Summation post
Gina. Vilcabamba, Ecuador.
It´s been a while since I´ve updated this thing. We´ve been pretty busy winding down this leg of our trip. A week from today we get on a plane in Lima for San Francisco. And then we have a few days to see friends and family, apply to graduate school (for Gina) and get some new stuff and leave some other stuff behind. I´ll have to write about the details later when I have more time. For now we´re getting ready to have lunch and go for a three hour spa day in the little town of Vilcambamba in the southern part of Ecuador. Tomorrow night we take a night bus for Peru where we´ll spend a couple of days in Chiclayo going to museums (and breaking up the long way to Lima) and then another night bus to Lima and then on to SF. We´re both very excited about our spa day–something we could never afford back home. I´m going to try to take lots of pictures, especially of Steve getting a facial! I have a lot of pictures of our touristy things around Ecuador to upload, but it might have to wait until we get back to the states because computers are slow and we´ve been both very busy and very lazy.
We had a great time in Banos going to waterfalls and hiking around. I took a lot of pictures of bugs including a creepy spider, beautiful butterflies, and leaf cutter ants (yay!). We never made it into the baths, but that´s okay. Neither of us was that into it. We did go to the little zoo which was neat but a little sad as zoos usually are. We saw Galapogos tortoises which were freaking awesome, toucans and all kinds of parrots, a spectacled bear, lots of monkeys, and a jaguar. We also saw capybaras which are basically giant rodents. They were funny looking and made me laugh and think of the movie Princess Bride with the rodents of unusual size (or something like that).
After Banos we went to Riobamba where we basically just spent the night in order to get up at 6 a.m. and sit on top of a train for the Devil´s Nose. This is a very touristy thing to do in Ecuador as the train system is very slow and not practical for real travel. The allure of this particular train trip is that you sit on top of the train and go down the world´s steepest section of track! It was fun for the first 4 hours or so, but then our bums and our backs were killing us and we´d had enough. The downside of the trip is that if you take it from Riobamba you have a very long way before even getting to the Devil´s Nose portion. And since that was what we thought would be the highlight, we stuck it out all the way. But what a disappointment! We should have gotten off in Aluasi where tons of people got on (and really crowded us even more making things that much worse on the bum) just for the Devil´s Nose section. But the steepest section of track in the world is gotten down through switchbacks so you don´t even notice what´s happening. And the ride from Riobamba to Aluasi was so much pretty than the ride from Aluasi on, and you then have to backtrack back up the mountain to Aluasi after going down the Devil´s Nose which took so much time. We ended up giving up on the roof and sitting inside on the seats for the ride back up. What was supposed to be a five our trip took about 8 since there was a landslide on the track, a train car got derailed, and the whole switching around process of the cars and the engine in order to go back up the mountain was painfully slow. If I would have known ahead of time, we would have gotten off in Aluasi, eaten lunch, and been very happy with the trip. But I think we´re both choosing to try to ignore the last few hours and remember the thrill of sitting on top of a train, seeing Volcano Chimborazo (I think) very clearly. It´s the highest mountain in the world when measured from the center of the earth because it´s so close to the equator which bulges out. It was also fun to see all the kids and adults standing by the track waving at all the white people on top of the train! We were our own tourist attraction!
After the train trip we took a bus to Ecuador´s third largest town Cuenca where we walked around and had a couple of good meals (including a snack at a chocolate bar where Steve had a chocolate beer!) and then down to Vilcabamba where we´ve been relaxing and doing little chores like getting our hair cut ($5 each and really well done!) so that we don´t have to worry about it back in the States.
We´re both really looking forward to coming home for a few days even though it´ll be a little hectic trying to fit everything in. And I´m especially looking forward to China. South America has been nice and a good place for us to learn how to do this type of traveling since things are pretty similar to the States (even though very few people speak English). We´ve gotten a routine down that I´m sure will change a little in practice for China but will stay basically the same as far as how we interact and handle different situations. I´m so excited about good food! I´m going to pig out in the states on dairy products and salads cheeseburgers (no french fries!) and then hopefully will have lots of good food in China.
I´m off for lunch and then it´s spa time! I´ll try to upload some photos and write more later.
Tags: Devil´s Nose train, Ecuador, Vilcabamba
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