Quito

Quito has been our base for the last week, coming and going. Now we are leaving it again and will return there at least once after Galapagos. 

We have travelled with the local buses and trolles all over Quito plus walked the old town so many times so yesterday it was time to explore the new town with fancy shopping malls. Street names were after European countries, we found Hotel Finlandia also! :D it was so weird being at the shopping malls, shops were so fancy and expensive. 

Friday we went to La Mariscal, restaurant and bar area with Stina and Jesper. The worst indian food what I have ever had! Only the mango lassi was decent. Thank good we were four of us, area wasn't the safest and we didn't see any other gringos walking around the streets when it came dark. Taxi please! Should just stay in San Blas area, enjoying local places in their back rooms, playing card till late like we did yesterday :D I must admid that last days I have felt so home sick. It is Vappu, 1st of May celebrations and I really would have wanted to be in Helsinki with my sisters and friends. At home people start celebrating summer with sparkling wine, I took Glögi (mulled wine) because here starts winter now. 

Cloudforest and mountains

After leaving Mindo, we made a pitstop close to Nanegal. Rob had volunteered in Santa Lucia cloudforest ecoreserve eight years ago and wanted to see it again. He remembered that it is one hour walk there from the road.. Well, if it would have been we wouldn't have had so many arguments! After two hours walking uphill we came to end of the road where a muddy uphill path greeted us - oh, from here it is the one hour uphill! I could have killed somebody (not pointing my lovely boyfriend).

After getting there it was like a heaven. Beautiful lodge with tons of hummingbirds around, nice view to the valley, many hiking paths crossing. Sadly the clouds came almost as soon as we got to the top, some serious thunderstorm was coming. We enjoyed the walks the next day, as well as the hike back down to the village. Saw few toucans and probably zillion butterflies.

Getting the taste of hiking, we headed to Quilotoa. Mountain village and surrounded by the volcanos. Center point of the village is a huge crater lake with emerald green water, a former volcano which collapsed 800 years ago. We hiked down and around it, the highest point was at 3930m. Pretty steep climbs at some points.. Today we continued till Chugchilan village, part of the Quilotoa circuit. We are staying a night here and heading back to Quito tomorrow morning on a milktruck :) I seriously hope to find some sparkling wine and munkkis to celebrate Vappu with Stine and Jesper!

Mindo

Lago Mindo

I must say that Quito is definitely the nicest Latin American capitals I have been so far. Quite small, we saw basicly everything when walked around the town and looked the buildings for two days. Checked the golden church and climbed up to the cathedral clocktower. 

We came to Mindo for the weekend. Needed some nature time in very beautiful cloudforest. Tons of hummingbirds and other birds also (saw different kinds of toucans), orchids and flowers. And restaurants! Boy, quinoa restaurant with homemade ice cream (passionfruit with mint and hint of chili was my favorite!), chocolate factory with organic coffee, german cakeshop, proper kiviuuni pizzeria,.. Were we suppose to do something else than eating? :D

Saturday evening we went to a frogs concert ;) so romantic! Lago Mindo is home for more than 20 species of frogs. We sat in the balcony drinking wine and listening different sounds, surprisingly I could hear at least three different frog sounds. Saw a two colored snake and way too many spiders for my like. But it was a very nice tour, the lake itself was very idyllic. Sunday we hiked to the cloudforest to do some ziplining. So awesome! 500m long and don't know even how high we were, but those views :D 

San Augustin

Last days have been pretty emotional. Saturday evening we had mild earthquake which made us to change our plans for Ecuador, Rob was sick during the weekend, I got sad news from home that my grandma has passed away so I was thinking should I fly home, Monday just day after we said goodbye to our Swedish friends, we heard that their bags were stolen from the bus, which gave me this uncertain feeling. I am full of mixed feelings - sadness, anger, frustration, disapointment, fear,..

When Rob felt better we took the bus to San Augustin to see ancient stone statues and tombs. Parque Archeologico was huge and statues were clearly visible and fenced. There has been a time when statues has been stolen and sold for luxury mansions in France or just hidden in basements in Denmark. Don't know how they have maneged to move those huge volcanic rocks.. Rocks were carved more than 2000 years ago, resembling human figures and animals.

I wanted to keep myself busy so we looked around the park, took a jeep tour to see Colombias highest waterfall and the further archeological sites. Plus I managed to convince Rob horseback riding with me :) I don't know why he always gets the jukuri ones. He said after the riding - sweetie, this was the last time I will come riding! It was so cool, we matched so well with Noblesa (my horse). Oh that speed!! I really felt alive :D

We stayed in Casa de la Francoi, such a beautiful place! That would be that kind of place where you could just stay for weeks. The coolest thing was that they had used glass bottles for building the houses. And the food was superb, they really knew about portion sizes and how to spice the meals. Ten points!

Yesterday night after the riding and busride back to Popayan, I really got bad itkupotkuraivarit when I was trying to pack my bag. I think it was just from everything what has happened the last days. This day didn't start any better after short night sleep, getting on the busstation 6am and ended up waiting on the bus more than an hour it to leave. I try to understand these guys mentals but I can't. They lie against your face with poker face and when you ask something they will never give you straight answer. Our bus ticket was suppose to be direct, big bus with toilet, A/C and wifi. Well, you can guess it wasn't either of those! We still made it to Ibarra, Ecuador after 14h of sitting in the bus.

Making panella

400m

Popayan

I don't have so much to say from the town because we didn't do so much sightseeing. Friday we only chilled out at the hostel, looked a new cap for Rob and cooked some food. Oh yes, me and Stine found this yoga place where we went in the evening :) we had to avoid eye contact with each others cos otherwise we would have been very disrespectful and started laughing.. The teacher was, how would you describe him, special. It was definitely the most interesting yoga experience, or more like streching.

Yesterday we woke up shamelessly early and took 4.30am bus to Volcano Purace. Bus dropped us at 3200m where we paid entrance fee and met our guide. It seemed that it was only our group going up. It was not more that 10°C which was perfect cos I knew it will be a very hot and hard climb! And it started steep immediately, damn it felt like my heart was coming out from my chest!

Hike through paramo was beautiful. We saw few little lakes and these blueberry like berries, so tempted to taste :) After two hours of hiking we had reached 4100m and were on half way. I started feeling little bit of a headache coming but luckily it went away. Soon wee saw the summit, which wasn't actually the summit. And when we got to the fake summit and saw the actual one, my first thought was F*@k!  Zick zack all the way to the top for the last 200m. We can do this!

4650m, sleeping Volcano Purace (since 1977) and its crater welcomed us with heavy clouds so we barely could see the edge! So our luck. We stopped and had our snacks, it was time to open well earned bag of Salmiakki :D Sweds and Germans were also very happy about this. Thank you Minna for this! :) It was so cold at the top, I was so happy for my warmpeace jacket, nepalese mittens and a hat. After a while the clouds dissapeared like magic for 2 minutes and we got to see the crater. Still little bit steamimg though it hasn't been active for long time. It would have been nice to walk around it, but we didn't have time and we wouldn't have seen much anyway because of the clouds.

Walk down was much easier but I started feeling this banging headache again. We started from 1750m and climbed 3000m up in one day. No wonder if some of our braincells got damaged and we felt tired. We were almost flying down cos we had 3pm bus to catch. So our luck that one time you are three minutes late, the bus is early. Next bus was 5pm so we got a ride from this pickup truck. Five people inside the cabin and nine of us in the back, it felt like human trafficking with windows closed and darkened..

Day just got more intetested in the evening when I thought here I am sitting in this rocking chair..when the girl next to me asked if I felt something? We looked around and all the paintings and curtains were moving and now it really looked that the whole hostel was moving! Stine and Jesper said their wardrobe doors had been flying open and whole bed moved. I picked Rob and we all went outside on the street. Epicentre was in Ecuador, 7.8 magnitudes! It was so surreal, but luckily no damage happend where we were. Hopefully there won't be more earthquakes because we are planning to be in Quito by Thursday.

Cocora Valley

We were suppose to catch the earliest bus to Popayan, but weather looked way too good to be sitting on a bus the whole day. Instead of we took Willys Jeep to Cocora. 

Hike through the valley was so beautiful!! I can't describe how pretty it was so hopefully you get the idea from the pictures. It took less than two hours to reach Acaime, humming bird house. We spotted at least five different species. I am totally in love with kolibris. Sound of their wings and color of the feathers.. And how tiny they are?! I didn't know that there are so many different ones, some with long peak, some with long tail.

We did a loop around Montañita. Pretty steep uphill climb, but totally worth it! View down to the valley was amazing and we got to walk right next to the tall wax palms. Felt myself very short ;) Absolutely right decision to do the hike, even it meant we had to travel night time. Got to Popayan at 10.30pm without hostel reservation and for our luck all the places were full! Damn, after one hour search (pretty much saw the whole town already) we finally found one!