first trip

Hello all,

Time has passed quickly here. There is so much to do and see.
On saturday morning we left for a trip outside Quito. At first we took the bus to a bit of a tourist location: the equator monument. It was nothing very special, but I guess a little bit of a reminder that you are somewhere else and I guess kind of cool. After that we took the bus to a small village and climbed up a huge hill to a volcano Pulaluhua (I am not entirely sure that that is how it is spelled.) Its a dormant volcano since long and theres a little village in the crater. It was worth the hike.

Afterwards we took another 2 hour bus ride and afterwards a hitch which is very common in Ecuador, as you do pay to get the ride on the back of a landwagon to Mindo, a very small town in the midst of forests and next to a river Mindo. The town was very small, very basic and surrounded by amazing landscapes. Ecuador is so beautiful with lots of mountains, volcanoes, forests, rivers, coast also etc. it is just so variable. As we ascended the volcano, the mountain peaks were embedded in clouds and fog as we were really high and it was just quite spectacular.

In Mindo we were invited to a fiesta by someone at the street so we ended up going to a house party where we met lots of nice people, the people hosting it were from galapagos islands, we also met 2 German girls working in the embassy in Quito, 2 girls doing stuff by the UN in quito, there are many foreigners that have some weird job or reason to be here.

Today we took seriously a 6 hour hike to a waterfall and down again. I am so incredibly tired and a little sunburnt.. yes it is around 20-25 degrees here.. sunny but not too hot.

Yup and then another long busride, tourists pay a different price than locals here for everything, which I guess really is quite fair. The door of our bus fell off and we didn´t even stop for a second longer. as if it was totally normal, I guess it is?

The people outside Quito I guess are a little friendlier and a lot poorer too.

The indigenas are pretty much doomed for the worse jobs.

Anyways I¨ll stop here because I really am quite tired.