May 24 – May 29, 2016

View from the patio of our room at night

Our view this morning. ..

When the clouds are going by your porch. ..feels like Mt. Olympus lol.

Julie and I have established that our hotel is right next to some sort of 'make out' park. Have seen many couples just sitting on benches making out. This one young couple were kissing in various parts of the park for a good solid 2 or 3 hours. At one point we thought the guy was going to fall off of a ledge he was perched on. Dedication to the art brutha....respect lol.

Lots of ladders and steps in this place. Whew! Super beautiful though.

You don't have to be religious to appreciate the beautiful doors of Basilica del Voto Nacional

Found it! Was going to get a shirt. Didn't see any my size. The price on the t-shirts we looked at was $98. GO HOME HD ECUADOR! YOU'RE DRUNK!

Dinner and Chilean wine with beautiful. To all of her latest accomplishments.

Much larger than the pictures portray. You see it from across the city. Pretty neat. Haven't looked into the story yet.

Raise your hand if you hiked the jungles of Ecuador today. Our guide said he's been doing this for 16 years and we're only the 3rd to go all the way to the end where the big waterfall is. Mind you we were all a sweaty dirty mess afterward. We both feel accomplished and the waterfall at the end was a great reward.

Needed that. Great ceviche here by the way.

We're coming for you today Otavalo! Are you ready for us?

Okay, that's my first time seeing a metallica sweater.

So today was a planned trip to Otavalo which is the largest outdoor market in South America. On the way we saw some volcanoes and other things. I didn't take a whole lot of pictures in Otavalo as once you see some booths you've seen most of them. The majority of what you see and what Otavalo is known for is its textiles. In between you see a little leather, some woodcraft, jewelry (mainly silver with stones). There was also some knockoff Nike, Adidas, Abercrombie, etc but not a lot. In the middle was some grains, meats, bugs...pretty much anything else you'd want to put in your mouth. After looking at some of it was ended up in the town square. As with most town squares you had a church on one side, the leading government building on another and sporadically placed shops. Town squares in Ecuador are very popular and again with this one as you see in the pictures there were lots of people enjoying the day. After we ate some lunch in town Julio took us to the outskirts of town where some higher quality textiles were to be found. He took us to a small area where a shop called Artesania El Gran Condor was located. In the basement we got to watch as an expert created textiles. First we learned how she created the thread out of various types of animal hair and how she colored it using all variety of color sources..berries, bugs, cactus, coal. Then she moved over to the machine where she created some product. I'll upload a video separately as it's kind of big. After watching the skill she used to develop these products we purchased some stuff then Julio took us to another town called Cotacachi. If Otavalo was the textile town.....Cotacachi is the leather town. Every shop in this place was full of leather goods. We picked up a few things here as well then headed back to the hotel. We've learned so much about this place and I'm sure we'll return again....maybe with friends next time :)

Julie and I have learned a few lessons during the trip. Through conversations with others we assumed that more people here knew English as a second language. To be honest that's not the case. Learning to communicate was challenging at times but Julie's basic Spanish got us over some hurtles and Julio helped us a lot. So tonight Julie and I decided to go to Hunter's, a restaurant a few blocks from the hotel. As we get the menu we both are looking at it and realizing that it's not English friendly at all and our waiter knows zero English so we're pretty much on our own. So I could play the safe game and order something that's obvious (empanadas, wings, etc) but I see something called Bife Chorizo. Hmmmm, I'm guessing Bife is beef and I know what chorizo is so I figure it's steak and chorizo sausage or something. So Julie goes all out with something called Hunter's Mix Futbolero. It has all sorts of stuff. One word she didn't know was costillas. We had no idea what that was. So they come out with mine. It's a steak seasoned with chorizo. Good call. It was delicious. So they bring Julie's out with a box with a bag in it, some rubber gloves, and a plate with ribs and wings. Yup, costillas was ribs! Julie was laughing pretty good and said "It's RIBS!" I know what costillas is now!!!". The box with the bag in it was for the bones of the ribs and wings. Interesting. Anyway, everything was great.

Kind of a lazy day today. Okay, about 17,000 steps of lazy but just wandered around Quito on foot. Took a few pictures. Found this road through the city that they close off for miles so people can ride bikes without fear of getting hit by cars so we walked down that road for a couple miles or so until we hit Parque El Ejido. We knew we were at the park when we saw the 'Arc'. If you've been to Europe you've seen these...well this one was kind of small but neat. This park was really utilized. A ring on the inside was all market good, the outside ring was all art. Couldn't fit the good ones in our bags so we left empty handed. Some guys were putting on a little comedy show with a large crowd around them. Julie and I couldn't understand what they were saying but we could understand some of what was going on. Inside the circles of the park kids were riding what looked like a shared collection of bikes....maybe a few dozen. Food was being made all around. It was a lot of walking but will help us get tired so we can take naps before our redeye flight back home tonight.