Ecuador: Curia Town - The Coast

I just realized that I never finished blogging about our trip to South America that we took back in December/January. Now that eight months have gone by maybe I'll finish :-) From the mountains of Banos we headed to the coast...it was time for Brian to surf and for me to relax!

We knew some folks who had lived in Ecuador for a while, so they gave us the recommendation to stay with a friend of theirs who rented out rooms from his house on the water. It was a great spot where we ended up spending a week and made friends with a group of Argentenians who were staying there as well.

And here are some more friends we made...Helmet and his twin daughters are from Germany. The girls had just finished a few months of studying in Quito, so he flew out to do some traveling with them...they were a great family!

This was the view from our room...

One of the great things about staying at Dicky and Susie's was that they had boards...yay! If we didn't go anywhere for the day Brian was still able to surf out front; even though the waves weren't the best there, they were still surfable. I was even able to try short boarding for the first time....and I got up! It was heaps of fun until the fin decided to come crashing down on the back of my arm, which gave me the biggest bruise I have ever had....

Here is a day that we went searching for waves....and we played, "how many people can you fit in one truck?" I think there were 12 of us...it was pretty impressive.

Aaaaaaaand we got stuck on the way out.

Besides surfing, our other activities included:

Crab Catching


Relaxing

And LOTS of Eating!

Pan fried fish with fried plantains


Fish and shrimp ceviche with fried plantains...AMAZING!


Breaded fish...these plates were about $2.50 and they were SO good!


Corviche. Some sort of dough that had peanut butter in it then stuffed with squid and fried...it was yummy!


Fried shrimp


Yes, that is the "restaurant" right behind me :-)


Mora (blackberry) popsicles. These things were out of control! They also had chocolate and coconut ones that came in a close second place. We eat lots of ice cream (whatever form it comes in) when we travel, it's just what we do!

There were a few nights that we all ate together and the Argentinians bar-b-que'd for us in traditional Argentenian style. They even treated us to a delicacy....any guesses??? Cow salivary glands! Yes, we ate them, and yes, they were strange. They were kinda sticky and chewy but with somewhat of a meaty texture. I don't think I'll eat one ever again....

One of the craziest nights we had in Ecuador was New Year's Eve in Montanita (a 10 minute drive from Curia). Unfortunately I don't have any photos from the night, but to give you a picture of what it was like: thousands and thousands of people (mainly young people) flock to Montanita for the New Year's celebration where, at midnight, they burn massive "puppets" on the beach, then a bunch of drunk idiots run through the fires. We saw a guy rolling in the waves because he caught on fire...don't worry, he was fine. There were tons of people night surfing, lots of music, and dancing in the streets. By far the craziest New Year's celebration we have ever been a part of!

The trip is almost over...I'll fill you in on our next destination soon....

Bermuda

Yes, it's true, we were just in Bermuda for 5 days. I know, so random....who goes to Bermuda??? It was a mixture of a work trip (though there was technically no work involved) and a vacation. I am so proud of Brian and his accomplishments at work last year. He is the hardest worker I know, and it was great to see him being recognized for all of that work.

Bermuda is not a place we would have ever chosen to go, but it ended up being just what we needed! I got to watch Brian relax for the first time in I don't know how long...we were so lucky that this trip fell at the time that it did. Being 7 1/2 months pregnant I was still feeling good and had a decent amount of energy.

We were put up at the Fairmont South Hampton, and this was the view from our room...not too shabby....

And the pool facilities...

The first two days of the trip there was quite a bit of rain, but we didn't let that dampen our spirits! Tropical rain is so different then the rain we get here, so it is more of a novelty. The dark clouds actually made for a cool photo...

Luckily our massages were scheduled on one of the rainy days, so it worked out perfectly. I can't tell you how great it felt to lay on my belly (they had a pregnancy massage table) and how fabulous my masseuse was! Brian experienced his first massage ever and he is now a HUGE fan...he looked like he was going to fall over from being so relaxed :-)

The water in Bermuda was the perfect temperature! Cool enough to feel refreshed when you get in, but warm enough that you could literally stay in it all day. Sorry in advance for the loooooong columns of photos...if I knew how to use Photoshop I would place some of them side by side, or make small collages, but I have no idea how to do it...anyone up for giving me a simple Photoshop tutorial?!?! Anyway, the water photos...

And now for a close-up of the belly....

Bermuda is expensive! We decided it is probably all east coast billionaires who own homes there. This is what most of the houses look like...

We spent most of our evenings attending company events where we actually had a blast...there were some great people to hang out with, and I even hit the dance floor two of the nights. I think maybe that is what wore me out the most! Here is Brian accepting his Falcon Award on the night of the big awards ceremony....Yay Brian!!!!!

And this was our last night at the goodbye beach party...

Well, that's the quick recap...we so enjoyed our time of relaxation, perfect water, and pink sand beaches!

Ecuador: Banos

We weren't planning on going to Banos, but we had quite a few people mention what a cool spot it was, and we're glad they did. The town is nestled right below Volcano Tungurahua, which is one of the 8 active volcanoes in Ecuador. There has been quite a bit of activity since 1999, and on occasion the entire town has had to evacuate. While we were there the volcano just so happened to be letting off a bit of steam, yes, it made me nervous.

Take a closer look....it may look like clouds, but it's not...it was billowing steam from a volcano, crazy!

And here is part of Banos...

This man was awesome! I tried my best to get a photo without him noticing; hence the reason it's blurry. We wanted to be friends with him, but he looked like he was on a mission.

Puppet anyone? I guess they're technically not puppets, but that's what everyone there called them. Right after Christmas these "puppets" appear everywhere to begin getting ready for the new year celebration. Some people buy puppets and some people make their own puppets. We saw some older kids making a huge puppet that looked like it should have been on a float, it was massive!

I'm sure you're now wondering what everyone does with these puppets. Well, right after the stroke of twelve midnight on December 31st, everyone kicks their puppet into a pile and lights it on fire. There are huge piles of burning puppets everywhere!!! Such an interesting new year's tradition.

And some people wear these masks to help them ring in the new year

One of the major draws in Banos is the hot spings...hence the name of the town is Banos (baths). I had been to hot springs before in New Zealand and in Hungary, but it was Brian's first time experiencing the amazing-ness of natural hot springs. He fell in love immediately!

The next day we fueled ourselves with a big breakfast and headed out for our 6 hour hike to get an up close look at the volcano.

Have you ever been on a hike in Ecuador? Well, if you have then you will know that it is very easy to get lost! At some crossroads there will be signs and at others there won't be. Even if there is a sign you can't always tell which direction the arrow is pointing. By the time we got to this first lookout point we had already taken a 45 minute to 1 hour detour. We were sweaty and exhausted with hours more to go...so we continued.

A few hours into the hike we were even more exhausted...

Oh good, just in case the volcano decides to start spewing lava we know which direction to run!

We passed through a lot of farmland on our hike.

We were almost to the volcano...

when we came across these men...they told us since the cloud cover had already come in for the day that it would be impossible for us to see the volcano...noooooooooooooooooo!

With that said, we headed back to Banos.

And came across some red ants.

Almost there, almost there!

These stairs were gnarly! Poor Brian and his bad knees...

We got back to town about 6 hours later completely exhausted! We were going to head straight to the hot springs to relax and shower before our 10 p.m. night bus to Guayaquil when we ran into some friends we had made earlier in the trip. We were told we had to rent a dune buggy and go explore the waterfalls on the road to Puyo....so we did. The sun was on its way down so we were only able to rent the buggy for an hour and a half, and we had a blast! We would have loved to have had more time to actually go explore the waterfalls instead of pulling off the road, taking a photo, and moving on to the next one.

Here we are in our dune buggy about to get going. Don't be fooled, you don't just drive these things through town....you drive them on a highway! No joke. It would be the same if someone came to visit Santa Cruz and we put them on Highway 17 in a dune buggy and told them to enjoy the views...you would never even think to do that, right? Well in Ecuador they do :-)

Maybe you need some videos to get the full effect...

Oh ya, and there were dark tunnels...

And if you'll notice we only had one side mirror...

Our time was running out fast and it was almost dark at this point, so we decided it was time to book it back to town. Brian was driving at the time and we had just come around a corner when out of no where our buggy stopped shifting! It wouldn't do anything. Mind you this is on a highway with semi-trucks and huge buses that are constantly passing each other. Thank God no one was behind us! Brian jumped out of the buggy, yelled to me to get in the driver seat and crank the wheel to the left, and he pushed the buggy to the other side of the freeway. I'm glad I'm married to a quick thinker because he got us out of there just in time. There was no turnout anywhere near us, so we had the buggy up against the railing and it was still partially in the road.

I stood there waving cars and trucks around him so that he could try to fix the problem, but it still wasn't working. By the way, it was pitch black by this time. The only time we could see anything was when a car drove by. Luckily, Brian had his cell phone on him and remembered that the guy we rented it from had given him a business card. He called and he got through, which was a miracle in itself because we had tried making calls earlier in the trip and they never worked. In his best Spanish he told the man what happened and supposedly someone was coming to get us. Half hour later two guys showed up. We figured out that it wasn't a problem with the gears, but that the chain had broken and fallen off and we ended up finding it in the middle of the street where the buggy stopped.

The whole thing was a bit terrifying, but it was also quite the adventure. We ended up making it back to town with time to relax in the hot springs one more time!

And look who we ran into on our way to the bus station later that night....our friends Sue and Thompson who we met and hung out with in Cotopaxi. Hi guys!!!