We left Salinas and drove across a high plateau toward Parque Nacional Chimborazo. In what was becoming a pattern, we were supposed to be staring straight at the Chimborazo volcano for the whole drive, but all we saw was fog, and to be fair, we also saw some llamas and vicuñas. It was still a pretty drive, and after an hour or so we met back up with the Pan Am and turned north.

We’ve been trying to figure out the difference between llamas, vicuñas, and alpacas. So far we’ve decided that vicuñas are smaller and less scruffy looking than their cousins. Their long slender neck is an easy way to identify them.

Our next stop was the Quilatoa loop, a back road through the Ecuadorian highlands that takes in a beautiful crater lake and some local villages. It’s pretty well established on the backpacker circuit and there were lots of other travelers. The scenery was impressive as we wound through the valleys.

The first night after leaving the Pan Am we stayed at a working hacienda. The owners were very nice and served fresh meat and dairy products from the farm. The yogurt at breakfast was some of the best I’ve had!

I couldn’t get Quinn to let the baby cows suckle on his fingers. Yuck!

The next morning was sunny, and after the previous day’s rain everyone was out soaking up the warm sun.

The dogs appreciated it too.

El Jefe

A small steep-walled canyon made for some nice views.

The next day we stopped at Laguna Quilatoa, a deep turquoise crater lake.

Quinn wasn’t in the mood to get his picture taken for this shot.

He posed in this shot for Jen a little later.

After a couple of days on the Quilatoa Loop we we headed for Cotopaxi National park, home to yet another volcano. We found a beautiful campsite, but it was cold enough that we used our heater for the first time in over a year!

We saw some interesting birds, and a fox visited our camp.

We reached our highest altitude of the trip thus far, over 15,000 feet.

Unfortunately the volcano itself remained mostly hidden by clouds.

He’ll make someone a nice sweater someday…

Our next stop was Baños (meaning “baths” as it is named for the many hot springs in and near town), set in a deep valley at about 5000 feet on the road down toward the jungle. Here we met up with our friend Jeff and his giant dog Barley.

A lady a few minutes from our campsite has trout ponds, so we had to go fishing.

Quinn got bored with the fishing pretty quick, but he loved eating the fish. Kind of like his dad.

The cathedral in the town of Baños.

The whole valley is littered with waterfalls, and we made the short walk to see this one.

And finally a shot with all three of us!

After sending Henry and Kathy back to the Land of Good Beer (aka the good ole’ US of A) we had two weeks before our apartment rental expired. We enjoyed spending time with Rick and Leticia, our friends from California. We shared several good meals and lots of travel stories. We visited a couple more of Cuenca’s microbreweries, but I don’t think any would have measured up to Henry’s high standards.

One day when we came back to our apartment we found that a construction crew had loosened a cable strung across Avenida de Los Americas, a major road running through town. The cable was dangling about 4 feet above the road and brought traffic to a standstill. Normal cars could fit under, but trucks and buses were stopped, with some drivers using brooms or whatever they could find to hold the cable up as they inched under it.

Duck!!

We went with our friend Lainie and some of her friends to another parade in town one night.

Another fun parade with lots of great people watching.

Cuenca has no end of nice street scenes

Walking on air

Looking out onto Cuenca’s new cathedral (the one with the blue domes) from a hillside above town.

For the first time on our trip we are making plans to be sure we don’t overstay our 90-day tourist visa. We have to be out by February 11 to avoid stiff fines, and there’s still quite a bit of the country left to see. Back in December we left Quito and headed to to the coast by way of Mindo, then explored the coast all the way south to Guayaquil before heading inland to Cuenca. That means we have the Panamericana between Quito and Cuenca to explore.

With that in mind, we decided to spend a couple of weeks filling in that gap before coming back to Cuenca to spend a week there sharing an apartment with our friends Justin and Melanie from Rhode Island. That should give us a whole week to make it to Peru! We moved out of our fancy apartment (thanks mom and dad for splitting the cost with us!) and headed out on the road for more adventures.

Lunch stop on our first day back on the road.

An in-auspicious start to a tour that was supposed to include lots of volcano viewing.

We have to stop to explore every train we see.

It took us two days to reach our first destination, the tiny village of Salinas de Guaranda. There are at least three towns by the name of “Salinas” in Ecuador, and this is that last one that Google Maps thinks of. It was visited by an Italian back in the 70s, and he introduced the concept of cooperative agriculture. Today the village makes wonderful artisinal cheeses, salami, and chocolate.

The road to Salinas is dirt and crosses over a 13,000 foot pass. The drive was beautiful.

The town of Salinas.

It was raining when we arrived so we took refuge in a restaurant for lunch. Afterward we visited the chocolate-making factory where we stocked up on 75% yumminess and then bought some salami at a local shop. Unfortunately it being Saturday the factories weren’t operating, but we still got to buy some of the products. It was still raining, so we drove out of town to visit the cheese factory, which was opened by a Swiss man (who better?). In Latin America most of the cheeses available are young and soft. Here they offered a wide selection of cheeses, including a wonderful Emmentaler.

The factory is set on a hill overlooking town, and seemed like a good place to camp. We asked, and they said it was fine. We dined that night on boxed wine, salami, cheese and crackers. It was a fairly cold night at 11,000 feet. The next morning Jen discovered the daily milk delivery in progress. Farmers from the surrounding area brought their milk to sell at the cheese factory. Many used donkeys and even llamas to deliver jugs of milk which were weighed and poured into a giant vat.

We liked not only the taste of the cheese but we also appreciated that we could see that we were directly supporting local people, so we went back in to buy another pound of cheese (for only five dollars) before we left.

The morning milk run.

Each New Year’s eve, Ecuadorians get a stuffed doll and pin all of the bad stuff that happened in the previous year to the doll and then light it on fire. The idea is that you’re getting rid of all of the bad things and starting fresh in the new year, presumably so that you can build up a bunch more bad stuff to burn the next time around.

The building of these life-sized dolls is quite the industry. We saw dolls for sale everywhere. Dolls on street corners, dolls stacked on trucks. Bus drivers tied them to the front of their buses.

Pin your disappointments on these guys, add a little gasoline, and watch it all go up in flames.

Unfortunately we went to bed too early to see the festivities (after setting off our own fireworks in the park nearby!), but the next morning when we got up I canceled my morning run because of the haze of smoke in the normally clear Andean skies. As my friend Ed commented, good for the soul but bad for the environment.

On New Year’s Day, Quinn turned six years old. We made him his favorite pancake breakfast, watched him open his birthday gifts in the morning and went to the park. Later we made chocolate cake.

Quinn was super excited to get a new car for his tiny N-gauge electric train.

Happy birthday!

Grammy and Papa wanted to see the beach before they left to return to cold Colorado, and we had booked a hotel room for them in the quiet beach town of Olón where we camped a few weeks ago. We loaded everyone in the van and headed for the coast. We were shocked when we arrived. The holiday had transformed the sleepy town where we had had the beach nearly to ourselves to something that looked like Miami Beach on the weekend. Cars were parked everywhere, but despite our fears we were able to drive through town to the beach and find a spot to park.

The drive down to the coastal plain from Las Cajas National Park (at 13,600 feet) afforded spectacular views.

Grammy and Papa had a third floor room with a view to the beach. If it had had reliable running water it would have been perfect!

They could see our campsite from their room.

Quinn and Papa played in the sand and surf.

Witt took a surf lesson, trying to build on the little he learned way back in Sayulita almost a year ago.

You can never get enough sunsets on the beach.

After two nights in Olón, we returned to Guayaquil where we spent the night in the nicest Holiday Inn I’ve every seen. I’ve never been served champagne at check-in at an $89 per night hotel! The next morning we said a sad goodbye to my parents as they headed to the airport to begin their 4-leg, 14-hour journey back home.

Thanks very much to all of our loyal followers! We hope you had a great Christmas and wish you all the best for the new year. Without further ado, here’s how we spent our Christmas in Ecuador.

Quinn, with help from mom and grammy, made a gingerbread train. Check out the smoke!

The big Christmas Eve event here is the Paseo del Niño, or passing of the Child. It’s a huge parade that lasts all day and draws people from all over the country and even from Colombia and Peru. Families decorate their cars and trucks and form a procession through town. We asked a local when we need to be at what point to catch the parade, and she just laughed and said, “don’t worry, you can’t miss it.” She was right.

We set out in the morning, wandering along the street looking at all of the home-made floats. We didn’t make it far, though, before my mom, Kathy, tripped on the uneven street and hit her head on the ground. Immediately several bystanders helped her up and someone went to get help. A lady offered a cut up lime to help clean the wound. Within a couple of minutes there were several young Red Cross volunteers. They cleaned and bandaged the cut and advised us to go to the hospital for stitches.

Kathy got lots of attention from the medics

My mom and I rode in an ambulance to a hospital where a doctor cleaned the wound again and put in two stitches. After it was all over, we asked where we should pay. No charge they said. Oh, and by the way if you want a ride back to the center of town, the ambulance will drop you off. I thought back to when Jen had to call an ambulance when Quinn had an allergic reaction when he was little. That cost $750 just for a 3 mile ride. The rest of that visit added up from there.

Back at our apartment we re-grouped, had lunch, and went back out to see some more of the parade. It was still going on, some three hours later. We had a great time watching the floats and the people.

Floats were elaborately decorated with whatever was on hand – fruits and veggies were popular, and some even used bags of chips.

This float features roasted guinea pig.

The parade was a great opportunity to see traditional dress.

It turns out that most of the roses imported into the US are from Ecuador. This is because they grow with straight stems near the equator. We bought some for our Christmas centerpiece. These cost all of $3.

The next day we went to a local park. The weather was great and we had a good time exploring.

Sparks on the rocks

For more on Paseo del Niño and some fun in the park, here’s a short video: