Happy 30th Birthday Dave!!!
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We arrived in a city called Banos, 3 hours outside of Quito, at 2 in the morning. A little bit of a rough way to wake up on your birthday, but a small price to pay for being at the bottom of an active volcano with a chance to see it smoke and hear it rumble!
Banos is a small city located in a valley between mountains and crawling with tourists for the purpose of the volcano, waterfalls, hiking, white water rafting and many other extreme activities. Arriving in the middle of the night, we didn’t feel like we were anywhere special at all. The streets were deserted except for the people getting off our bus scurrying in different directions, and drunk gringos walking around late Friday night. It didn't help the deserted feeling that all the stores and restaurants were boarded up. We walked with our jungle friends Hugo and Vidar to the hostel where they'd made a reservation in hopes they had room for us as well. Luckily enough, they had a private double room waiting for us.
When we woke up in the morning we went upstairs to the roof top café for breakfast and realized
exactly where we were. We were surrounded by green mountains with a waterfall right in front of us. We couldn’t see the volcano from where we were, and the skies were completely clouded over, but it was still a remarkable sight. Dave ordered a "big-man-birthday" breakfast and Alice stole half of the block of cheese that came with it, and we spent the morning up on the patio enjoying the view (and skyping family).
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| Our view from the rooftop |
We took a walk around the now busy streets of the town filled with tour agencies and hand crafts. We went into every single electronic store looking for the present Dave already knew he wanted, Nintendo DS or Sony’s PS Vita (yes, he is a 30 year old child). However, every store we went into was quite old fashioned with the technology they carried and we soon realized Dave’s birthday present was going to have to wait.
We checked out a crafts market where we were able to find a shark tooth necklace that Dave has been looking for since we left on our adventure. The store owner was even nice enough to take two different necklaces and put them together to customize it into almost exactly what Dave was looking for.
After the market we rushed to the bakery beside our hostel and made it just in time to get a slice of cake before they closed. Unfortunately they didn’t have any whole cakes, and definitely didn’t have any Loblaw’s cake, but we made do and enjoyed it almost just as much.
The cake, the chill and the clouds put us straight back to our room for a long nap. It just didn’t feel like a day for a hike or exerting too much energy, so made into a lazy day. After our nap we found a cute café owned by a mean German lady where Dave chose a cheese plate and coffee over another slice of cake. We then found ourselves back at our favorite spot on the rooftop to meet up with another friend from the jungle named Harro from the Netherlands. Harro was in another group and stayed at a different lodge in the jungle, so we spent some time sharing jungle stories and comparing photos.
Around 9pm we took a walk down the main street and David picked out a cute Italian restaurant called Pappadelle’s for his birthday dinner. The restaurant had dimmed candle lighting with a big screen TV showing the UFC in the back. He couldn’t have picked a better romantic/manly place. We shared a gourmet pizza and lasagna while we watched the fight and then headed to a BBQ party that we were invited to by Vidar and Hugo, for drinks.
Sunday, March 17
After another cloudy rooftop breakfast, we packed up, checked out and caught an early afternoon bus back to Quito. We were unfortunate and never got to see the active volcano in Banos. It was our second chance at missing the awe of the rumble and lava since the recently dormant volcano back in Costa Rica. Now, it’s become our mission to find another one along our travels, and we WILL see or hear a volcano somewhere!
Our ride back to the big city was quiet and rainy. We passed through a few small towns and as we got closer to the city we were able to see the big snow capped (inactive) volcano called Cotopaxi. We shared a taxi with the Argentinian couple sitting beside us, back to the same hostel we stayed at in Mariscal Foch in the popular touristy centre. As had been the case with the last Argentinian couple we'd met, we had a tough time communicating, but as our Spanish was a bit better this time, managed to have most of a real conversation. We barely settled in, and headed straight to the north Quicentro (mall) with our new Spanish speaking friends to continue our mission of finding Dave a birthday present.
There was only one store in the entire mall that sold normal electronics (the SONY store) and when Dave put his eye on the prize, we realized it was more than DOUBLE the price it would have been back home, a whopping $649! Because all electronics get shipped here from America (or Asia), the transfer and tax make them almost unaffordable. In fact, we were told by one of the sales people that you can't even find Nintendo products in the country! Sadly, Dave would have to wait just a little bit longer until we were back in the real world, for his big-boy present.
Monday, March 18
We woke up early along with our friends from Argentina and some new friends from Venezuela as we had a big day planned ahead of us. We were going to take series of local busses for over an hour to El Mitre Del Mundo (the middle of the world) Museum. The city of Quito, in its high altitude lies on the map at 0 degrees latitude and 0 degrees longitude, hence on the equator.
They built 2 museums in honor of the authentic location. The first of the two was built around a tall (and most likely very expensive) monument standing on the “equator line” that separated the north and south hemispheres of the world. Within the museum you could find mini-museums like the insect museum, the hand crafts museum, that further related the Ecuadorian culture to the site. Years later they found out through the wonder of GPS that the museum was actually NOT built on the equator, and the real line was actually almost a half km west of it. So naturally, they built another museum around the corner, that officially marked the spot.
At the first museum we took a few silly pictures and walked around. The place was packed with tourists and we had to basically line up to wait for a good picture. We didn’t stay long before we got our appetites rolling and sat down for a true authentic Ecuadorian lunch with all of our new Spanish friends.
It wasn’t until the REAL (and much smaller) museum that we were actually in awe. We had a guided tour that took us around and explained the history of Ecuador at first. We then conducted a few experiments together that centred around the gravity of the equator. They had a yellow line marking the separation between hemispheres, our first experiment was try to walk a straight line on it with our eyes closed. None of us could do it because the gravitational pull is off in the centre and therefore pulls you straight down instead of evenly sideways and therefore plays tricks on your vertigo. The second experiment was with a sink of water. On one side of the line, if you pour a tub of water in the sink, the water turns clockwise. Two meters away, on the other side of the line, a tub of water in the very same sink will turn counter clockwise, also due to the gravitational pull. Finally, they poured the water down the sink ON the equator, and it funneled straight down without turning clockwise or counter clockwise. In the last experiment we had to try to balance an egg on a nail (in which we were victorious!) which is easier on the equator, due to the fact that the gravitational forces were, for the most part, pulling straight down.
By 5pm, we were back at the hostel on another cold and rainy day. Pavla and Ivan picked us up an hour later and took us to one of there favorite cafe’s to try a “Wind Empanada” (Empanadas are the Spanish version of a panzerotti ). The size of the empanada’s were big enough to be a pillow and the biggest one’s we’ve ever seen. Instead of filling it with cheese and sauce or meat they had a small layer of cheese on the bottom and the rest was filled with air and sprinkled with sugar. They were gigantic and delicious.
We spent the next couple of hours filling Pavla and Ivan in our jungle tour, our trip to the Banos, and the museums, and then thanked them for everything they had done for us since we got to Quito. They wished us safe travels and at 11:15 we headed to the new and very modern Quito airport for our final night living as Gringos in South America.
Tuesday, March 19.
After getting no sleep at all while waiting for our 6am flight, we were able to check our bags in with United Airlines and go through security at 3:30am. By 11:30am we were back on American soil at the Houston Airport for a 2 hour layover. We spent almost the entire time waiting in line at customs and then jumped on another plane to Los Angeles for another 6 hour layover.
When we landed at LAX we new we had time to venture off the airport grounds for a few hours, so we headed to the Westfield Mall to see if we could finally score Dave his long overdue birthday present. It was a grand success and he had his brand new shiny PS VITA in hand with over 3 hours to spare!
It was so nice to be back on American ground and in an English speaking country. We were able to easily ask for directions and we were even able to eat at our favorite burger joint called Five Guys Burgers and Fries.
When we got back to the airport we sat down at a WIFI hot spot so Dave to download one of the 4 free games that came with his PSVita system, but he had to wait an hour to charge the system before he could turn it on, and the internet was super slow. So, even though it was a successful buy, it was still a mission unaccomplished as it was, for the moment, unplayable.
We went through security an hour before our 11:30 pm flight to Fiji, and waited at our gate while an alarm wailed almost the whole time, as a stupid employee opened the gate doors without the code. When we finally boarded our plane, we were pretty exhausted from all the travelling, and fell asleep almost immediately.
Wednesday, March 20.
This day didn't actually exist for us, as we flew across the international date line! So as we slept literally through the entire day (or lack thereof) we knew we'd be waking up on Thursday in Fiji!
Thanks for keeping up!
With love from the plane,
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