Quilotoa treking and adventures with Jennifer

trail to Chugchilan

As of our last blog entry we were done with our volunteering stint in the Mindo cloudforest area and heading back to Quito to meet our friend Jennifer who would travel with us for about 10 days. For a few days after we left the town of Milpe (where we volunteered for 2 weeks) we stayed in the lovely little town of Mindo. Highlights were a few guided birding outings. Somebody asked about the red birds in the trees that Liam caught a picture of and I posted in the last entry. Those are the beautful and difficult to find Cock of the Rock. We got up very early to travel about 30 minutes to a known lek (area used for communal courtship displays) and were treated to a wonderful, and cacophonous, display. Liam was seeing new species and adding to his life list at quite an accellerated pace, especially when we went out with local guides.

Jennifer was waiting for us at our favorite Quito hotel when we arrived back to the big city. We were thrilled to see her and immediately began planning our time together. Sheilah and I had the idea that we wanted to head south and explore the remarkable and remote Quilotoa region. Jennifer was game so we took a 2 hour bus ride (after a 1 hour taxi ride to get to the bus station...Quito is almost endless in the N/S direction) to Latacunga and staged our trip from there. The picutres above feature much of the rugged and steep landscape of the Quilotoa area. Laguna Quilotoa is the centerpiece of this area and our hike from this high, volcanic lake back to the hostal (5 hours) was our first of three days of hiking. The sand dune above is on the trail at the outer rim of the volcano. Not quite sure how to explain that geologic phenomenon. The caldera, situated at 3800 meters, is the remnant of an eruption in the late 1200's. The 250 meter deep basin has no inlet or outlet and has a very high concentration of CO2. There is some worry that a significant seismic event could trigger a release of toxic gases currently trapped deep under water. We opted not to hike the 300 meters down into the crater and instead skirted the rim before heading toward our base in Chugchilan.

After the hike I had time for a little disc golf at the much accoladed ecotouristic Black Sheep Inn where we were staying. A picture above shows hole 5. It was a blast to throw a golf disc at that altitude. Scary though, you let one go a little long and there's no telling where it will stop. Great fun, made me miss my SF disc golf buddies. Things were soon to get a little less cheery and frivolous.

I'm going to plagiarize myself and copy and paste an email I sent to my family from the town of Baños where we spent a few days directly after we left the magnificent, sweeping views of the high Andes in the Quilotoa region. Email from August 21st is as follows: (sorry, to those 3 of you who have read this before)

Hey family,
It wasn´t easy but we made it out of the Quilotoa region intact and are now resting up and relaxing in Baños. We´re looking forward to getting back to the old blog when we get back to Cuenca but I´ll share here a few recent highlights.

We left Quito with Jennifer a little over a week ago. Jennifer has been like a ray of sunshine to travel with. Relentlessly positive and flexible and she and Ailish have enjoyed each other immensely. We spent a fun night in Latacunga as we prepared to enter the famed Quilotoa region by bus the following morning. We reserved 3 nights at the incredible Black Sheep Inn in Chugchilan. This place is the 15 year project of an enterprising and creative US couple. The property sits overlooking the ¨grand canyon¨ of Ecuador and features whimsical and lovely things like a disc golf course (reputedly the highest in the world at over 10,000´¨), a sauna, a mini zipline, a beautiful yoga-dance studio, all vegetarian and organic cuisine, and really cool sustainable architecture. I´ll send pictures later.

Unfortunately, Jennifer and I got a food related sickness the night before a planned, and really not optional, 6 hour trek to our next hostal. We hired horses to carry our gear but still had one of the most miserable days in some of the most awe inspiring country that one could ever hope to hike through. The trails were steep and narrow through one very deep, and a second not so deep, canyon. This is rugged and incredible country populated only by subsistence farmers who cultivate the most unlikely and precarious mountain slopes. Sadly, I was too weak to even carry my camera. The two of us slept at every opportunity along the trail but tried not to slow down the caravan too much. We soldiered through ascents that seemed endless. The fresh horse shit on the trail was giving me the dry heaves...and so it went. When we finally arrived at Islinlivi and our next hostal Jennifer celebrated by puking on their front lawn. She smiled gamely at our Dutch hosts and said something about how she loved a grand entrance but this was a little beyond the pale. We spent a quiet night and following morning resting in front of the fireplace and generally feeling like things were looking up, until...

the kids started getting sick, first Liam in the afternoon, then Ailish at about bedtime. To really get the picture you have to imagine NO INDOOR PLUMBING. It was about a 50´trek across the back lawn to a composting toilet. I moved upstairs to be with Ailish in the dorm room and Sheilah stayed with Liam downstairs in our room. It was a very lo-ong night. Ailish was idominatable in spirit throughout: "well, the good thing about having a low bed like this is when I throw up it´s easy to hit the bucket!"

We again really didn´t have a choice but to travel the next day as planned. (These places are small and when your stay is over they´ve got more people coming to take your place.) So with our still-sick-but-holding-it-together children we headed off to the bus stop at 6:30 the next morning (for a 3 1/2 hour trip back to Latacunga and the Pan-American highway). The bus stop is in front of the town's church and it was no easy feat getting just that far, maybe 300 yards. I almost cried when I caught up to the others and heard from inside the church a morning mass singing "Hallelujah". Auspicious as that was, our morale sunk immediately when the bus pulled up. Every seat and the aisle in between was filled with campesinos in their felt hats looking at us like we were some kind of foreign curiosity. I guess they had that part right. We made it on the bus (picture dirt road, sheer cliffs, 3 point turns at some tight hairpins) and on to Sigchos where we were thrilled to see half the bus clear out.

Baños, it turns out, is the perfect place to recover. A balmy 5000´, there´s water everywhere, mineral baths, good restaurants (still no appetite but maybe today´s the day), and great, cheap accomodations with toilets with water in them. We´ve decided, I think, to take a direct bus back to Cuenca on Tuesday. It´s been an incredible summer of travels but we´re ready to get back to our home.

That letter, written when all was much fresher in body and memory, describes better than I could now those unforgettably trying days as we made our way out of Quilotoa and back to good health. We concluded our summer travels in Baños, but that will be for another post.

Mark

I have to add that the first moment of seeing Jennifer leaning over the balcony in the hotel in Quito was one of my highlights of the summer. It was nice to see Jennifer in particular but it was also special to see someone from home. She brought a little bit of the heart that we had left in San Francisco. And I feel like I still have it with me.

She was an amazing traveling companion, so full of good energy and cheer even amidst the all the stomach problems. And she is also an amazing hiker.

Sheilah

On to a new subject.
I am always telling myself that I don't want to lose any of this year. And every moment is really special because I am having a lot of fun. And I'm learning how I am here. I am getting comfortable with what I do every day, how I am now some gringa, but I'm happy that way and I feel common and good, like somebody with a purpose and a routine. I especially feel that way in my neighborhood, when I am playing with my neighbors. I get a feeling that they don't notice that I'm not from here, they just notice that I speak English and that's cool. I also feel kind of grown walking to the corner store. I know that it's super close but it's still a cool feeling. In school it's a little different because I'm not just playing with little kids and doing stuff that seems totally trivial to most people. But it's kind of cool that a lot of kids speak English. I enjoy making up games about some of the exchange students. Most of them are way older than me so I don't talk to them. I'm exaggerating, there are only a couple. But there are a lot of Ecuadorian kids who speak English. I speak Spanish most of the day anyway but it's nice to know the English speakers are around. So, especially, since we got back from our vacation I'm begining to feel my place here.

Ailish

I have to echo Ailish's sentiments. Up until we left for our summer travels I was really struggling with what my role here is. And now that we've returned I feel much more at peace with myself here. Maybe it's the little bit of heart that Jennifer left with us but I feel more comfortable in my skin. I'm still working on the details of how to get the most out of our stay but I'm more at home.

Sheilah

Volunteer work in Milpe (or Look at the size of that snail!)

We left Otavalo and went straight to Milpe by way of the Quito bus station. Milpe is the teeny tiny town between Quito and the coast primarily notable for being on KM91 of the west bound highway. It's other claim to fame is that it is the home of the Mindo Cloudforest Foundation, the 155 acre bird sanctuary where we were to volunteer. Our two week stint there started on July 27th.

We were quite pleased with the set up for the first week. The second week things went a little south. Our group consisted of the resident family who hosted us, a group of three university students from Ibarra who were doing a summer tourism internship, and our family. Accomodations were rustic but perfectly adequate. Food was adequate but less than scintillating. (We didn't have our own cooking facility so we were at the mercy of our host family who received $4/day/person for our food. The low point of our nightly cuisine was a meal that featured potatoes and pasta with mayonaise for a sauce. Yum!) Our first big task was to build a new bridge on one of the many hiking trails from which people birdwatch. Everything about this project took about 10 times as much energy and time as it should have so I got a chance to try and be really zen and suspend my normal tendency toward contractor efficiency and production.

At the end of 6 or 7 days of work we had built a nice little bridge that will probably last at least 5 years. Yes, 5 years. The cloudforest is a study in accellerated decay and regrowth. Hence, a secondary forest that only 15 years ago was leveled for cattle grazing can, with a little bit of selective planting and mostly just benign neglect, reinvent itself as a rich and diverse ecosystem providing ideal habitat for all but a few of the native bird species (who require old growth to thrive). Ironically, this reestablished type of forest is in many ways preferable for birding because the sightlines are more open. Check out some of Liam's bird shots!

Things unraveled a little bit the second week. Our little group of volunteers decided that they had enough of this work stuff and completely lost their mojo by the beginning of our second week. Things were sluggish but got a lot worse after "the brawl". Here's the story in brief: the Ibarra jovenes were alone at the gift shop/entrance to the sanctuary when a group of Quiteños with attitude arrived to look at birds. This was a group of 10 adults and several kids, women dressed in high heels, no bionoculars, no guide, no idea what they were doing...in short, if ever a group were less prepared for a successful birding experience I can't imagine how. Liam and I were out for a hike and swim when we encountered this group steaming back to the entrance area and looking decidedly unhappy. What ensued was a showdown between the students from Ibarra and the Quiteños that escalated unbelievably. The tourist group were incensed because they had paid to see birds and didn´t see a thing. The student volunteers should have refunded them their money immediately and sent them on their way but instead got a little self righteous. ("Este es un sanctuario. No hay guarantias que va a ver aves!" etc.) With no resolution in sight things got really crazy, really suddenly when one of the Ibarra students was called the equivalent of "nigger" and responded by calling the other woman an hija de puta - in front of her mother! No bueno. The Quiteños stormed the gift shop and bodies, computers, in short everything, was flying all over the place. I tried to pull a principal attacker off the Ibarran girl and got clotheslined from behind by some one of their tribe. As quickly as this mess exploded it was over. The "administrador" was reached on his cell phone and he told the students to give back the money and send the group on their way. I regret that my Spanish kept me from redirecting this unfortunate sequence of events. At least I hope that if I had been a full participant I would have had the skills and sense to see that this group didn't belong in a bird sanctuary in the first place and keeping their money as punishment for being so stupid wasn't really in the Foundation's best interest. You never know what kind of strange lessons one can learn at a bird sanctuary in the Ecuadorian cloudforest.

Mark

My experience in Milpe was a little different from what Mark described. Each morning I walked with the six year old son of the host family down the gravel road into what can loosely be called town. It's impressive that a settlement as small as this had its own school. It was a one room school house with 15 students, representing four families. Luckily for me, there was an extra room attached and this is where I taught. (School was in session in July because that part of Ecuador is on a different schedule. They shut down in January when the heavy rains start.) The teacher would send the kids over to me in groups and I would try to teach them a little English. We played a lot of games, especially with cards. It's amazing how attached you can become in such a short amount of time. One of the boys, Andaluz, is not going to continue school after he finishes the year. He is only twelve years old but his whole life is laid out in front of him. He's going to work in a lumber yard cutting wood with a chain saw. He already does it on the weekends and earns ten dollars a day. I wish I had a picture of him. What breaks my heart about the situation is how full of life he is. He has a real spark in his eyes and a real desire to learn and play. I hope he can keep that spark for a while longer.

As far as volunteer work goes the situation I had at the school was ideal. I had a small group of kids prepared to learn and I could decide how best to use the time. The volunteer work I've done in Cuenca has been different in that any learning that happens, happens by trickery. The kids at the shelter are prepared for special activities which I provide them with but it hasn't been a context in which I can observe progress.

After working at the school in the morning I would walk back to the sanctuary, have almuerzo, maybe a siesta, and then help with the bridge construction or do trail maintenance.

I only heard about the brawl second hand as I was practising my machete skills on the trail. It's lucky the would be birders didn't run into me as who knows what would have happened. Chop, chop.

The lack of desire to work on the part of the jovenes -and the quality of the food- really had an effect on Mark's and my morale. By the time our stay was over we were rather desperate to leave. We headed straight to the famous birding and tourist town of Mindo. Yay, pizza, brownies. Oh yes, and more birds.

Sheilah

PS We're sorry that the photos don't have labels. Either the program doesn't allow us to do it or we're just dumb.

Liam's hand next to a giant land snail at MCF.

Back to school and lost in the ruins

Ruins of Ingapirca Haven't we seen this church before?

We want to get back to sharing some of our travel experiences from the summer but, again, that will have to wait. Things are beginning to shape up here in Cuenca and we're very excited to report that our hunch was correct that our kids would transition more smoothly into school this year than last. Liam and Ailish are actually having fun at Santana and seem to really be enjoying the new freedoms and responsibilities that come with graduating to the level of colegio. They are now spending all their time in a different part of the campus and hanging out with 12-16 year olds exclusively. They also have a different faculty - both administrative and academic - and like all their teachers (the science teacher tries a little too hard but even she is starting to gain a little traction) a lot. New students in the octavo grade include two native English speakers from the States, both boys, and Liam is now feeling like something of the wise old salt. This has been a huge morale boost for him. Another change is that their class is divided into two groups of about 15 students and, apart from enjoying the more intimate educational environment, the kids are also enjoying a little more separation that comes from being in different classes. It's only been four days but so far we are thrilled with the happy and smooth beginning and feeling very optimistic about the school year.

Sheilah and I last reported that we has been offered two teaching jobs and had chosen one that would start (last) Monday. Not so fast would-be English teachers...we showed up for our training day and were told that because of our non-resident status we would have to have our checks written to an undetermined Ecuadorian 2nd party who would then cash the check and give us the money. Of course, we were told, there could be some tax liability for that person but it shouldn't be too big of a problem. The funny thing is that by the standard of how things seem to be done down here this isn't even that high on the flake-o-meter. All the schools want and need native English speaking teachers but in order to hire them they have to figure some way around the government regulations forbidding employment to extranjeros. The problem with the school that we were hoping to work for is that, because they haven't been in business very long, they don't have much experience in getting around this little sticky point. So...we have continued to make headway with the most established school in town (who write checks directly to their all extranjero staff as a matter of course) and have now been invited to do tutorials and substitute classses in the fall and move on from there. Luckily we're not trying to earn our rent money or this would be really stressful. As it is we have the luxury of feeling sort of detached and bemused and to enjoy a few more weeks of jubilado-lation.

No blog entry is complete without some pictures so I offer my mountain bike riding club's lost ("Chupa, estamos ultro perdido!") day trip in the Ingapirca region. We hired a chiva (a small bus, in this case outfitted with a custom roof rack to carry 17 bikes) to drive us 2 hours to the town of Ingapirca (known for the best Incan ruins in Ecuador) where we would ride to a town called Paute back in the general direction of Cuenca. It started out great. We had a guide who exuded confidence in the certainty of our route even when a local farmer stopped to ask why we were headed on a road that would only circle back to exactly where we started. The picture above is of Laguna Grande, a large, mostly marshy lakebed that is approximately 25 KM in circumference. I know this because we are sophisticated biker dudes who have bike computers and because we rode around the fucking lake twice before we figured out there was no turn off point and we were exactly back where we started! How could this happen to a bunch of reasonably competent, educated fellas, all native Ecuadorians (other than me, of course) who ride in far flung places a lot? Many of us are still wrestling with that one. The hombre mas culpable, naturally, was the guide. But we all went a long for the ride...KM65 we climbed all the way back up to the 12,000' ruins of Ingapirca, called the bus driver and explained that, although it was very nice of him to wait for us at the town to which we thought we were headed he was going to have to turn the bus around and head back to Ingapirca and pick us up. The debate continues about where exactly the exit point was from the valley of riding in circles. Meanwhile guys are already planning our next big trip to some mountains near Saraguro in October. May Dios be our guia.

Mark

Sheilah's birthday hike in Cajas National Park

We're going to take a break from describing events of the summer and flash forward to more recent events. Sheilah turned 46 today and we celebrated with a very cool hike in Cajas. The trailheads in this incredible national park are about a half hour drive from our house. Our hike today was at about 13,000 feet and took us through the moorish highlands for which Cajas is so renowned. The pictures I've posted also feature a primary forest of Polylepsis trees that is truly magical. These are among the highest growing species of tree in the world. This tree is also known as Arbol de Papel because of its papery bark. Cajas Parque has approximately 235 lakes and you can't hike very far without seeing a few of them. As you can see from the way we were dressed it was a little too cold to swim but we stayed warm as long as we kept moving. Sheilah was very happy with the day and tonight we will eat at our favorite parillada and come home for some cake we purchased at Cuenca's only German bakery. We're feeling pretty good.

The kids start school on Monday. The most they will admit to is that school is more interesting than hanging around the house all day. We think that this will be a much smoother beginning than the one they had last March. Liam said it took him a week before he realized just how much work his Spanish really needed. One thing we all agree on about going to school in Ecuador: it is the only way Liam and Ailish will really learn Spanish.

Sheilah and I have been handing out resumes at almost all the English language schools in Cuenca the last week or so. We were excited to get a couple of offers yesterday. The school where we will begin on Monday is a nice walk or bike ride from our house (this is key as it looks increasingly like we won't be getting a car while we are living here) and in a leafy neighborhood near the University. We don't know too many details yet but it's exciting to (almost) have responsibility again. It could also be a little bit of a shock to our system. The "jubilado" (Spanish for retired - note the root is the same as jubilation) life style is awfully nice.

Mark

quito and otavalo

For me the best part of our jungle trip was the feeling of having visited another world entirely, a world with no roads, inhabited by wild animals and people who haven't fully entered this century. It's only been relatively recently that motorized canoes have entered that part of the Rio Cuyabeno so the people who live further east along the river were very isolated. Very few have running water. Many have electricity but no radio, TV, or newspapers. I find this lack of access to news very interesting given that voting is mandatory in Ecuador.

The jungle was relatively physically comfortable. It wasn't especially hot and the river had tannins that prevented mosquito larvae from developing so we didn't have to take anti- malarial pills or fend off too many flying insects. In fact, the only people who got sick in our group, got sick from the anti-malarial pills they were taking. Our lodge did provide indoor plumbing but we did not have hot water. Jungle dirt is dirty, even if you've gone swimming with the piranhas. The hot shower that I took in Quito was one of my favorite showers ever.

In Quito we stayed at a hotel that some Canadian friends of ours from Cuenca had recommended as they gave a discount for kids. In Ecuador most places charge by the person, rather than by the room. You can get great bargains as a single person but when you multiply everything by four the numbers get bigger. Our friends from Canada, Garth and Tia and their two daughters, spent their their last day in Quito with us before they headed back to Canada after a seven month stay in Cuenca. I have to say that we feel somewhat bereft without them as they were the best friends that we had made and now they're gone.

The more time I spend in Quito the more I like it. It's a very long city that stretches out in a high Andean valley but the two main areas that tourists/travellers go are the Old Town and the Mariscal. The Mariscal is where you go if you need to get laundry done or buy an English language book or go out late at night. It has good cheap food, tons of tourists and to my mind, very little else. Old Town, on the other hand, is a thriving city with beautiful colonial buildings, narrow streets, fruit markets, outdoor cafes It would exist without the tourists whereas the Mariscal exists for the tourists. Most tourists stay in the Mariscal and take a taxi to Old Town. We were lucky in that our hotel was in the Old Town so we could walk around Old Town at our leisure. Mark is a hard core traveller so when we needed to take our laundry into the Mariscal we consulted a map and figured out what bus to take. (If only Cuenca had a transit map! We're thinking of taking every bus just to take note of the different routes.) The buses are a little intense in Quito. They are often crowded and thievery is common so you have to be totally aware of your surroundings. Unlike some acquaintances of ours, we survived unscathed.

One of our jaunts took us to the Basilica. It's a beautiful church whose spires you can climb. It's the kind of thing that would never be permitted in the United States because of liability concerns. Once you get to the top there are amazing views of the city. The picture above shows the city in the background and me feeling some trepidation.

Another of our jaunts nearly took Mark into the sewer. Mark stepped backwards to get a better look at a building and his leg went into the hole up to his crotch. Who nows how far he would have gone if his crotch hadn't been there to stop him. I turned around to look at him and saw him basically lying in the street, one leg gone. After he got out and we figured out that he hadn't been seriously injured I couldn't stop laughing. The sewer gunk only went up as far as his ankle and we weren't far from the hotel so he could get cleaned up.

After saying our good-byes to Garth and Tia and getting our laundry done, we headed north to Otavalo. Otavalo is home to one of the most famous indigenous markets in the world. As a people Otavaleños have figured out how to maintain their own identity and culture while using the tourist dollar to their advantage. There is still poverty in Otavalo but the feeling of the city overall is prosperous. There are nice wide sidewalks, traffic signals at every intersection, and very little garbage. They seem to have used the tourist money that comes in to develop infrastructure.

Mark and I woke early every morning we were in Otavalo and went searching for coffee. (I've learned to love a good cup of coffee.) The town was completely quiet until around seven. On Saturday, market day, we got up again for our early morning stroll to find the town transformed. It was actually bustling at six in the morning. People come from all over Ecuador to sell their wares and the streets were already full of vendors setting up shop. People come from the surrounding hills dressed in their finest clothing to buy, sell, see and be seen. Much of what is sold goes to the busloads of tourists who come in from Quito for the day (alpaca sweaters, hats, woven blouses, etc) but there are many streets full of the daily necessities of life including underwear, socks, cutlery. There's a whole section across the highway that is for people buying and selling live animals. Kittens, rabbits, cuys, chickens, pigs, an occassional cow filled the parking lot. We were travelling with backpacks and the stop in Otavalo was relatively early in our summer travels so we didn't purchase much even though some of those cuy sure were cute.

The area around Otavalo is known for some beautiful walks and hikes. We took a particularly memorable hike around Lago Cuicocha (so named because one of the little islands in the middle looks like a cuy). It is a sparkling blue lake formed about three thousand years ago when a volcano collapsed. Depite the high altitude (about 11,000 feet) this hike reminded us very much of some of our favorite hikes in Marin. I guess it's a sign that although we have been having some great adventures, in some fundamental ways we've left our hearts in San Francisco.

Sheilah

cuyabeno reserve jungle trip

We said goodbye to Sue and Jim and had a couple of days to pack up for about 6 weeks of travel through Ecuador. The kids' school schedule had kept us pretty tied to Cuenca for the first several months after our arrival here so it was with great excitement that we flew north to Quito. From the airport in Quito we had a taxi take us to the east bound bus station where we waited several hours for an overnite carrier to Lago Agrio. Lago Agrio (Sour Lake, named after an oil town in Texas) is where we met our 7 international jungle tour companions and started our trip by small bus into the jungle.

The small city of Lago Agrio dates only to 1972 when it was carved out of the jungle by Texaco to be used as a base for their Amazon oil exploits. Ecuadorian interests have taken over the oil operations but Texaco (now owned by Chevron) remains actively involved in fighting a law suit levied against them for some of the mess they left behind. Texaco is accused of dumping oil contaminated water into the swamps and streams of the area between 1971 and 1992 and is being sued by nearly one hundred Ecuadorian plaintiffs representing 30,000 people. The town itself is strange. I read that one in five women who live there are prostitutes. The place has a sort of frontier/company town aura. Not uninteresting but we were happy to head further into the Amazon and leave it behind.

We followed a great road (presumably maintained by oil money as it follows a big above ground pipeline which disects the countryside such that if you happen to live on the backside of said pipe you simply build a stair up and over so you can get to your house) for a couple of hours to the meeting spot where our group of eleven guests boarded a 30' canoe powered by an outboard motor. Two hours into the jungle on Rio Cuyabeno we arrived at our lodge.

The experience of being in the jungle with a knowledgeable guide and an interesting group of people was fabulous. Our group consisted of a father/son from Israel, a young Dutch couple, 2 30ish women teachers from New York, and a 21 year old French girl. Liam will comment below on some of the wildlife we saw. It was a great luxury to have our day organized by professionals who knew the area so well. We hiked, kayaked, swam, birdwatched, fished (for Piranha), and thoroughly enjoyed eating and hanging out with our little group when we were back in the lodge.

Mark

The jungle was cool. We saw a lot of animals though not as many as I had hoped. There were caiman, toucans, 4 different species of monkeys, an anaconda, and we even saw a sloth. The rivers would widen out sometimes and in those lakes we saw pink dolphins. Supposedly we swam with pirahnas in those lakes but I'm not sure. We saw them in other parts of the lake. It was awesome. Where we were there was no access by road, only boat. We got to the lodge in a canoe with a motor attached to it. It was a 2 and a half hour boat trip.

The lodge was pretty. I liked the hammock room that was made out of jungle hardwoods and grassy stuff they put on the roof. Well I guess everything in the lodge was made out of that. We slept in a dorm room with someone we didn't know. That was the first dorm room Ailish and I slept in but later on we did a WHOLE lot more. . . Sharing a room with a stranger is kinda weird but then I got used to it. I can't tell you how happy I was to have my own room after more than a month of sharing one with my sister and people I didn't know.

Liam

Visit from Sue and Jim

We had a wonderful visit from my dad and sister for 10 days starting in early July while the kids were still in the Galapagos. We were a little anxious about my dad in this environment because of high altitude and the general difficulties one experiences being a pedestrian here. It all worked out fine. My dad enjoyed the trip so much he's even contemplating a return visit. That speaks volumes to us.

In the picture above (left) he and Sue are having a warm soak in the thermal pools near Cuenca in a place called Baños. (This is not to be confused with the more famous Baños in the central -sierras - more on that later.) This is a place we can get to by bus in less than 15 minutes and we make a habit of going there about once a month. The family picture above was taken on a trip to the Saturday market at Saraguro. This town is 2+ hours from Cuenca and the market was highly recommended by some friends of Sue's who come to Ecuador often. The coolest part was the traditional dress of the indigenous people. The three pictures above give a feel for some of the people we encountered.

What we enjoyed most about the visit were the relaxed hours at home, eating together, taking walks along the river, and other less-than-newsworthy activities that integrated Sue and Jim into the fabric of our lives here in Cuenca. Sue loved the shopping and showed an enthusiasm and indefatigability that was quite remarkable. It was also a great opportunity for her to interact with locals and put to use her most excellent and enviable Spanish. My dad's big purchase is featured in the group photo above. He had been reading The Panama Hat Trail (excellent reading we recommend for anybody interested in Ecuadorian history in general and particularly the peculiar story of the panama hat, which actually has very little to do with Panama and everything to do with the southern region of Ecuador) and was eager to put his head under the genuine article. It looks great on him. I think he may be the only one of us that could ever be confused for a native (at least until he tries to communicate in Spanish). We sure miss those guys and would welcome another visit. That goes for the rest of you too!

Mark