Lots of pics, and yes, I am alive

Well, it`s been quite a week or so since I last posted. I`ve been above 5000 meters, found a pseudo-job, seen some really cool sights and hiked about 30 miles. It`s been a good time.

After Mindo, I headed back to Quito for a night to get my plans firmed up for Cotopaxi. I booked 4 nighs at this hostel called Secret Garden, which has a sister hostel in Quito. I got it all lined up, found a pair of pants (see below) and headed off. The place was a little pricey at $28 a night, but that included all meals and a few hikes, so I figured it was well worth it.

The hostel was in the middle of nowhere, about 20k from the Cotopaxi volcano. It is in an agricultural valley surrounded by volcanoes, and overall one of the more beautiful places I`ve ever been. The first day I got there the staff took us on a hike up a creek to a couple of waterfalls. I led the way in jumping into the glacier fed creek. They next day included a 6 hour horse ride up to the peak of Huachinago. My legs are still sore from that. The day after was Cotopaxi - took a 4x4 to about 4500 meters, hiked up to the refugio and then after a rest there made it to the glacier at 5200 meters. It would have been an easier hike but due to some localized, completely natural weather variation, the glacier has retreated up the mountain over the last 10 years or so. The day after included another hike to the top of Pachocoa. I then chilled for the next day and recovered a bit.

Secret Garden is owned by a Aussie guy and his Ecuadorian wife. It`s one of my favorite places I`ve ever stayed - they grow a ton of their own veggies on the property, have pigs, ducks, rabbits, guinea pigs, geese, chickens,and sheep for meat/eggs and get really good milk and butter and whatnot from surrounding farms. Katerine (the Ecuadorian) is a chef and we had some great food up there. Particular highlights included a few of the soups, the pizza baked in the wood-fired oven, and a rabbit pie (made by one of the volunteers that I`m replacing who also happens to be a chef). The rabbit had been freshly slaughtered that afternoon. I liked the place so much that when I found out they were looking for volunteers to take the place of a couple guys that are leaving on the 25th, I jumped at the chance. Starting Sunday I`ll be leading hikes, helping out on the farm, doing waiter duties and whatever else is needed around the place for a month in exchange for free room and board. Should be a good time and allow me to extend my trip a bit longer.

The last few days I`ve been doing a bit of town hopping. I went to Quilotoa yesterday afternoon to see the crater lake up there and hike around. After a morning hike today I took 4 different buses to a place called Banos where I am now. It`s a little touristy, but I`ve been told there are some great bike rides and hikes around here so it should be fun. There are also volcano-fed thermal baths that I`m going to check out. That`s about all for now. As a reward for making it through all that here are some pics:

Ziplining through in Mindo

Rock jumping in Mindo

Cool flower

My buddy the tree frog

Omar rounding up horses at Secret Garden

An experienced horserider

Waterfall near Cotopaxi

Lake Quilotoa

Cotopaxi on a clear day

Omar feeding Bazel a dead rabbit. Bazel eats them skin, bones a all. He especially likes to crunch the skulls.

The top of Cotopaxi

Un par de pantalones

Note: this post was from about a week ago but the computer I was on crashed before I got it up. I don`t know why I`m bothering to post it now, but I am. I wouldn`t read it, it`s not very intresting.

After having my legs get chewed to bits up in Mindo by these little biting black flies, I decided that I needed a pair of good treking pants if I was going to do as much hiking as I want to. I`m heading to the Cotopaxi area tommorow morning so set out today to find a pair.

I figured that the big mall by the stadium here in Quito would be a good place to start. I headed down there on the bus and noticed a big sign advertising Columbia gear at this one store in the mall. Excellent sign.

What I discovered after an hour of searching four different stores is that XL isn`t really a size carried here. I wasn`t able to find a single pair that actually fit. I found a pair of 36 waist pants, but they were not anywhere near long enough. With time running out, I needed a plan.

Thinking that "Gringoland" (the touristy area I stayed in for a bit) would be a better bet, I hopped on another bus in a torrential downpour. I dashed through Gringoland, and checekd in 2 shops. No luck on the right size. Finally, I found this well-stocked shop that had all sorts. I hope they serve me well around Cotopaxi.

Back From Mindo

Just got back from Mindo, a cool little mountain town a couple hours from Quito. It has some pristine cloud forest, lots of rivers and a ton to do. I did a bunch of hiking, ziplined around, floated down a river and generally had a great time. I came back to Quito today as the power had been out for two days up there, and I wanted to get back to civilization.

Next, I`m headed to the Cotopaxi Volcano to stay at this hostel in the middle nowhere. I guess there are lots of hikes, bike rides and whatnot to do in the area. I wanted to climb the volcano, but being an idiot I didn`t bring my hiking boots, just running shoes. I don`t want to shell out for another pair on top of the expensive trip to the top so I`m going to pass on hiking it and just hike around it.

I`m finally posting some pictures that I salvaged from my various camera disasters. I`ll try and get some up from Mindo, but don`t want to plug it into the sketchy computer I`m in so am going to hold off till I can burn them onto a CD.

Cool door in Quito

Plaza Grande in Quito

View from the top of Basilica Voto Nacional

Cool window

Quito from the Teleferico

Church where I got yelled at (a sign might be a good idea?)for taking pictures of the blinged out interior

Basilica Voto Nacional

Hiking the Teleferico

Thunderclouds

Lupine and paintbrush at 4200 meters

GN'R

What to do in Quito on a Thursday night when your plans to head to an idyllic little town for some nature exploration fall through? Why Guns N´ Roses at the Estadio Olympico, of course! Throw in a little Sebastian Bach, and I´m betting you have a hell of a concert. How can you go wrong with this dude:

Ecuador, ect.

The last week or so in Ecuador has been great. I`ve been hanging out in Quito and am really enjoying the city. I`ve seen some cool sights, met some cool people and really enjoyed the city. Tomorrow I`m headed to this little town called Mindo. It sounds like a great place to hike, tube the river, monkey around in trees, ect.

The first few days in Quito I took it pretty easy as I think the altitude got to me a bit. Either that or I was a little sick. I got through a couple of trashy novels that my hotel had. One was entitled The Tiger of Desire, that had the tagline ¨When it strikes, it is often deadly.¨ I couldn`t pass that one up, mainly because it was one of only two novels they had in English at the hotel. They were well stocked in German books, strangely. I`ve been trying to stick to book exchanges as used books are pretty pricey here. The trade off has been a steep decline in the quality of literature available. What can ya do?

In the last few days I`ve done some sightseeing, managed to delete all the pictures on my camera`s memory card twice and done some searching for a job. Yesterday I went to the top of this mountain on this gondola system called the Teleférico. It lets you out in at this building at about 13,000 feet with a few cafes and whatnot, and you can walk around. I decided to hike a couple of miles to this other peak that tops out at a little over 14,000 feet. I almost reached it before a combination of: a sketchy looking super-steep trail, dense fog, peals of thunder in the distance, a headache, poor selection of footwear, and a breath that I was having trouble catching convinced me that perhaps it was time to turn back. I`d never been up that high and really didin`t appreciate what that kind of altitude entails.

I want to do the Cotopaxi volcano (tops out above 19,000 feet) trek after my upcoming trip to Mindo, but my little adventure yesterday made me realize that I better hang out at altitude and get acclimatized if I`m going to be able to summit. I met this guy last night who tried to do it without acclimatizing and he said at one point that he couldn`t even stand.

There were to be some pictures in this post, but there has been a repeat of The Great Camera Disaster of 2010.

The Farm

The PD just did a little feature on Carrot Top Farm for thier new local section of thier website. As most of the readers of this blog have enjoyed Carrot Top Farm veggies at one point or another, I thought I would post the link for anyone who is intrested.

http://yourtown.pressdemocrat.com/2010/03/healdsburg/meet-the-millers-of-carrot-top-farm/

The Food So Far

So I had big plans to upload a bunch of pictures that had been clogging up my memory card since El Salvador. I tried to download them in Panama and got some weird virus notice but chalked it up to a computer that wasn´t working very well. Anyways, I went to try and salvage them today and discovered that my entire memory card had been corrupted and had to be reformatted. FUCK.

Instead, I´m going to write about the food so far. It´ll be a poor substitute, but all I´ve got.

Overall, the food has been very underwhelming. I would rank the tree countries I´ve spent any legth of time in the following descending order: El Salvador, Ecuador, and Panama bringing up the rear. El Salvador had the brilliant street food called the pupusa, which is esssentially why it is in first place. To make it you take some masa, fill it with your choice of meat, beans and cheese and throw it on a griddle for 5 or 10 minutes. It´s essentially a tiny quesadilla, but the tortillas are cooked at the same time as you warm everything in the middle up. You then top it with pickeld cabbage and hot sauce for a delicious meal. They cost $.30-$.40 apiece, and three or four are a good sized meal. I have a mad scheme to open a stand in SF on the street serving them when I get back to support myself. I doubt the economics really work though...

Beyond that, El Salvador had some well prepared seafood, which wins it my top spot.

Panamanian food was not very good at all. Comida criolla was pretty bad - essentially an awfull mishmash of Chinese, Itallian and local stuff. I never got it, but saw people eating plates of warmed-over fried rice together with spahgetti with marinnaram pretty often. Most of the seafood was overcooked and meats were pretty bland. There wasn´t even any widely available hot sauce that was any good. The one exception to this was some good ceviche, specifically at the main fish market in Panama City (Bourdain fans should recall the location). However, I also had some pretty bad ceviche that balances out the really good stuff. I really wish I could have just eaten at the fish market every day and cooked for myself the rest of the time.

I haven´t eaten enough in Ecuador to make any wider judgements, but it wins points for not being Panama. Speaking of which, I´m starving and am headed out onto the mean streets of Quito to stuff my maw.