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Ecuador Adventures

August 2022 - August 2023
A 352-day adventure by Ecuador Adventures Read more
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  • TravelerEcuador Adventures
    1
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    Day 25

    More birds!

    September 12, 2022 in Ecuador ⋅ ⛅ 72 °F

    These are more birds of Olon, Sucre, Cuenca and Cajas. 40-ish new birds in less than a month!

  • TravelerEcuador Adventures
    Day 27

    School Starts! Sun! Montanita nights!

    September 14, 2022 in Ecuador ⋅ ⛅ 72 °F

    It's been a busy week! On the 13th, we had a "back to school night" for Talia at a nearby playground, where she met a new friend who invited her to her home to play for the evening. The other family spoke no English and our Spanish is no bueno, but, with some help from google translate, we managed to make a plan that involved us picking Talia up in the hills above Olon after dinner. The mom of Talia's friend instructed us to call her via What's Ap when we were on our way so that she could direct a cab driver to her home on a not-yet-fully-constructed street. I took a deep breath and sent Talia off into the hills in a pickup truck. Of course, we hadn't accounted for the fact that cell service is terrible in the jungle-y hills around Olon, so when it was time to pick her up, we ended up lost with our taxi driver in the dark for a half hour. We did eventually find Talia, happily eating pancakes with her new friends in their beautiful mountain home. Phew. Mom--are you still breathing? Are you on a plane, planning on kidnapping Talia?

    The day after her mountain adventure, Talia started school at Anyi Green, a small outdoor school with about 35 kids between 5 and 14-ish years old. Talia loves that the classrooms have no walls, that the untamed gardens include hidden eggplants and that the main learning materials include mud and more mud. She's in a class of 8 that's evenly split between native Spanish and native English speakers. They alternate each week between an English-speaking and a Spanish-speaking teacher. We were hoping for a fully immersive program, but she's happy that it's bilingual. Currently, her favorite part of the day is riding the school bus--she's one of the first kids picked up and one of the last kids dropped off, so she gets to see a ton of the surrounding areas every day while chatting with "real teenagers."

    We capped off Talia's first week of school with a sunny beach day in Olon followed by a dinner out in Montanita on Saturday, and a trip to Isla de la Plata on Sunday (more on that in the next post).    Read more

  • TravelerEcuador Adventures
    12
    Day 31

    Isla de la Plata—waves, whales, boobies

    September 18, 2022 in Ecuador ⋅ ☁️ 70 °F

    We travelled back up the coast this weekend to take a boat ride to Isla de la Plata, an island near Puerto Lopez that is known for its variety of birds. I managed not to puke on the boat ride, so that was a win.

    On the island, we went on an 8 kilometer hike with a guide who was knowledgeable about birds, but not very sympathetic to a 6 year old’s short legs. Talia made it most of the way, but Kyla wins the “most likely to schlep up a mountain carrying a backpack and a 6 year old” award. When I was pregnant, we made a deal that I’d carry Talia for the first 9 months and she’d do the schlepping thereafter—Kyla has stuck to the deal, that’s for sure.

    We saw blue footed boobies galore and learned a ton of facts about them—for example, you can tell their sex by the color of their pupils and their age by the tone of the blue on their feet (notice the mismatched ages of the couples—the females with darker feet are all cougars coupled up with younger light footed males). Side note: Ecuadorian wildlife guides are, not surprisingly, very focused on Darwin, natural selection, and preservation of species via procreation—our IVF-science-made little family always throws their speeches a little off kilter.

    After our island trek, we got back on the boat and some of our companions snorkeled despite the somewhat chilly (by my standards) weather. From the boat, we could see turtles, fish and some enormous manta rays, and the nut jobs who went in the water reported that the snorkeling was amazing—maybe we will go back when it’s warmer and when I restock Dramamine. Post-snorkeling, we chased whales around, which was all fun and games until the seasickness made me question all my life choices. It was cool to see whales up close, but I think I’ve had enough whale watching for a while.

    Back on dry land, we met our first local friends, Carmen and and her partner, Sarah at a restaurant in Puerto Lopez. The restaurant owner’s 9 year old daughter, Thelma, hung out with us for the night and was a Rummikube master (shout out to Steph, Jenn, Ruby and Jonah for teaching us). Thelma had a cool treehouse/death-trap behind the restaurant, and between the opportunity to play with Thelma’s cats and the chance to swing from the (totally OSHA non-complaint) treehouse ropes, Talia was in heaven. Thelma didn’t speak any English, and it was great to see Talia switch to Spanish a bit (though she’s still shy about speaking).

    Overall, Isla de la Plata was great! We loved the hiking, wildlife and views. Kyla and Talia will label the birds in the pics below and I will work on finding haircare products that keep the Jew ‘fro under control on boats.    Read more

  • TravelerEcuador Adventures
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    Day 45

    Surf, sun (briefly) and fun

    October 2, 2022 in Ecuador ⋅ ⛅ 72 °F

    We've spent the past few weeks in and around Olon, getting to know more about our environment and adjusting to the day-to-day life in small town Ecuador. We are now in a much better rhythm with shopping at local markets, visiting our favorite encebollado (fish soup) vendor, acquiring fresh fish (and ignoring the lack of ice/refrigeration/ food safety standards), hitting up our favorite bakery, etc. Stores with walls, flavored seltzer and mac and cheese are distant memories.

    Some recent highlights include:

    -Talia had her first surf lessons and did great. Her first grade teacher is also her surf instructor.

    -In addition to surf lessons, Talia does "telas," which is fabric acrobatics. Neither of her chosen sports are transferable to life in DC or gonna get her a college scholarship, but she's really enjoying them. Surf is entirely in Spanish, but for telas, she's convinced the bilingual instructor to speak English.

    -For Rosh Hashanah, we had dinner with the 4 Jews we could find in this part of Ecuador. Kyla and Talia made raisin challah, of course, and others managed to make matzah ball soup and brisket. It was lovely.

    -We enjoyed a bunch of hours of sun on the beach and at the pool. I really cannot wait for the consistently sunnier weather. Have I mentioned that?!

    -We participated in a local beach clean up, where we ran into one of the teenagers who regularly makes Talia’s school bus ride the highlight of her day. Talia is the second kid picked up and the second to last kid dropped off, so she spends an hour each day chatting with the older kids on the bus and seeing places we’ve never visited. She loves it, and when we run into kids she knows from the bus, she exclaims “there’s one of my REAL-TEENAGER-chatting friends!”

    -We went to our first birthday party, had dinner out with some new friends and started to feel like we kinda live here a bit.

    -We explored Ayangue, a hopping beach town about 35 minutes south of Olon.

    We are heading to Quito and surrounding areas next week. More from there!    Read more

  • TravelerEcuador Adventures
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    Day 49

    Quito

    October 6, 2022 in Ecuador ⋅ ☁️ 57 °F

    We spent Yom Kippur in Quito. We didn't make it to synagogue, but we figured that, at over 10,000 feet, we were closer to the heavens and could thus cross being pious off our to-do list.

    We liked Quito, despite a few misadventures. On our first day, we stepped out of our hotel (across from the presidential residence!) and took a walking tour of the old city with a very knowledgeable guide. Shockingly, understanding 100% of the features of baroque architecture of churches was not on Talia's bucket list, so she didn't totally appreciate our guide's encyclopedic knowledge.

    After the somewhat tedious yom kipur “tour o'churches,” we headed to Teleférico, where we took a gondola ride up one of Quito's many steep hills. It was beautiful on the way up, but the extra few thousand feet threw Talia over the edge into altitude sickness. Plus, while we were exploring the peak, a thunder storm rolled in, the temperature dropped and sudenly we were being pelted with hail. We quickly boarded a gondola to head down the mountain but a few minutes into the ride, the lightening started and the gondola stopped running. We spent a stressful half hour dangling approximately a billion feet in the air in a small metal container during an intense hail/lightening storm before the storm passed and we started moving again.

    After the gondola ride, we headed to "the center of the world" to straddle the equator. We took a somewhat cheesey tour there, which appeared to be full of all sorts of fake science. That said, I did manage to get an egg to stand on its end, so that was cool.

    During our second day, Kyla had to work all day, so Talia and wandered the city on our own. We climbed to the clock tower in a basilica, explored botanical gardens, found a cool playground, bought a stuffed llama at a touristy artesenal market, and got our photo of the Quito sign (featuring me instead of Talia this time).

    In the evening, Kyla joined us and we had a very strange experience involving ice cream (see the video).

    From Quito, we headed to Cotopaxi, the subject of the next post.    Read more

  • TravelerEcuador Adventures
    Day 50

    Cotopaxi

    October 7, 2022 in Ecuador ⋅ ☁️ 41 °F

    From Quito, we headed to an amazing hacienda at the base of Cotopaxi. The hacienda is a working farm on the site of Inca ruins, and the setting was gorgeous (https://www.incahacienda.com/). We could see Cotopaxi clearly from the beautiful gardens.

    Our first day was drizzly, so we stayed around the hacienda, toured the grounds and got to know the animals. Talia really wanted to milk the cows, so we headed to the barn where we received a cow-milking lesson. Talia suddenly got cow-shy and somehow I ended up being the only cow-milker in our family (though Talia did feed the baby cows from a bottle). After the cows, we hung out by the communal fireplace, had an excellent farm-to-enormous-table dinner and then fell asleep quickly with Ecuadorian-poncho-wrapped hot water bottles in our bed.

    On day 2, we hired a driver to take us to Cotopaxi…which was completely covered in clouds. We did take a walk around a beautiful lake, and we spotted some new birds as well as an Andean wolf. Despite the weather, it was a nice outing. Back at the hacienda, Talia fed lamas and hung out with Lady Gaga, the farm dog.

    On our third day, we woke up to SUN and took an early horseback tour around the hacienda property and neighboring farms before breakfast. Talia loved galloping and I loved the scenery (and the fact that, for the first time since we arrived in Ecuador, we were offered helmets). After the horseback riding, we had a delicious breakfast that did not include enough praise for the yogurt, which I’m sure was made more delicious by my expert cow-milking. Then Talia bid farewell to all of the farm animals, including a baby bunny, and we headed off to Quilotoa. Photos of horseback riding and Quilotoa in the next post.    Read more

  • TravelerEcuador Adventures
    2
    Day 52

    Quilatoa

    October 9, 2022 in Ecuador ⋅ ☁️ 48 °F

    From our Cotopaxi hacienda, we headed two hours south to Quilotoa. The drive was gorgeous, but terrifying—it involved an hour detour in a cloud on the curviest road I’ve ever seen, with a speedy driver, some chunks of road missing, etc. I’ll spare my mom the remaining details. Rest assured that we will do a bit more research re: road conditions and drivers in the future.

    The drive was worth it though! We saw a lot of the Andean countryside—little villages, shepherds, lamas, horses, etc. Quilotoa was beautiful—a bright blue lake in a volcanic crater. We hiked past houses tucked into the hills and countless sheep. We didn’t have time to go all the way around the lake or to hike down to the bottom, but we still had a great time (and Kyla made it a bit further than Talia and I did).

    One night back in Quito and then we are off to Guayaquil and then Olon. Happy Canadian thanksgiving/indigenous peoples day to all.

    (Pics are from the horseback adventure at the Cotopaxi hacienda and from Quilotoa.)    Read more

  • TravelerEcuador Adventures
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    Day 74

    Oh Olon

    October 31, 2022 in Ecuador ⋅ ⛅ 70 °F

    We’ve spent the last few weeks in Olon and surrounding areas, and we’re getting comfortable in this quirky little town. I wish Kyla and I spoke more Spanish, so that we could access the local community more effectively, but, even in our weird little expat world, we’re learning a lot. Recent weeks have featured:

    -Parties! Despite excellent training by Addie and Cristhian and my general tendency to be late for everything, I’m not late *enough* for anything in Ecuador. We showed up a half hour late for a birthday party and we beat the rest of the expats by about an hour and Ecuadorians by 2 hours. The birthday party included Mirabel and Isabel hype ladies, a DJ, strobe lights, a fog machine, organized games and gifts for all of the kids. I’m SO GLAD that Talia won’t celebrate her birthday in Ecuador. I would fail miserably.

    -Halloween! Halloween isn’t really a thing in Ecuador, but Talia’s school went all out for the kids. There are not enough Pinterest sites in the world that would make me good at crafting, but I did my best (and Kyla baked Halloween treats, which were a hit).

    -Telas! Talia loves fabric acrobatics and she had a Halloween-themed recital this week. She had a great time! Not sure how transferable this interest is to life in DC, but she’s enjoying it.

    -Stray Cows! I’m constantly adjusting my route along the beach into town to avoid stay cows (and their poop). The strays are for real around here: cows, dogs, roosters and even horses run loose,

    -Bread festival! We went down the coast a bit to visit a local bread festival, featuring local bakeries and various bread sculptures. We went towards the end of the day, and the bread sculptures were looking….ragged. Had fun and carb loaded.

    -School! Talia loves, loves, loves school, and the kids are super sweet. School was cancelled due to excessive mud one day last week and her teacher came by for a house call with two other kids.

    Surfing! Both Talia and Kyla are taking surf classes now. I’ll join when it’s warmer (it’s still winter here—not cold, but not the type of weather that gets me in the water). Talia’s school teacher is also her surf instructor.

    Food! We go to the fish market every few days, but we haven’t branched out to the meat-on-hook or lobsters-in-a wheel-barrel guys. After years of instacart, it’s been interesting to get fresh fish, vegetables, fruit and homemade bread every day.

    Logistics! Our day-to-day requires way more logistical planning here than in DC. I’m in charge of gathering (i.e. grocery shopping at the various stalls around town) and external relations (i.e. using google translate to navigate various exchanges via whatsap) and Kyla is the “advance team” and handles all travel logistics. We have to move out of our apartment in December, which is proving to be a logistical pain….but I think we’re just going to move into another unit in our current spot. It’s not very adventurous, but it’s easy and frees Kyla up to plan our various travel adventures.

    Next spot is Cotacachi! Amazon and Cuenca are on deck after that.    Read more

  • TravelerEcuador Adventures
    Day 76

    Hacienda San Isidro de Itaqui and Cotaca

    November 2, 2022 in Ecuador ⋅ ☁️ 64 °F

    Another long weekend and another adventure! This time, we headed north of Quito to check out another hacienda and more sites in the Andes. As usual, our travels included some minor inconveniences—this time the issues involved plumbing problems at the hacienda where we were staying. More on that later.

    Our first day, we hung out at the hacienda and had a lovely tour of the grounds by the adorable 83-year-old owner. He was incredibly enthusiastic and welcoming. Talia did a good job translating for us since he spoke no English and our Spanish remains no bueno. He treated us as if we were the first visitors in ages (again, more on that later). We tasted fruits from his many trees, toured the gardens, met the baby cows and had a lovely morning. In the afternoon, we took a long horseback ride through the huge property (Kyla, who was a bit wary of horses came too!). Talia and Kyla shared a horse because, when we met our guide he said, “tenemos tres caballos. Dos están tranquilos y uno está loco. ¿Quién está bien con el loco?” I now know enough Spanish to stop Talia from volunteering for the loco horse.

    Ok, remember the plumbing problem I mentioned? Well, when Kyla took her usual 3-minute shower post horseback riding, she noticed that there was a bit of water on the floor. No big deal. Then I took my usual-length shower and caused a biblical flood in the bathroom—water gushed from a drain in the floor. We told the lovely hosts and they did their best to fix the problem…but when Talia showered a few hours later, the problem occurred again and this time black water streamed from the drain. Oy.

    The next morning, we attempted to check out, but our hosts were very persuasive and convinced us to stay in a part of the property that was connected to a different plumbing system. They assured us that the room was great, even though it seemed as if no guests had been there for 200 years (and, in fact, as noted above, it seemed that we were the first guests in quite a while and we the only guests during our stay). Our tour guide for the day, Andres, offered to call a new plumber for the hacienda owner, and we took off for a day of exploring with hopes of normal showers when we returned. See the next post for the rest of day 2 of this trip.    Read more

  • TravelerEcuador Adventures
    11
    Day 77

    Laguna Cuicocha, Cascada Peguche

    November 3, 2022 in Ecuador ⋅ ☁️ 52 °F

    We spent our second day of this trip with our guide, Andres, and saw a gorgeous lake in a volcanic crater, Languna Cuicocha, which included a quick boat ride around the lake. Then we headed to the cute town of Cotacachi for lunch, followed by a trip to the Peguche waterfall, which was pretty but very crowded. After a quick dinner back in Cotacachi, we caught a taxi back to our hacienda. The road was so rocky(and we had so much to eat at dinner) that we had to get out for a bit so that the taxi could make it up the steep hill without us weighing him down.

    We were looking forward to a good night of sleep in our new room. Unfortunately, our new room was right next to where the owners tied up their dogs at night and the dogs barked non-stop all night. Oh, and not shockingly, in the morning, our shower didn’t work. Despite how lovely everyone at the hacienda was, we decided to check out that day.    Read more

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