Otavalo

The rain had to catch up to us eventually.  While we dealt with partial day showers in Quito, Cuyabeno, and Cuenca, the day we arrived in Orvieto was a total washout.  Alas.  We had a delicious Mexican lunch at Taco Bello, and then spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the room.  We stayed at the Hostal Riviera Sucre, which was great.  It was a cute property, had strong and hot water in the bathroom, and lots of blankets on the beds (needed since the rooms weren't heated). 

The big draw of Orvieto was the markets on Saturday.  We actually got there too early, while they were still setting up, so we had coffee and waited for things to get going. The markets were huge.  I want to come back and go Christmas shopping.  This was definitely not the place to come with limited suitcase space and limited budget. I loved all of the beautiful textiles and jewelry that were for sale.  We spent most of the day wandering through the aisles and aisles of goods. 

The late afternoon, sick of the crowds, we took a cab to Peguche Waterfall, just outside the city.  It was lovely to be in nature again, hiking up to the pretty fall.  It rained a little, but produced a grand rainbow.  We decided to walk back, since the rain had stopped.  It took about an hour, but the sunshine was lovely. 

The next morning we had time before the bus back to Quito.  We took a bus and a cab up to a lagoon in an old volcanic crater.  It was a gorgeous lake, probably even prettier in full sunshine. We didn't have time to walk fully around Cotacachi, but got some pretty pictures.

Cuenca

Down south in Ecuador is the highland city of Cuenca.  It's adorably colonial, surrounded by beautiful mountains, full of native cultural sites.

We stayed at the Hotel Victoria, which was just lovely.  Our room looked down toward the river.  We arrived around lunch time, and started the day by just wandering around to see some of the city.  We went down to the river, and then up to the Iglesia San Blas plaza.  Lunch was a delicious arepa from a Colombia restaurant called Moliendo Cafe.  After lunch, we walked up to the main square, Parque Calderon, to see the Cathedral and other historic buildings.  Then we just sort of ambled, with ice cream and shopping and so many people bustling about.

On our second day, we rode out to Ingapirca, the remains of an Incan city situated on top of an older Canari city.  The guide gave a great tour of the excavated ruins, highlighting the two temples there.  It was definitely not as elaborate as Machu Picchu, but it was older and very cool to see some of the outlying sections of the Incan Empire after being in the center in Peru a decade ago.  We managed to get our tour in between rain storms, which was pretty fortunate.  It was a rather grey day.  After returning to Cuenca, we explored a new area, further west from where we were staying.  There was some pretty art along the walk.  We ended the day at the Anthropological Museum, studying some of the artifacts that had been found in the local area.  It was small but arranged well, with good information about the collection.

Day three was more museums- we went to the Museo Pumapungo, which is set above ruins of another Canari village.  I loved the ethnographic exhibits at the museum.  For lunch, we went upstairs at the Mercado 3 November to get giant plates of pork and salad.  SO GOOD.  Since our flight was late, we really just wandered around the city for the day, a little shopping, a little food, a lot of coffee.

Cuenca was cute and historical.  It was my friend's favorite part of Ecuador.  It wasn't super exciting, but I liked it for a slower pace for a few days.

Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve

One of the main draws of Ecuador was getting to see the Headwaters of the Amazon.  The Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve is in the Amazon Rainforest, a section of river that floods into a huge, beautiful lagoon annually.  We were lucky enough to be there during that time. 

We stayed at the Caiman Ecolodge.  It was definitely rustic.  We never did get hot water, though others did, and the electricity only ran from about 6:30-10 at night.  There was no cell reception or wifi.  We were truly cut off from the outside world, and it was wonderful.  We flew to Flores, and then were picked up by bus at the airport.  The bus drove us to the river, where we transferred to a motorized boat for the ride to the lodge.  Along the way we saw wildlife- anaconda, several types of monkeys, macaws, and even river dolphins!  

For three days, we rode around in the boat, hiked in the rain, and saw so much wildlife.  We ate delicious meal and relaxed in hammocks.  We learned how to make traditional yucca bread, and practiced using a blow gun.  A local shaman talked about traditional medicine. We swam in the lagoon at sunset. We learned about the trees that grew up from the water and how they were used.  We ate live ants. 

This was such a fun part of my trip to Ecuador.  I could have ridden around in the boat looking for animals for weeks.  Unfortunately, it was back to the real world after a few days. 

A partial sightings list:
Tiger Heron
Ninga
Anaconda
Spider Monkey
Capuchian Monkey
Sun Duck
Macaw
Wool Throated Monkey
River Dolphin
Quatzen
Sloth
Caiman
Amazon King Fisher
Black Headed Parrot
White Caracara
Flycatcher
Common Wooly Monkey
"stinky turkey" bird
Ani
Dogfish
Pirahna
Black yellow rump casique
Red beaked heron
Highland frog
Banana spider
Paca
Wing Head Kingfisher
Oropendula
TOucan
Woodpecker
yellow headed vulture
mini bandedtoucan
Eagle
Montsake monkey
White winged swallow
Amazon kingfisher
Heron
Pygmy kingfisher

Quito

Ecuador was an unexpected, and vastly out of the way, stop on this world tour, but I'm so glad that I crossed oceans to spend two weeks there.  It was a chance to see a different part of the world, have some grand adventures with a friend, and eat some downright delicious food. 

I arrived in Quito jetlagged and ragged, and didn't sleep well despite that.  The first day was a slog.  It was bright and sunny in the morning, so we took advantage of the weather while it lasted and did a self-guided walking tour of the Old Town.  This part of Quito was beautiful.  The colonial churches dominated the squares.  We went in to a few of them- it was a good way to dodge the raindrops.  The Metropolitan Cathedral was beautiful, as was the Compania de Jesus- wow, the gold! Quito reminded me a lot of Cusco.  We had some great traditional food for lunch, lots of corn and potatoes. Unfortunately, by afternoon it had started to rain. After waiting for the worst of it to pass, we walked back to the hotel.  We passed through the Mariscal Sucre neighborhood, stopping for chocolate samples at a Republic of Chocolate store.  For dinner we went to Crepes and Waffles, a recommended restaurant from a friend.  Oh, the Sopa del Soul was delicious.

Day 2 in Quito once again started with sunshine.  We went to the Teleferico de Quito, a gondola lift up the mountain to the summit of the Pichincha Volcano.  The ride was pretty, up into the clouds.  It was definitely getting harder to breathe at the top.  We didn't to the final hike up to the peak- neither of us were acclimitized to the altitude or prepared for an alpine trek in terms of food and water.  But the views from the top of the lift were definitely worth the price of the trip. 

After descending, we drove up to Mitad del Mundo, or Middle of the World.  It's the equator!  There were some interesting scientific explanations (the water draining differently is mostly a myth! Gah!) and LOTS of photos standing in two hemispheres.  We had lunch there, and wandered through the shops. For dinner we turned to Lonely Planet for a recommendation near Plaza Foch.  It wasn't great. 

Overall, two days in Quito turned out well.  It's not a place I need to go back to, but it was nice to see.