Tag Archives: Ecuador

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Family Friendly Activities in Cuenca Ecuador

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Cuenca is a pretty, very walkable city. It’s the first place we visited in Ecuador that I could imagine recommending as a family-friendly vacation destination. The city, with it’s many churches and a strong focus on traditional arts and culture is unmistakably Ecuadorean, but it also has a very European feel. It is smaller and cleaner than Quito and a fraction of the size of Guayaquil.

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Isla De La Plata

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Puerto Lopez is a charming little town in coastal Ecuador. The main industry here is still fishing but tourism, especially to Isla de la Plata in the Machalilla National Park is becoming more important. I’d read about Machalilla, sometimes called “poor man’s Galapagos’, while planning our trip and decided that a visit to this park, where we could experience some of the biodiversity for which the Galapagos is famous but at a lower cost was perfect for us.

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On The Road To Cuenca

The bus paused mid-span on the bridge over the broad Guayas river giving me a chance to look back on the Guayaquil skyline. It was hot, it seems to be always hot in Guayaquil. I guess that’s the desert for you. Although, the heat came as a surprise since we’d been shivering while waiting for our first bus in the coastal town of Olon that morning. Now we were heading up the mountains and possibly to chillier climes again to Cuenca, Ecuador’s third largest city.

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Hotel Review Huagra Corral Hostel Cotopaxi Ecuador

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I knew I was splurging when I chose the Huagra Corral. My thought was that it would be better to stay on the ground of the Cotopaxi National Park, to enjoy the peace and solitude – after being in Quito – than to stay at the nearest town (Latacunga) and have to get taxis or buses to and from the park.

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Murphys At Cotopaxi National Park

Cotopaxi National Park

It was mostly overcast during our day at Cotopaxi National Park, but we catch sight of the famous peak briefly before we started our hike down the mountain.

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Curia Ecuador

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This is the view from the house we rented in Curia, Ecuador (which I found using vrbo.com). For $30 per night, we have two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a spacious living room, a well-equiped kitchen and a stunning view of the ocean. The day we arrived the sun was shining and I was optimistic that – as planned – we’d be able to spend ten lazy days hanging out at the beach doing very little except sunbathing and swimming. Unfortunately since that day, we’ve had damp, wet weather and only BigB has been brave enough to go into the water. Instead, we’ve been using Curia as a base from which to explore this section of Ecuador’s Pacific coast from Montanita to Puerto Lopez.

Curia is little more than a sleepy village just 6k or so from Montanita – where most of the tourist activity in this area is focused. The sound of the surf, which pounds the shore day and night, is punctuated in the morning by cocks crowing and in the evening by music blaring from the houses around us. Curia is a peaceful, restful spot but the longer I’m here, I’m finding myself more and more disconcerted by the cavernous gap between the lifestyle I’m used to and what it’s like to live in a rural Ecuadorian village.

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Modernity is unevenly applied in Curia. People sit in houses with bare brick walls and dirt floors watching soap operas and soccer on plasma TVs sometimes with chickens wandering around their feet and pigs wallowing outside the door. I can go to the lavanderia and pay to have my clothes washed and dried in a regular automatic washing machine and dryer – at 50cents per pound, it’s cheap – but I can tell that most of the people living in this village are still washing their clothes by hand. Laundry is drying around every house on lines, hedges and walls. If the weather had held, I’m sure I’d barely notice the volume of clothing since it would dry quickly in the sun. As it is, the damp weather has meant that more laundry is added to the lines daily with very little being removed. It’s a visible sign of hard work against tough odds. I can’t help think of how much work these mothers are doing to keep their boys and girls in clean clothes. It’s a long way from choosing not to use a tumble dryer for environmental reasons.

The unpaved street has turned to mud more than once since we’ve been here causing me to reflect on simple things that we take for granted at home – like paved streets. And well-stocked grocery stores that have large signs, are brightly lit and are full of an abundance of products. Here, you might see “Se Vende …” written on the side of a house. It took me a few days to work out that the house was not for sale, rather that this was the owner’s way of advertising his or her wares. Each store is small with an eclectic mix of products. Just because you can’t see the thing you’re looking for on the shelves doesn’t mean it isn’t available – it may be, but to find it you have to ask the owner.

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The guy with the bicycle in that photo is selling fish. Bicycle salesmen selling fruit, vegetables, fish or bread meander through the village or along the beach daily. You have to be in the right place at the right time to catch them. Buying food for dinner this way certainly makes you feel closer to the producer, but the randomness of it is confounding. There is a supermercado in Libertad which is an hour’s bus-ride away. We could go there and stock up – as I’m sure many locals actually do – but I’m loath to do so since that would feel like cheating on this experience of figuring out how and where to buy what we need here. The local bus passes by every 15 minutes or so making it easy to get to the larger towns of Montanita or Puerto Lopez if necessary.

I’m sure that as development marches up the coast – the streets in Montanita were recently paved, for example – Curia will change. I’m glad we got to experience it now but I’ll be curious to return here in five or ten years just to see how it has changed. Hopefully the changes will be for the better and the simple character of the village will be preserved.

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Wanderfood Wednesday: Mercado Central Quito

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This semi-carved roast pig greeted us as we entered the Mercado Central in Old Town Quito, Ecuador. I had to take a photo for my pig-roasting friends.

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The market is organized into sections for produce, fruits, meat, fish, poultry, etc. This photo of a produce-seller’s stall gives you a feel for the abundance and variety of foods on offer. I couldn’t help but linger by the two stalls selling herbs. They were not as visually appealing as this one, but the co-mingling scents of the many herbs stacked high was an aromatic delight.

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The humble spud had it’s own aisle in this market.

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That last photo didn’t do justice to the variety of spuds on display so I had to take another photo so you could appreciate the detail :)

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Two Weeks Into Our Family World Trip

 

Guayaquil

We’re glad we packed:
1. Headlamps. We’re using Petzl headlamps and highly recommend them. They rock for: kids reading in bed at night, compensating for the lack of outdoor lighting at a rental house and taking a nighttime run on the beach – for a few unusual uses.
2. A small flexible extension cord. Ours is a cheapie one from our local drug store (although REI does stock a pricey “travel extension cord” from Swiss Army). With one socket converter, we can charge three devices making it easy to keep Kindles, Nintendos, the netbook and the camera charged most of the time.
3. Waist wallets.
4. Long underwear. The Andes in the Spring are warm and sunny during the day but sweet heavens it’s freezing at night!
5. A handful of dried cherries and pineapple scores a winning smile from an Andean toddler.

We’ve learned:
1. Don’t take directions using public transport without asking for the bus, tram or train number -and be suspicious if the person giving directions puts an arrow pointing off the map to the intended destination. Our taxi-ride from central Quito to the bus station to catch a bus to Cotopaxi took long enough that even Cillan was starting to get suspicious that we may be in danger.
2. Always carry an empty plastic bag. Why? See here.
3. Washing clothes by hand is hard work! (Murph may disagree, but maybe that’s because I’m more particular when I do the washing).
4. In Ecuador buying bus tickets at the station is more expensive than buying them on the bus. We’re only talking about a few dollars difference, but when you’re keeping a tight budget it’s worth keeping in mind.

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How the kids are doing:
1. They don’t seem to be bothered by the abrupt change from Starbucks-on-every-corner Seattle to being stinky backpackers in impoverished Central Ecuador. They still rate free wifi in accommodation a critical necessity.
2. So long as they have a seat on the bus, hopping on and off the busy buses plying the Panamerica Sur and coastal Ecuador has become as normal as walking to our local grocery store.
3. We’re going to have toileting issues. At least one of our children is only comfortable using a clean, western-style toilet with a seat. We’re already joking that by the time we get to Western China the standards in Ecuador will seem regal in comparison.
4. We’re planning to follow the Seattle Public School 2010/2011 calendar. School started on Wednesday 9/8. So far, so good.
5. The kids have started blogging at TravelingPikmin.com. Officially, this is school-work (the writing component), but I’m finding it’s fun to read what they have to say about the trip.

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Photo Friday: Mitad Del Mundo

Mitad Del Mundo Ecuador

We started our family world trip in Quito, Ecuador. Although we plan to chill out at the beach in Southern Ecuador for a little rest and relaxation before we start the trip proper, I thought it would be fun to indulge in a little geekiness and take photos standing on the Equator as a way to mark the start of our journey in a notable way. My boys were only too happy to comply.

Mitad Del Mundo is an equatorial marker about an hour north of Quito. It’s a totally manufactured tourist attraction, but it’s fun. You can take your photo in front of the small on-site museum or…

Mitad Del Mundo Equator Line

standing on the line marking the Equator or…

Mitad Del Mundo Jumping The Equator

high-five-ing across the Equator.

The Mitad Del Mundo is easily accessible via the blue line public buses from central Quito. There is an expressway which runs along Av America and Av Del La Prensa. If like us, you think that you don’t really need to take the express bus, be warned, the trip takes at least 30 minutes longer on the local buses. We paid less than $5 there and back for all four of us.

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