back in Quito

Hola,

Arrived about an hour ago to Quito again, it is nice to be in the cool climate valley city, with a bit more of a stable place again.
I didn´t have time to write during my travelling week, we started last day and did a ten day tour of Ecuador down south and through the coast up to Quito again.

Anja, the website is ecuadorvolunteer.com (do you spell volonteer, or volunteer..very bad English..) but it is less than informative. You can look at the "street children project".
Just met the first boy from Finland, had to speak in Finnish, which in the first minutes was a mixture of Spanish. He´s doing a community project outside Cayambe.

Katri: I´ll have to visit you and the stomach in Berlin, the baby is kicking? When can you find out if it is a boy or a girl, or do you want a surprise? I´m very excited to be an aunt.

Hope you are all well and enjoying your studies, work whatever you are doing.

For a summary of the last ten days. We started off going to Latacunga which is near the volcano Cotopaxi, it was just to see the landscapes of the volcano because the entry to the park is quite expensive. Afterwards we went to the small village of Laguna Quilotoa, which has a volcanic lagoon, absolutely beautiful, but a very difficult sandpit hour and a half hike down. We canoed there and spent the night in an indigenous owned hostal down at the lagoon. We spent the evening sitting with the family around a fire and then slept in their very basic rooms. It was quite authentic and there really aren´t many tourists around there. They told us of the legends in their culture, it seems a very tranquil, nature based culture, which they had preserved quite alot, however most of the indigenous are catholic here.
After a hike up the lagoon the next day we planned to go to Baños in a bus, but got stuck on the motorway a few kilometers away from Latacunga because there was a bus-strike. We rode a 5 hour ride of jeeps to latacunga, ambato, pelileo, and then to Baños, were two days there with pouring rain, which is such a shame as Baños is worth hiking around and the town itself is not interesting, very touristy etc. we didn´t know whether we should come back to Quito or not, since the next station Cuenca was far away from Baños and not so easy to hitch to, but there were buses to Ambato and then to Cuenca the next day.
Cuenca is beautiful, absolutely packed with old churches and cathedrals, a bit like a clean centro historico of Quito. It is one of the most international, but foreigner unfriendly cities that we experienced. I think it also has quite a fascist scene because I got heil-hitlered I think 4 times, and the graffiti is very in that direction.. strange. We slept the first night there in a really dodgy hostel that rented rooms out by hour to prostitutes and their clients, it was a little bit of bad district tourism as it was in the north, and we could see and hear quite interesting things in the night..We arrived in the night, so we changed for the next day, then took a bus during the day to Guayaquil which has a really hot humid climate. Its the biggest city in Ecuador, a port town. We didn´t see much more than the really old parts, the new port district which is spotless and very safe and then some more local areas downtown. It would be an interesting city to spend a month or two in doing a project as then you know where you can go etc. because some areas are quite dodgy and there is a slum district. First time that we wished we would have had just a cold shower, as we just had one warm tap, there are so many cockroaches and I can´t recall the name but big ones of those usually green things that jump alot , but there they are really big, fly all around the streets and especially the bus station and brown, they don´t do anything, but they are massive and you constantly have to flick things from your hair and body..
Afterwards we left to the Beach, to Puerto Lopez first, which was disgusting when we arrived. we had a hostal for 2 dollars a night, which was worth nothing more, really manky, it rained and the streets were just muck, algae and garbage and the water really dirty as it is a port-town. So we left, to Montañita, for 2 days and nights, where we had a really cheap domitorium, just an attick, right by the sea, with 20 people sleeping on the floor. We found this deserted beach by Olon a small village a few kilometers away, but filled with medusas, that we only noticed once we were well in the water, otherwise it is a surfing town with lots of tourists. In the places that there are most tourists, they are most hostile to foreigners, I guess partly because they see the rude types, partly because they have to cater to so many and group you more into a whole.

that was in general, our nice little trip around Ecuador. Today I am going to see about other projects they have here in Quito. I would really like to do a few weeks at this organic fruit farm a little more to the coast, but its through a different organization so I have to see how that works as Ecuador volonteer is quite buisness oriented as well, not all so fair.

But,
if you want to call me, I´ll be in tomorrow from lets say 3-5 my time.