beyond Quito

We've had some fast-paced days... but some really good ones. La Mitad del Mundo on Friday was a blast - yes, imagine how "climatic" it is when you get out of the car at Mount Rushmore... you see the stone faces... you marvel at the human feet... and question the motives... and then you just get back into the car. Mitad del Mundo was funny. A whole town built around a marker incidating the equator. It was a funny thing to do, but we both got into it and definitely made the most of it... and we of course have plenty of photos with our feet on either side of the equator to prove it.:) But the best part was going to this museum nextdoor to the main marker. Apparently the French explorers got it wrong, so Ecuadorians used GPS and built a museum around the real line that marks the equator. The museum was a blast - beats the SPAM museum hands down! An they even did the full-out experiment - it would appeart that water really does drain in opposite directions depending on the hemisphere you're in. Saw it with my own eyes.:)

Then yesterday morning we took off early for the bus station and headed out of town. We went to two villages along the Quilotoa Loop. Amazing! It was soooooo beautiful. I think the last time I put my memory card into a computer, it screwed it up, so I won't be doing that again. If you'd like to see... do a quick Google Image search on the Quilotoa Loop, and more specifically the Luguna Quilotoa. It was all together lovely to get outside of Quito and absolutely flooring to see some beautiful mountains with the Cotopaxi Mountain looming in the background. We stopped in Zumbahua to catch the end of a Saturday market and then rode in the back of a pickup truck to Quilotoa. The people were wonderful, the sites were outstanding and the air was very cold at night. I wore ever piece of warm clothing I had with me last night, but our room had a little wood-burning stove in it.:) We enjoyed the company of other travelers as well - Sebastian from Poland split the cab with us from the hostel to the bus terminal in Quito, but was heading the same way so we traveled all day together yesterday. Playing cards with him and a German (Maritz?) was a wonderful way to pass a cold night in an Ecuadorian village.

We hiked down to the Laguna today and then hiked back out. The laguna is actually inside an inactive volcanic crator... which again, only means it was be-u-tif-ul. And so funny to experience the altitude. To say we were out of breathe a bit on the assent would be an understatement. Ha. There was a lot more hiking to be done on the Quilotoa loop, but it was such a process to get out there (bus to bus to pickup truck) that we didn't want to pass up a 1:00 bus back to Latacunga to be able to have a full day tomorrow to visit the Cotopaxi volcano. So the quiet, relaxed, not-all-together-charming-but-a-good-hub-for-other-adventures city of Latacunga is home for the night. We found a tour company to help us make the most of Cotopaxi tomorrow (the details seemed to be difficult to patchwork together on our own), so that makes tonight a full-out chance to relax.:)

More to say... but never enough time. The president of Ecuador visted Zumbahau today - we even passed his helicopter on the way back to Latacunga today. Apparently at 10:30 last night (after we went to bed) he was in Quilotoa for a late supper - we heard the music and celebrating outside of our hostel... but we sure weren't going to leave our wool blankets to check it out. It's a strange thing to be in a foreign country and still use US dollars - it sure makes the conversion easy! Ha. And it's been nice to have more interactions with people other than tourists now that we've left Quito.

Tomorrow - Cotopaxi. Tuesday - Baños. To be continued...