and correct it and then let me go at it again. i eventually got the hang of it. the cook left when the captain came in and then he just sat down and started reading a newspaper, glancing up every ten minutes or so to make sure we were still headed in the right direction. that was pretty cool. i didn´t tell anyone on the tour until the day after.
• i get sea sick and i don´t like it. didn´t throw up but definitely fet nauseas and my head span like nothing else. a girl from australia had bought a bottle of a hundred anti-motion sickness pills from wal-mart. i popped two and that put me out for the rest of the night.
• capriniña (not sure if that´s how it´s spelt) - mojitos without the mint and made with sugar cane alcohol instead of rum. i had tried a shot of straight sugar alcohol in baños and nearly DIED because the stuff was so strong - you could run a car on that stuff. so i was quite weary of trying anything that had it. but the bartender on the boat made capriniñas well enough that i had my fair share of them.
• i am continually amazed by the cooks on my tours who are able to whip up good meals in tiny kitchens. my best meals - both in taste and in nutritional value - have all been on my tours.
• never underestimate the bargaining power of chocolate when you´re out in the midde of the ocean. =)
• never underestimate the amount of fun that can be had just by using new terms in an old game to suit the occassion. a group of us came up with galapajack - blackjack galapagos style. seemingly childish and simple but i have never had so much fun playing blackjack before - nor have i ever heard a group of people say ¨boobie¨ more than when we were playing that game.
• this was probably the most educational of all the tours i´ve done. i never knew there was so much you could know about lava until the guide started talking.
• there was a 69 year old lady with me for the last part of the tour and she was open to being a part of everything. she came out with us the last night in santa cruz and just danced her heart away. i want to be like that when i´m 69.
• i think i´m really going to enjoy retirement. there were a few retired folk on the tour and i was chatting with one the morning we were leaving. he asked me where i was off to next and i said home. he asked me if i was starting work again on monday. i said yup. he laughed. i believe that there was a part of him laughing at me for having to go back to work and a part of him that was laughing because he doesn´t have to go back to work. i want to be laughing like him one day - preferably sooner rather than later but we´ll see how that works out for me.
• having physiotherapists on board with you after you just rolled your ankle is super handy - especially when one specializes in sport physio. so i had my rented crutch scrutinized the night before we left, i had orders to ice my ankle and elevate it in the evenings, and she taped it up quite nicely for me. i was feeling like my ankle was doing ok by day three and was told to strap my crutch to my backpack just in case. didn´t use my crutch anymore after day 3. i don´t think a rolled ankle of mine has ever gotten better that quickly before - i´m impressed with it.
• so what´s a bad idea? being too confident in my ankle recovery and kind of forgetting to be careful and kind of rolling it again later in the tour while avoiding being sprayed by a crew member. still not painful to walk on but definitely still a little swollen, even today. oops.
• oh, and i learned that there´s a reason why i´m clutzy and suck at spatial recognition. apparently i score eight out of nine on some hyperelasticity scale - and 4 is where problems start. apparently i have too much collagen...somewhere...maybe it was in my joints(?). anyways, that´s why i never really know where my body is in relation to other things - like chairs, tables, the floor, trees, etc. and everyone who scores higher on this scale has a problem area - mine are my ankles. so there. it´s not because i´m careless or not careful. it´s because i have no idea where my body is. =)
  
• i´m continually amazed by how much fun i can have with people who don´t speak much english, if any. the crew had limited english and i had limited spanish but i had SO much fun with them and even managed to sit around and ¨chat¨ for a couple hours one night. there was definitely a lot of ¨huh?¨ going on and i´m sure a lot of misunderstandings but there were few nights that i laughed that much. good times. =)
• best meal of the trip: lobster dinner with chocolate cake for dessert on my last night. the cook traded chicken for lobster with a fisherman who caught a whole bunch of lobster on another ship. gotta love commodity trading. =)

so i´m back in quito now. went to mitad del mundo (the equator line monument outside of quito) today and visited the REAL equator line (they got it wrong by a bit the first time around and there´s a museum at the GPS determined equator line) - that was fun. got lost on the way back because i hopped on the wrong bus but i got off near what looked like a main road and i lucked out because i was able to find it on the incomplete map of quito that i was carrying and i wasn´t terribly far from my hostel. super glad that i can walk without a crutch.

i´m headed out to otavalo tomorrow for a day trip and then packing my bags for my flight out of here on friday morning. exciting news: i just realized that i get to check-in TWO pieces of luggage. i have picked up more stuff than i thought i was going to and the backpack i´ve borrowed from a friend is definitely full right now. which is ok for bus rides and what not but i didn´t want to put it through three airplane changes packed that full and now i don´t have to! i have a pretty sturdy, large plastic-but-not bag (kind of like the bags you would get twenty pounds of rice in) from a previous tour so i bought packing tape today and will stuff that bag and packing tape the heck out of it and call that my second piece of check-in luggage.

and so the end is near. kind of surreal. all of it. doesn´t really feel like i´ve been traveling for two months. doesn´t really feel like i´ve done all the things i´ve done. doesn´t really feel like i´m going back to canada in a couple days. defintiely doesn´t feel like i´ll be back at work on monday. not really sure when it´s going to hit me but hopefully before i get off the plane in calgary...

i spoke too soon...

i know i said i wouldn´t be posting until after the galapagos but i just HAD to vent and rant.

so i´ve managed to get through six and a half week so of traveling - various treks, hikes, bike rides, etc - with virtually no injury. what happens this morning while i´m walking to the baños bus station to catch a bus to quito? i step off a curb and roll my left ankle. a COMPLETE roll - i was on the ground. kept my hiking boot on, hopped on the bus, tried to elevate it the best i could. got to the hotel, took my boot off and my ankle was SWOLLEN. hobble out to the pharmacy to get a tensor bandage. pop a couple anti-inflammatories. ice my ankle while watching tv. bandage it up and go hunting for crutches. yup, i´m going to the galapagos islands with a crutch. not impressed. however, i am thankful that it is near the end of my trip and that the galapagos tour isn´t super active but there is walking around involved. oh well, i guess it was too good to be true that i´d get through two months of traveling without any injury.

that´s all. =)

i´ll be in the glapagos islands in 48 hours!!!!!

i´m kind of at a bittersweet point with my trip. i´m SUPER stoked that my galapagos tour is FINALLY here. but that means it´s the last part of my trip and i will be flying back to canada soon. i´m not gonna get all whiney about it but i really can´t say i´m ready to go back yet. sigh. c´est la vie.

so i´ve had a pretty sweet, chilled out four days here in baños. i went on a hike up to this huge statue/monument of the virgin mary and it´s basically just stairs straight up to the statue and some idiot thought it´d be amusing to number the steps so that you are FULLY aware of how many stairs you have climbed. there were 670 steps in total. i think i would have enjoyed that climb more without that knowledge. anyways, the guy who rented me the bike the day before told me that there´s hike from the virgin, up and across the mountain to the other end of town where there´s another lookout point called bellevista (there´s a huge cross up there) and then there´s a path that brings you back down the mountain into town. so i made it up to the virgin and then i started looking for the trail up to the top. no trail. just a wall. so i look around, completely confused for a few minutes. look at the map i was given - which was really only a cartoon version of the town but i think it´s actually the ¨official¨ tourist map of the place - the map doesn´t help. a local man comes up the stairs and he walks past me and goes through a gap in the railing and starts walking BEHIND the wall up the mountain. i have no idea if that´s where i´m suppose to go but i follow. so when i say that this trail takes you UP the mountain, it quite literally just goes UP. i swear there were times when the path was at more than a forty-five degree angle up and i slid back a little with every step. and it seemed to go on FOREVER and it was super sunny and hot that day and it was the day that i decided to underpack so i ran out of water and snacks by the time i got to the top which took about an hour. a solid hour of solid UP. now, having done the lares trek and the inca trail, i figured i was good to hike just about anything but there was no hot, sunny days on the long trekking days - just the days of being a tourist in machu picchu. so i felt like death in the heat of the sun going up this thing. anyways, so an hour later i get to the top and there´s a house up there, a road and no signs pointing me in the direction of where i want to go. so i wander around the top of the mountain for a while. looking at the map. looking at the signs that are there. i match a sign to a landmark on the map but it doesn´t look right as the map shows that the location that the sign is indicating should pretty much be on the other side of the mountain - i was quite sure that i was not on the other side of the mountain. and then a truck comes up the road and it stops, people hop out and everyone looks at me wondering what i´m doing up there. of course, none of them speak english but i manage to find out that i am where the map says i am but the map is not to scale so it really is quite useless. they ask me how i got up there. i said i walked. and they all look at me like i´m crazy. the driver asks if i want a ride back down into town and i decline - i fully intended on hiking back down anyways, just had to figure out where i was. everyone continues to look at me like i´m crazy. oh well. they pointed me in the right direction and off i went. the road went on for a bit and then there are signs. i look down the road that would take me to the hotel/spa at the top of the mountain (people say it´s got a great view and i believe them) and there´s a horse hanging out, chomping away on some grass. it´s not a very wide road, maybe the width of a bus, and the horse is on maybe two-thirds of the road. my plan was to walk slowly and as non-threatening as possible past the horse and to the hotel. seemed like a good plan. until i got to about six feet of the horse. the horse looks up at me as if to ask, ¨what do you think you´re doing?¨ and then starts walking towards me - staring at me. i´m not really an animal person and i know that horses are heavy and could do some serious damage with kicks and tramples and what not. so i decided that i did not have to see the hotel, turned around and walked away slowly. the horse followed me until the rope he was tied to was taut. so i kept going down the road, followed signs to the bellevista viewpoint. i´m walking down a trail in the middle of what seems like forest and there are no signs for a while but there is a local lady picking...something. i pull out my map, tell her i want to go to bellevista, point at the trail and ask, ¨yes?¨ she nods, says something and motions for me to follow her. she starts asking me questions, chatting away, and i tell her that i don´t know spanish. she keeps chatting and asking me questions so i just smile and nod and shrug my shoulders when she looks at me for an answer. so i´m thinking it´s great that someone´s taking me to the viewpoint. however, the language barrier makes itself apparent when she brings me to a paved road, motions for me to cross to the other side and just wait. i´m quite confused. she makes motions of something going by and then i realize that she has brought me to the road so that i could try to hitch a ride back into town. i tell her no, i´ll just walk down the road. i thank her and head off down this road. it´s a very windy road (as in it was very curvy and turny, not blowy) so i walked a lot to not get very far. then i saw a sign pointing to a path that was suppose to lead me back into town. so i head down that and keep going, thinking i´ve completely missed the bellevista lookout but then i walk right into it. i take my pictures and continue on down into baños. all in all, it was a good hike. oh, i may have slightly rolled my right ankle, but it´s not really swollen and doesn´t really hurt, so i think it´s ok...

i went to the hot pools that night, too, and had a fun spanglish conversation with a couple guys from a nearby city who were in town for a few days on business. and i was quite amused by all the parents trying to teach their kids how to swim. the best was probably the little girl with water wings on who essentially just put her head under water and was convinced that she was swimming. totally reminded me of various kids i´ve taught swimming lessons to.

there has been a great group of people i´ve met at this hostel and the five of us have had supper together for the last couple nights. someone goes out and buys stuff from the grocery store and a couple others cook it and i get to eat it. pretty sweet deal. and the food´s been really good.

so nothing too exciting going on. but my galapagos tour officially starts tomorrow!!! yay!!!!! i´m QUITE excited. tomorrow´s just a check-in day for the group so everyone´s just arriving. after i get to quito, i think i´m going to do a day trip out to mitad del mundo - literally ¨the middle of the world,¨ and more commonly known as the equator line. and then we fly out to the galapagos on tuesday morning!!!! and then live on a boat for eight days. i hear that the water´s pretty rough this time of year - i may look into getting some gravol or whatever the ecuadorian equivalent is...

i highly doubt there will be internet access while i´m on the boat, so no more stories from me until the end of the month...and maybe you will actually see me before i post anything...

i think i´ve found the canmore of ecuador...

so the more i move around and the more locals try to start a conversation with me, the more i´m convinced that after i learn spanish back in canada, i need to come back and do this properly - this whole travel around the spanish-speaking bits of south america thing. pretty much everyone who knows me knows that i´m a chatty person but i swear there are people i´ve met who believe that i am the quietest, shyest person around but it´s just that i can´t string a proper sentence together in spanish. sigh. so the poor english-speaking folk whom i have met in hostels - especially those i run into in my dorm - always get held up for at LEAST a half hour by me when i see them because i need to tell SOMEONE what i´ve been up to all day. but if i was able to chat with people throughout the day, i wouldn´t explode all over the first person i run into who will understand my ramblings.

anyways, i left montatñita at 0500H yesterday, arrived in guayaquil and immediately hopped onto another bus taking me to baños. ALWAYS ask how long a bus ride is suppose to be. had i known i´d be on that last bus for seven hours, i would have gone to the bathroom first.

there are definitely things i miss about montañita - peeled and cut, ready to eat mangos for 50 cents; fresh fruit smoothies; walking around barefoot because you´re just headed a block down to the beach; wandering down the beach for hours because it goes on FOREVER; playing with the waves; watching the guy making my lunch fight to get an oyster (that is my lunch) open on the street. but baños - had i known how much i´d love this place, i would have left the beach earlier to have a few more days here. baños is almost like canmore - hiking, biking, rafting, horse-back riding. it may even be a little bit cooler as you can head out to the jungle from here, rent ATVs and just explore the surrounding mountains, hot pools/springs, and stuff is definitely cheaper here than in canmore. i met an american last night who just quit his job recently and has decided to live here - i can totally understand why. this town sits in a valley between luscious, green mountains with waterfalls coming out left, right and centre. ok, maybe there´s only one main waterfall you can see from the town but there´s a ¨road of waterfalls¨ that you can follow not to far out of town to see lots of waterfalls. and it´s small but not tiny so you´re not running into the same people every single day. and people are super nice and friendly and it´s super safe around here. yup, i REALLY like this place.

so i biked the ¨road of waterfalls¨ today and decided to do the whole 61 km ride to the next city/big town (puyo). rented a decent mountain bike for $5, got rough directions from the guy who rented me the bike and who assured me that it was all downhill with only two steep-ish uphills and that it would be about five to six hours to do the whole thing and off i went. it started off all downhill and was really fun. the drivers here are actually quite good about giving cyclists LOTS of space, which was super exciting for me when i was on the cliff side of the road (no railguards). so the first while was pretty sweet, cruising along with spectacular views and oasis playing in my ipod. i went through a tunnel but didn´t have headlights from a car behind me like the last time i went through a tunnel, so that was a bit unnerving, especially when a car passed me and didn´t quite realize i was there until it was RIGHT behind me. i crossed a bridge where there were guys selling jumps off the bridge - it wasn´t quite bungee jumping as it wasn´t a bungee rope (not elastic) but more like jump off and swing back and forth type of deal. i passed on that offer. and then i ended up biking with a guy from switzerland and we chatted - well, i chatted - as we went along. there was a point where we could choose to either go up a rocky/dirt road and do a loop or just continue on the highway - we went with the loop only to find that it was not a complete loop as one of the bridges was no longer there so we had to carry our bikes across (well, the swiss guy came back and took my bike across as i tried to figure out how to get across without getting my shoes completely wet) and had a couple dogs chase and snap at our heels as we biked past this one house. anyways, we parted ways after a bit as he was thinking of turning around soon and i was set on going all the way to puyo. so three and a half hours into the ride, there´s a RIDICULOUS uphill that absolutely killed me - i walked my bike up the last part of that. and then about a half hour after that (just as the mission impossible theme started playing), there was ANOTHER ridiculous uphill that seemed to go on forever. i thought puyo would never come but i finally saw the sign saying 12 km and just hoped that there weren´t any other major uphills. four and half hours after leaving baños, i get to puyo in one piece and buy myself an ice cream bar for 25 cents (i´m REALLY going to miss ice cream prices). flagged down a bus, the guy threw my bike under the bus and i headed back to baños just as it started to rain. and now i´m really missing my biking gloves (my palms are quite tender from the ride) and my gel seat - my ass is sore. =( but all in all, i had a fun day. AND there´s this fantastic bakery across the street from the bike rental shop so i picked up some muffins and a cookie there afterwards. mmmmmm...

so it´s only 1920H but i am ready for bed - i feel like an old lady. but i got a big day of hiking planned for tomorrow so i probably will just read for a bit and then go to sleep. and i´m thinking that i need to do some major exploring in calgary when i get back to find parks and trails to wander off into when i get antsy...i´m really gonna miss being outside so much...

montanita

things i've learned while on the beach:

• best way to get the business of females traveling alone - send kids their way. i got off the bus and had the option of listening to a man in his late 30s or following two kids (maybe aged eight and twelve) who started yammering away at me in spanish - i went with the kids who took me on a bit of a tour of the place (it's not that big) and told me that the hostel i was looking for was currently under renovations and not open. so i ended up staying at the hotel they recommended.
• batidos - fresh fruit smoothies made of only fresh fruit, milk, sugar and ice. i'm not sure how they away with not using yogurt and still getting a thicker consistency. regardless, it's SOOOO good. i have at LEAST one a day and at $1USD a pop, it puts any smoothie place back home to shame.
• ecuador runs on USD. i miss peruvian prices and soles.
• fresh ceviche - you can pretty much watch the seafood come out of the ocean and into the restaurant. SOOOOO good...mmm...
• empanadas - the BEST empanadas i have EVER had are to be found in montanita. there's a shop down liquor alley (more about that later) run by a guy who's from NY and his argentinian wife. they don't deep fry their empanadas, they bake them, i think, and then toaster oven them so that they're warm when you eat them. SOOOO good. i've had empanadas stuffed with spinach and ricotto cheese, tuna and cheese, sweet red peppers and cheese...mmmmm...
• liquor alley - so there are bars and restaurants and clubs and what not here in montanita. but there is also what gringos call liquor alley. it's basically a street lined up with carts/kiosks where people sell cocktails. it's quite ridiculous but brilliant in that overhead costs next to nothing and all you need are a few plastic chairs in front of the cart. otherwise your customers just stand around and drink and when enough alcohol has been consumes, they can dance in the streets and you don't have to worry about them. it's basically a huge street party.
• thursday, friday, saturday and sometimes sunday evenings - music blares from various bars, clubs and liquor alley until at least 0300H but i've heard it going until 0600H.
• staying in a hotel on the main strip means that uninterrupted sleep does NOT happen on thursday, friday, saturday or sunday evenings.
• music stops at 0600H, construction starts at 0700H.
• if your original surf instructor says to meet him at 0830H but you see him out drinking and partying harder than you are at 0200H, there is the possibility that he will show up at 0830H to teach you how to surf. i wasn't that fortunate. i showed up at 0820H and waited until 0900H before my hunger got the best of me and i had to go looking for food. i went back to the shop after breakfast and chatted with the guy doing bookings and he was QUITE apologetic about the whole thing. gave me my money back and recommended a couple other surf schools for me to check out.
• being a girl definitely has its perks around here. i ended up running into a surfing lesson a few minutes late and it was just the instructor and one guy he was teaching. my instructor's name is uba (or ubar, i'm not really sure) and i pretty much got a private lesson as he essentially never left my side and just sent the other guy off. granted the other guy was faring better than i was but still, i imagine he's a little miffed. and once uba discovered i was completely unattached, he offered to help me out with my surfing the next day of the kindness of his heart and he's taking me out surfing one last time today before i go tomorrow. there's a bit of a language barrier but i always remind him that i'm leaving montanita and that all i want from him are surfing lessons.
• surfing is NOTHING like snowboarding. i find that there's a LOT more to think about when it comes to surfing - like staying on top of the water, whereas in snowboarding, staying atop the snow is a given. and apparently my hand-talking tendencies are doing me no favours when it comes to surfing. the few times i've gotten up, i get really excited and throw my arms up and that topples me over. my surfing instructor has been VERY patient and kind to me but i can only imagine how frustrated he gets watching me ALMOST get it. i found it amusing that within five minutes of my lesson, uba figured out that my main problem was that i had to relax. apparently i get a little too excited about getting up on the board and that throws me over. i swear, 50% of his feedback to me is "take it easy, honey, relax." and i get frustrated because i'm TRYING to relax but that in and of itself gets me more frustrated because i'm trying so hard to relax. sigh. there's no winning. surfing also requires a great deal of balance. i suck at balancing. one of the first things uba said to me was that surfing is not like snowboarding in that your weight is more forward in surfing and surfing is far more sensitive to the positioning of your butt. if your butt isn't centered with the board, you fall off. i'm not very good at keeping my butt centered with the board. so if it's not my arms flailing about, it's my butt in the wrong place, or i'm not relaxed enough or i jump up on the board too fast or i'm not leaning forward enough or i'm just not liking the feeling of having flushed gallons of salt water through my sinuses - i just don't think i was made to surf. uba was nice enough to suggest that perhaps it was the board and not me - but i've been out twice on two different boards and i can't say one was any better than the other. we'll see how today goes.
• i definitely cannot live in small, small towns. i knew that already but being here for almost a week definitely confirms it. i think there are about a thousand people living here. maybe it'd be different if i had my own place but still, i'm definitely getting bored. everyone i talk to says that there are basically two things to do in montanita: surf and drink. and if you don't do either one of those, you should look at getting out of montanita asap. so i've done both AND i've discovered good food here, too. but yeah, i'm ready to go.
• i think i'm understanding more spanish than i thought i would considering i've been to very english-speaking-friendly places in peru. i've had quite a few "conversations" with locals where i ask a questions in VERY elementary and broken spanish and they reply in simple words and very slowly in spanish. i reply in english with appropriate hand gestures and a lot of pointing. they respond in spanish in the same way and we seem to understand each other. or at least we get the gist of what the other is trying to convey. it's kind of cool walking away from a "conversation" realizing that the other person didn't use a word of english. i definitely want to take spanish lessons when i get back. wish i had more time to do it down here as it is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper and it'd be SO much easier to practice...\

so i'm leaving montanita tomorrow. not entirely sure where i'll end up tomorrow night but i'll figure it out when i'm back at the bus terminal in guayaquil. speaking of which, the bus terminal in guayaquil is AMAZING. it's like an airport! i was quite impressed with it. anyways, i thought i could go straight to quito from montanita but everyone's telling me it's faster to head back to guayaquil and then up to quito. i think i'm going to stop in banos on my way up to quito for a couple days and do a bike ride there. got a few day trips from quito i want to do and in a week i'll be off to the galapagos! meaning i go back to canada soon...boo...

on a happier note, i found out that i get an extra paycheque this week!!!!! as a part of the union's new agreement, we get "retention incentive pay" - which is bascially me getting a chunk of money for staying with my job. the original plan was that we would get the first of the two payments in january and the other six months later (i think) but i got word that they bumped it up to this friday!!!! that works out GREAT for me because money was getting kind of tight - especially with the canadian dollar not doing so well compared to the USD...so yay for getting unexpected chunks of money!!!

crossing the border and my peruvian michael

i got on a plane in cuzco yesterday morning and flew to lima. got on another plane and flew to tumbes - a town right by the peruvian-ecuadorian border. THE smallest airport i have EVER been at. seriously, it was just one building. we got off the plane onto the tarmac and the airport was maybe the size of a few school portables put together. they didn´t even have an information desk - which threw a wrench in my plans.

so my plan? i didn´t really have one. all i knew was that i didn´t want to bus 38 hours to montanita in ecuador so i splurged and bought flights to tumbes and decided to bus across the border and up to montanita. i figured once i got to tumbes, i´ll be able to figure out how to cross the border legitimately and then just get a bus to montanita. worse case scenario, i ask people at the info desk. so a lack of an info desk posed a bit of a problem. a taxi driver asked me if i needed a taxi. i told him i was going to montanita. did he speak english? no. and my spanish? no. so i THINK he told me that he would take me to the immigration office to get stamped out of peru. so i hopped in the cab with him. hoping for the best. he takes me to the immigration office, i get stamped out. i ask him to take me to the bus terminal. he shakes his head and starts making hand motions and rambling in spanish. i have NO IDEA what he´s trying to say. all i know is that he tells me to get into the cab and i do. i´m usually more skeptical than this but he seemed like a very nice guy. he drives me...somewhere. pulls of to the side of a street in the middle of a VERY busy marketplace. turns around and points at himself and me and says something about accompanying me. i´m just very confused and i´m sure i looked confused. he says something else and i pick out the words ¨ecuador immigration,¨ ¨bus station.¨ ¨guayaquil,¨ and ¨i and you.¨ i think he´s saying that he´ll cross the border with me to get me to the ecuadorian immigration office and then get me to the bus station? i think. so i go with that thought.

so he takes my big pack and i take my day pack and i follow him through this market until we get to a bridge with a sign saying something along the lines of ¨thank you for visiting peru¨ on one end and another sign saying something along the lines of ¨welcome to ecuador¨ on the other end. i SWEAR i´m the only tourist around. i´m a little concerned. so i stay close to my cab driver - who though i´ve only known for about twenty minutes i would probably trust him with my life at that time. we wait for a cab on a corner where it seems like EVERYONE is staring at us (me because i´m obviously not from around there and him because why is a peruvian cab driver in ecuador carrying my backpack?). i ask him what his name is. his name is michael. i thank him because i felt that he was probably doing more than he usually does for people he drives around. a couple of people that he knows walk by and they chat for a bit - likely asking who i was and what he was doing as there were many looks my way with hand gestures at my backpack. they introduce themselves to me and tell me that michael´s a good guy. i believe them. anyways, a cab comes and we hop into an ecuadorian cab (he wasn´t allowed to bring his peruvian cab over) and we go to the immigration office, get me stamped into the country, and then we hop into another cab, get out at what i would assume was a bus station, and next thing i know, he´s asking for a ticket to get me to guayaquil. he hands me the ticket, sets my bag down on the couch in the bus station, and says, ¨finito,¨ points at himself and then points out the door. this is the end. this is as far as he goes with me. i look at my watch. michael just spent TWO HOURS with me making sure that i got across the border ok and was on my way to the next stop. i was chatting with a guy from the states on the plane ride to tumbes earlier that day and he was asking what it was like as a girl traveling alone in peru with no spanish speaking ability. it made me think about the last five weeks and how unbelievably BLESSED i have been with the people i have met and the amount of help that i have been given. i have been fortunate that all the strangers that i have met and followed and even hopped into cars to places that i didn´t know have been good, solid people who just wanted to help. i have not been able to properly converse with anyone in spanish and yet i have stayed in hostels where the owners speak nothing but spanish and have been given directions and advice by locals and travelers who speak little to no english. my five weeks in peru were amazing. and as i crossed the border into ecuador, michael´s kindness reminded me that even though i have no idea what i´m doing down here in ecuador, i´ll be ok. so i gave micheal a hug, tipped him well (he almost wouldn´t take the tip) and said thank you and good bye. i had a couple of hours to kill at the bus station so i just sat there and started reading up on ecuador and guayaquil in the lonely planet.

so this bus to guayaquil was really just a minivan - like a proper north american minivan. and i got a bucket seat in the middle. probably one of the comfier rides i´ve had since being in south america. i slept most of the ride. arrived in guayaquil a little after midnight. got me a cab, headed to a hotel, checked in and slept. i spent this morning wandering around guyaquil a bit. big city. it´s alright. not a huge fan. and really, i just want to get to a beach. so packed my stuff up, checked out, hopped in a cab where the cab driver tried to tell me about the HUGE waves in monatanita and that i needed to surf, got off at the bus terminal and was greeted by this guy who got me my bus ticked to montanita within five minutes of me getting out of the cab. at first i thought he worked for the bus terminal and was thinking, ¨this is a great service for tourists!¨ but after he showed me where to board the bus, he was obviously waiting for payment. oh well. not everyone´s a michael. =)

and i know that this isn´t really a fair, proper comparison but i´m going to put it out there anyways. so i named my car back home michael - that´s a story in and of itself so i´m not going to go into it here. anyways, the joke back home is that michael is super reliable. he takes me places, on time, reliable, and there was only one time he wasn´t where i left him but he ended up coming back anyways. i find it kind of fitting that the cab driver´s name was michael. he got me from point a to b, reliable and was always outside both immigration offices waiting for me with my backpack. i know, i know. i just compared a man to my car. but i think of both with the same amount of fondness - and yes, i am SUPER fond of my car.

so my bus leaves in about a half hour or so and I´LL BE ON A BEACH!!!!! QUITE excited to be lying in a hammock with a book. QUITE excited to try surfing. QUITE excited for HOT weather. QUITE excited for even more ceviche. QUITE excited about just sitting and doing nothing for a few days. i´m just EXCITED!!!!!

bought me a new camera a couple days ago in cusco so i´ll be taking pics again!!! got the exact same model that i lost. was super tempted to stay in cusco until saturday night so that i could go check out the black market for stolen electronics and maybe get my camera back but cusco was not doing my health any favours with all the late nights. and i was getting bored in cusco. i did most of the touristy things and was just randomly wandering by the last day.

my first day in a new country reminded me a lot of my first day in lima. super weary. super cautious. definitely thinking everyone wanted to rob me. and guayaquil isn´t swarming with tourists. the last two cities i was in - cuzco and arequipa - were DEFINITELY tourist cities and i looked more local than tourist, or at least i could possibly pass as a local and not everyone assumed i was a tourist. but not so much in guayaquil. and fewer people speak english here. so i was feeling a little less confident. but i think i´m ok now. the beach will be good. oh, and something else about peru and ecuador that i with i could bring back to canada with me - men walking by will just tell you you´re beautiful and then walk away. no ulterior motives or intentions or anything of the sort. now, not ALL the men are like that but it was interesting to have someone just tell me they think i´m beautiful and not want anything else. call me a girl, but that always makes my day! =)

anyways, i´m off to catch my bus to montanita!!!!

the second 4-day trek

so the first trek i did was more of a cultural experience where we stopped in villages and was introduced to how life is for the people living in the lares valley. my second trek was the inca trail - the path that the incas used to get to machu picchu. not very interactive with locals as no one lives on the trail anymore but lots of history as there were archealogical ruins all along the way.

lessons learned from the inca trail:

• napping on bus rides is GREAT if you didn´t get a lot of sleep the night before
• apparently i´m ok to trek with only two and a half hours of sleep under my belt
• trekking for four days before the inca trail is a great way to get your body warmed up and used to hours of hiking each day
• you can use celery to make tea. actually, you can use just about any fruit or vegetable to make tea.
• if you want to have a glass of wine after a day of hiking, bring a litre of it in a box (like tetra packs). one of the girls in my group had heard people say that they wished they had a beer or a glass of wine at the end of the day so she brought along a litre of white wine. yeah, it´s extra weight, but the porters carried it.
• i forgot to mention this in the post about the last trek but every night before dinner the cook and porters prepared ¨happy hour¨ for us - tea, coffee, hot chocolate, popcorn and cookies! good way to end a day of hiking and a great way of spoiling supper.
• macho tea - at least that´s what i think it is called. bascially a bunch of fruit boiled with tea and then you add either rum or white wine or whatever your choice of liquor is and add a stink load of sugar. super tasty. our guide introduced us to it after we requested a real happy hour after our longest day crossing two mountain passes (one at 4200 m). i thought we were just going to break out the wine sally brought but apparently the cook was carrying a bottle of rum for the macho tea, as well.
• drinking at higher alititudes makes everyone a cheaper drunk
• multi-day treks makes me feel like an old lady sometimes - i was in my sleeping bag by 2030/2100H the first night and 2000H the second night. granted we had 0400H or 0500H mornings but still...
• walking up seemingly endless stone steps sucks but going down steep, uneven steps sucks even more. i´m glad i brought anti-inflammatories with me or my knees would have really hurt.
• i earned myself a bit of a reputation as the crazy girl from canada as it´s not common for people to do two hikes back to back. i think i´m just going to do an eight to ten day trek next time.
• you´d think that eight days of trekking would put me off hiking for a while but i was pretty close to booking the five-day salkantay trek. if it weren´t for time and money, i´d be out in the middle of nowhere again right now.
• our guide has been taking people on different treks around cusco once a week for the past seven years. he says that we were the first group where no one opted to pay for showers on the third night. he was too polite to say it but i´m pretty sure he thought we were crazy.
• i think it´d be fun to be a tour guide - mostly because i like to talk. but even a few of the guides asked me when i was moving to cusco to guide treks.
• machu picchu - still pretty cool the second time around.
• apparently there´s a TON of trekking and hiking to be done around cusco. depending on how my future world travels go, i just may come back and spend a couple months trekking around the sacred valley here...
  

so i´ve been off trails and in cusco for a couple days now. it was kind of odd not having a destination to get to on saturday. wasn´t really sure what to do with myself and really wanted to just walk lots. my body was feeling fine. treated myself to a one hour massage ($5CDN!) but i think that´s made my body start to hurt - my shoulders and traps are killing me. i think i might splurge and go get another massage.

anyways, the plan was to go to arequipa again when i got back but there have been quite a few road blocks and demonstrations between cusco and arequipa lately (i think it´s either over a gas pipeline that the government wants to put in or a dam they want to build) and i didn´t want to get stuck on the road somewhere. that and i added up the hours it would take for me to bus from cusco to arequipa to lima up into ecuador - a 38 hour bus trip just didn´t sound all that appealing. so i´m going to go buy me flights from here to lima to tumbes (town right by the peru/ecuador border) and then just bus eight hours into ecuador. i asked about flying straight into ecuador but that would make it an international flight and would cost me an extra $500USD. i can deal with an eight hour bus ride.

this past saturday and sunday were holidays here in peru - the first being a celebration of the living and the second being a celebration of the dead. i wandered down to the cemetary and it looked like half of cusco was down there cleaning tombstones and leaving food/drink for the deceased. and cusco was SO quiet on sunday as most shops were closed.

so it´s november third. twenty-five days to go before i go back to canada. my trip is more than half over. on one hand it feels like it´s flown by but on the other hand, i´ve done SO MUCH that it feels like more than a month has gone by. i´ve met SO many people and it´s been weird running into people i now know when i´m just wandering around cusco. gives me the sense that i have a life here...but i don´t. it feels like i´ve known the people i´ve met on my trips to the jungle and while trekking forever and it´s weird to think that i will probaly never see some of them ever again. i guess that´s the bittersweet reality of traveling - you meet great people but it´s only for a short period of time. a part of me wants to just stay here for a while and continue building on those friendships and become even more familiar with the city but the reality is that i need to go - and i don´t have the guts yet to just say screw it and stay. and even if i did stay, most of the people i´ve met are traveling and aren´t staying here. and there are really great, interesting people back in calgary that i know. sometimes i just wish that i could bring together ALL the cool, interesting people i´ve met to live in one place. THAT would be fun.

but i´m not leaving yet so looking forward to the last bit! four and half weeks in and even with eight days of trekking - no injuries!!!! i have random bruises from who knows what and only a small handful of bug bites and a few scrapes and cuts but nothing´s that had to stop me. i am feeling a bit of a cold coming on but i´m hoping it won´t actually turn into a full blown cold. oh, and i lost my camera. or someone stole it. took it out with me one night (which i know was a dumb idea) and didn´t have it on me anymore when i got back. luckily, i swapped memory cards before i left so i still have all but maybe 30 pictures from the beginning of my trip that are in the camera´s memory. i heard that there´s a black market of stolen goods on saturdays and that i could possibly find my camera there but i won´t be here anymore on saturday. so i guess i´m camera shopping today!

the first 4-day hike

um. SO much i could write about. and in FAR more detail than i´m willing to sit here and type out at the moment. the past eight days feel like they should have happened over at LEAST a month´s time. i´m just going to give bits of the first hike first and i´ll blog about the the other trip at another time.

lessons learned from my first hike - the lares trail:

• sometimes a 0530 pick up to the meeting spot that the agency promises you just means that one of the employees will meet you at your hostel, hop in a cab with you and tell the driver to drive to the meeting spot. oh, and you pay.
• it´s nice having a bit of a bus ride to sleep on the way to the beginning of a trek especially if it´s means waking up at 0430. oh, and also if you went out the night before and didn´t make it to bed until 0300.
• trek breifings the night before are good as you can meet your group before you start trekking and get an idea of where everyone´s at.
• it´s nice when people from your group recognize you while at the bar after the trek briefing and then you realize that you´re not the only one who isn´t doing the resposible thing of trying to get the most sleep as possible before the trek.
• the andes are GORGEOUS - but i think i still like the rockies more.
• a ¨gentle upwards slope¨ in peru actually requires quite a bit of effort to get up - especially if you live in the prairies of canada.
• peruvian flats - not actually flat but undulations of up and down, up and down.
• it´s a little disheartening when you climb up what you consider a rather difficult uphill only to have the guide tell you that the hard part starts next.
• sometimes the view really IS worth the pain of feeling like your heart is going to burst and your lungs don´t work.
• thin air sucks when you´re trying to climb up a mountain.
• i find it reassuring to know that there are people who work for the UN who have a wicked sense of humour. =)
• people from all over the world, of different backgrounds and worldviews makes for a really fun and interesting group of people to be trekking with for four days.
• being short 17 horses and 7 porters makes for a HELL of a lot of work for the 4 porters, 1 cook and 1 guide that we did have.
• porters are AMAZING. not just in their physical ability to carry a TON of stuff and STILL walk faster than you but also in their commitment to make sure you´re still as comfy as possible.
• the cook was AMAZING - gourmet meals, TONS of food, three times a day. all prepared in the middle of nowhere.
• getting lost on the way to the campsite with a fellow trekker who also has no idea where to go, in the dark and in heavy rain in slippery mud - not fun at the time but a great story to tell and i can look back on that night with a smile and chuckles.
• finding two other fellow trekkers who were actually MORE lost than the two of us made the evening of lostness even more interesting.
• i can become quite desperate for hope and not be the most rational when i´m lost in the dark and don´t even know what i´m looking for. i honestly thought that a half-foot wide mud path across a muddy hill was a good idea - until the guy behind me slipped down it. but then we all went down to where he was because there was something that looked like a path down there. that and there was no way we were going to be able to pull him back up.
• knowing how to speak the local language is IMMENSELY helpful when getting lost in rural areas. having a source of light is also good - especially at night because they don´t have street lights.
• i´m really glad that i tested out my sleeping bag back home before coming to south america because even though i was really cold during the hike at some points, i knew that i had a warm sleeping bag to crawl into once we hit camp.
• i go up and down a mountain back home in a day and feel sore the next day. but i felt fine every morning after trekking for hours the day before. not sure why that is.
• the ability of the kids i came across to have fun with so little makes me wonder why we feel like we need so much back home to be entertained.
• the last place we stayed in was a hotel in a city but the whole city didn´t have electricity. it was cool to see that life went on and people continued with business despite the lack of electricity. if i were in canada, i would have just stayed at home and wondered what to do.
• machu picchu is SUPER cool. i took a ton of pictures.
• the machu picchu version of vancouver´s grouse grind is called wayna picchu - the mountain beside machu picchu that you can climb.
• nineteen people can go on the exact same trip and come out with nineteen different opinions and experiences.
• even after four days of early starts, long hours of walking, and ok amounts of sleep, you can still find the energy to meet up with people an hour and a half after getting back for drinks and not get to bed until 0400. and then waking up an hour later to meet up with the next group for the next four day hike, well, that´s another story for another day...