A Todo el Mundo

so we left Quito and headed to the middle of no where... in other words, Peguche. We hiked outside of the town nearest, Otavalo, and headed up hill to Peguche. Its supposed to be like an Indigenous, traditional village. We hiked to a pretty nice waterfall and then around the entire town.

Then that night they had "traditional" Andean dancing and music.... the music was good... haha the dancing seemed like the kids just made it up as they went along to impress the tourists. still fun anyways... OH AND IT RAINED! but not just a little rain, more rain then i have ever seen and our hostel had a puddle in it and we had to walk through rapids to get up the stairs...

and then Nathans jacket got lost, so now neither of us have raincoats as we head closer and closer to the amazon.

The next morning, we hopped on a bus on the side of the road and went to Ibarra. Which is famous for blackberries, and hand made ice cream... so thats what we did... ate blackberry flavored ice cream.

Then today....

we started the morning by getting on the wrong bus... although it was going to the same place, we just had to pay twice. then our taxi driver tried to take us to the Colombian airport at the border, even though we were trying to fly from Ecuador, so i think he was pretty frustrated with us. Then at the airport we realized we didn´t have the departure tax money and there was no ATM. so Kristy had to walk into town to find an ATM while Nathan stayed and watched the bags and talked to nuns. Then in town, there were no ATMs and only one bank, with a HUGE line up... so we didn´t have the cash and just thought somehow we´d survive. THEN we went to check in and they said we needed a return flight out of Colombia (which actually isn´t totally true). So they said they could give us a return flight and then we would have to go get it refunded minus $15. BUT THEN they would only take cash... which we didn´t have. THEN they just randomly printed us a fake ticket. Then we had to sit and wait as both of us were freaking out about the stupid departure tax that we didn´t have money to pay. SO we went through customs but they wouldn´t let us in because we didn´t have our stamps..... SOOO we had to go to another room to get that. BUT THEN we didn´t have the imigration card so we had to go get that. then get our passports stamped. THEN we made it through customs, and practically ran to the airplane... and with the way things were going we thought maybe the plane might have some difficulties but there were nuns aboard so it was ok (haha).

Then we arrived here in Colombia and we were so happy to be here. We´re in Cali, and its warm and beautiful.

Tomorrow we are heading to Armenia, then to Parque Nacional del Cafe, then Salento, then....

well thats the plan at least... and so far our plans have worked mega awesome....

love: Kristy and Nate

Yesterday we took the exciting flight to Quito , Ecuador... even though we never planned on even going to Ecuador, we were totally glad we made it here. Quito is a much nicer city than Lima. More relaxed and our taxi driver actually gave us US$2 off instead of trying to rip us off... yes they use american dollars here in Ecuador, which makes things a lot more money.

We headed to the supermercado and bought some stuff to cook for supper at the hostel. It was nice to not have to eat out for TWO WHOLE DAYS!

There are a ton of fancy and old churches here. They are pretty intimidating to go into and you feel like you are always being too loud inside even if all you can hear is yourself breathing.

Today we decided to take the local transit out to Mitad del Mundo (the center of the world... or the equator). Well, it was quite the adventure... we took the trolley of death which was packed so full no one could move and then a couple more people squeeze in. Then we searched, literally, for hours for the stupid bus stop that Lonely Planet spoke of. However, it is not as they said and regardless after about 3 hours we finally made it to the equator. It was... ok... then we turned around and went home.

Tonight we are going to a play that is apparently tango, salsa, stand up comedy and drama... we´ll see how that goes...

Tomorrow we are heading into Northern Ecuador, to eventually be in Tulcan by Monday for our flight to Cali, Colombia.

Hasta luego
Kristy y Nate