29 September, 2007: Nina
♦ Adult Humback whales reach between 45 and 50 feet long ♦ They weigh between 25 and 40 TONS ♦ The fins can reach 15 feet long and the tail, 18 feet wide ♦ Each whale eats up to 1.5 TONS of food each day ♦ A baby humpback whale weighs 1 TON at birth and is 15 to 18 feet long ♦ A calf drinks 400 liters of milk each day ♦
Today we saw four beautiful humpback whales. We watched them swing along with their backs arching out of the water and their tails following gracefuly behind. We saw them, not so gracefuly, rise straight up from the water and slam their body back into the water, making an enormous splash. We watched the females raise their great fins into the air, (some sign of mating they think) and wave it back and forth. Most incredible of all, we watched a few of them jump entirely out of the water, rotate in the air, and crash back down again. It was such an amazing experience! I had never seen anything like it.
The humback whales were the highlight of our day but the runner-ups were snorkling with giant colorful fish and seeing the Blue Footed Boobies incredibly close. These amazing birds are found on ocean islands, like the Galapagos, and have, as the name suggests, blue feet... but not boobies. They are sea animals but come to land to breed and nest. These birds that we saw today on Isla de la Plata make their nests all over the island, including directly on the trails. They have these huge bright blue webbed feet and are so cute! I found it intriguing to watch them walk because they reminded me of people trying to walk with flippers on their feet! But when they fly, the look like a completely different animal, so graceful.
28 September, 2007: Matthew
So, this announcement is a couple of days after the fact, but I am very pleased to welcome our new little nephew, John Isaac Fisher who joined us to share this crazy life on September 24th. Though his arrival came a couple of weeks before the expected date, he managed to weigh in at almost eight pounds, and from all that I hear he is plenty healthy. This is my parent´s first grand-baby, and the first great-grand-baby on my dad´s side. We are all so excited about this new little life that has joined us. Welcome to our family Isaac!!! Congratulations also to my sister and her husband, Andrea and John on their first baby, we are so proud of you guys. We love you and can´t wait to all be together!
26 September, 2007: Nina
First, I want to say h a p p y b i r t h d a y to my dear little sister, Nadia. I thank God that somewhere on this day 6 years ago a woman gave birth to a beautiful little girl. And even more, she had chosen life for this baby and by the goodness of God, this little girl ended up in my family. I love you Nods. : )
Passport Update: Things at the embassy went better than we had even hoped for. They accepted all of the papers I had and we were out of the embassy within a couple of hours with the promise that my new passport would arive in exactly 8 days. With that info, we were out of Guayaquil less than 24 hours from when we had arrived and headed to the beach to wait out the 8 days! We are in Puerto Lopez, a little town near the only coastal National Park. We even got to enjoy the most beautiful dinner on our Anniversary, at a little italian restaurent set in a garden with outdoor dining, candlelight, delicous wine, pasta, and authentic tiramisu. It ws perfect. We are staying at a lovely little place right on the beach with our own cabin and breakfast in a swiss-family-robinson-style hut overlooking the ocean. What´s more, we are staying there for free because we are going to include them in Hosteltrail. Today we are going to try our luck at a few tour companies. Hosteltrail includes tours and we are going to see if any companies want to take the bait in exchange for a whale watching tour and trip to Isla de la Plata, the "the poor man's Galapagos". This is the end of the whale spawning season, when the whales make the trip all the way from Antartica to the equator. We hear it is incredible to see them.
23 September, 2007: Nina
23 September, 2007: Matthew
Oh man, what a crazy two days it has been since we checked in last... We discovered that Nina´s passport and wallet was missing on Friday night. This is never a good discovery, especially when you are in a foreign country, with further plans to go to another foreign country. Of course all items that we have with us changed places in a revolving cycle until it was confirmed that neither was her passport here nor there. Then the process of figuring out what happened begins... well, the best we can tell is that it was either lifted from our hotel room in Alausí while we were out to dinner, or she was pickpocketed on the bus, street, bus, street, or bus. We really only know that we last saw it 2 days earlier. The good thing is that we cancelled the credit cards that were contained in her wallet within an hour of our discovery, and while doing that found that no money had been spent from our accounts, and so we have merely extinguished a couple of sources for getting a hold of money. The terribly unfortunate thing is that obtaining a new passport for Nina not only promises to be complicated, but time consuming. In reality it shouldn´t be too bad, it just rearanges our schedule in a less than desirable way. We had plans to leave tomorrow morning for Vilcabamba where we were going to spend our anniversary at a lovely hostel with a spa, private cabin, etc. As it stands we will spend our anniversary hoping that the copies of critical identification documents serve us well at the US Embasy in Guayaquil... and that our total time of waiting for the new passport will be under a month´s time.
All of this is not much more than an inconvenience at this time, the critical factor for us is being able to make it to Lima Peru by October 17th, where Nina has been waiting to meet her sponsor chiid through Compassion Int. To organize a visit usually takes at least 6 weeks, and we don´t know excactly how things are going to work on the scheduling side with a re-schedule, not to mention the disappointment that Anthony would feel at being told that we are coming to see him, and then not. That is our biggest concern.
21 de Septiembre, 2007: Nina
Some of you may know that we have begun writing for Hosteltrail.com. As we had explained perviously, it is an online travel guide for South America, started by our friends Tony and Kim from Scotland. Well, my first write up of Mundo Andino Spanish School in Otavalo is now online, as well as a hostel in Cuenca. In addition, you will soon see a little profile for us in the About Us section of the site. We are a little giddy about it because it is a fun new experience for us, so check them out! There will be more to come as we pioneer the Vilcabamba section next week!
19 de Septiembre, 2007: Nina
Happy Birthday Ben Jones!!! We love you!
18 de Septiembre, 2007: Nina
Today was beautiful. We had the once-in-a-life-time opportunity to meet a special little girl, 13 year old "Maria" (pseudonym), whom has been sponsored by my parents through World Vision. We, along with two of the staff from WV, met Maria, her mom, and her sister in the little town of Pujilí, at the project office. We exchanged a few small gifts, a colorful handmade bag for myself and a scarf for Matthew, a game for her familiy, hairclips and lotion for Maria, along with a card and pictures from my family. We went through the pictures on by one, me showing her the many members of my wonderful crazy family. I don´t know whether it was from nervousness, happiness, or a scramble of emotions, but I heard sniffles from Maria and looked over to see tears on her sweet face. This of course made me choke up but I held it together. We then took a 30 minute car ride high up into the parched hills, Maria pointed out different plants and trees to me on the way. We arrived in her community which consisted of small collection of houses, a tiny school and a church, set amidst the dusty road. The community was not even big enough to be called a village, much less a town, and the houses were rectangular constructions of cinder blocks. The people there were obviously poor but their view was priceless. The community sat high on a hillside with boundless, rolling, patchworked hills stretched out to the horizon. It is the dry season now, so the colors were a mix of dusty browns and greens, but the view was the most vast I have seen in Ecuador. We climbed the hillside behind her house and met the donkey, sheep, and pig, after having been introduced to the dogs, puppies, kitten and chickens. We were invited inside the small house for bananas, boiled eggs, and bread. We played the game we had brought from Portland, the colorful box looked so strange and bright in the simple room. The room, consisted of a kitchen behind a curtain and a space barely large enough to hold a table, refrigerator, a large bag of rice and other food supplies. This was where we were invited. Presumably the other similar sized rectangular building acoss the way was their bedroom. Maria has 7 siblings. There are 12 people who occupy the 2 buildings I just described. They are in the process of building a third but have no money to finish it just now. They reminded me of the little cement and chicken wire house we built in Mexico when I was a teenager, I had been amazed that it was actually an improvement on the family´s previous living condition. I can´t say Maria´s circumstance is worse, but I couldn´t imagine 12 people sleeping in the building that I saw. After a glass of orange soda, we took a few photos and said our goodbyes, amidst many thank you´s from both sides. Mom and Dad, they want to know when you two are coming to visit. :)
17 September, 2007: Matthew
So, we had a strange experience today that was a first in all of our months of traveling so far. We are scheduled to have a visit with the little girl that Nina´s parents sponsor through World Vision, tomorrow in Pujilí - Our plan was simply to go to Pujilí, stay tonight and meet up with the World Vision representatives and have our visit. It is true that we didn´t have much information about this town, but it seems simple enough to just show up and look around for a place to stay. After getting down from the bus that we had caught from Latacanga, where we stayed last night, we started wandering around looking for a little hotel or residencia. After completing several blocks and being certain that we had located what seemed like the center of town, and looked around near the bus station we started asking around as well, to see if anyone knew of a place for us to stay the night... we got a couple of responses indicating the new-looking government building near the church that, sure enough, stated that it was a "hosteria". After waiting around for a while for the doors to be re-opened after lunch our question was answered, but only that the building was not ready yet to be inhabited, and that otherwise there were only some highly over-priced home stay options. We decided to ask around a little bit more and finally got another lead for a residencia, but one of the two poeple discussing its location thought the guy who ran it was no longer living... we go to check it out, and sure enough it is quite convincingly and thoughroughly closed up. Hmmm, a town of over 6,000 people whithout a single place to rent a room? There are places to make a phone call, use internet, buy fruit, snacks, pirated dvd´s, but no place to stay??! In Latin America that is a first for us.
Fortunately for us, it was not more than about a 30 minute bus ride back to Latacanga where we will spend another night before out visit with Enma. We didn´t have anything pressing to do today, so the round-trip to Pujilí, which we will repeat tomorrow, wasn´t a problem, just nearly unbelievable.
15 September, 2007: Matthew
Today was one of those beautifully exhausting days. Well, it got off to a relaxing start as we didn´t come down for breakfast until about 9 AM, but then we put on our hiking tennishoes to get started on our long awaited hike to Lake Cuicocha. Last time we were here in Otavalo we spent a couple of hours up at the lake with Marco, and the boys (which included at least 4 cousins on that excursion). But, there is a trail that circles around the entire lake, and though we didn´t realize what a beautiful setting this lake has last time we decided that on our next visit to Otavalo we would certainly have to prioritize another trip up to the lake to enjoy the entire hike. Our hopes had been that the boys would join us for the hike, but as Carlos is just getting over a broken knee he was certainly not able to join us and Marco had a lot of "house work" to do. We can´t blame him too much though, the 14 km hike up and down the ridge creating the perimeter of the lake can´t sound too appealing if it´s not your thing.
The day was beautiful in its own respect, although we had hoped for a bit more sun... however, the cloud striken week that we have spent in Otavalo prevented us from having too high of hopes for this morning. When the sun rays shine on this crater lake near the base of Volcán Cotacachi the blue, green, brilliant shimmer of the waves is a really beautiful site. We were priviledged to get a few glimpses of this amazement on our previous hike here. Today was an experience of the lake´s tranquil beauty as the clouds rapidly rolled in and out, and we were able to watch the islands and background as our focal point as we circled the lake.
12 de Septiembre, 2007: Nina
Just wanted to say that we are back in Otavalo with Marco, Yoli, Carlos and Marcito. Our professor this week is very good. He has a good understanding of where we are with our Spanish and gives us a good variety of exercises, which passes the time quickly! Marcito has been asking me to make chocolate chip cookies again with him, so I am going to go buy the ingredients after using the internet. Maybe this time I will get the ferenhight to celcius conversion correct! They turned out alright last time... just very flat.
Julie, you had asked on the C-box about anniversary plans. Well, we have just recently been deciding where to spend it. As it turns out, it will be perfect timing to spend it in the beautiful Vilcabamba Valley, the Valley of Longevity as they call it, in the south of Ecuador. We have decided on a place a couple kilometers outside of town, check it out at http://www.izhcayluma.com It looks like a very relaxing place to spend our third anniversary, which is September 25th. The lodge has beautiful views over the valley, its own resaruant, and its own spa, complete with 45 min massages for $12! Can´t beat that! Definetely looking forward to it... since the life of a traveler is so exhausting! We are due for ...another... break!
12 September, 2007: Matthew
I wanted to point some attention to our new videos that I posted of a local band that we had the priviledge of listening to while having some dinner at La Luna. It was a great experience and I am maintaining that the music in the high sierra here in Ecuador is some of the best that we have experienced in our journey. I especially love the variety of flutes that they use and the passionate rythem!
8 de Septiembre, 2007: Nina
Yikes, we are getting really lazy about the entries, aren´t we. It is already the 8th of September. How time is flying. We have been traveling for over 6 months now! We had another nice week in Popayan, and left Colombia two days ago. I tried to do a little clothes shopping before leaving Colombia but it was impossible to find anything without rhinestones in Pasto and Ipiales, so I will have to keep my eyes open for rhinestone free clothing here in Ecuador. We have been staying the weekend at a beautiful lodge 4 km outside of Otavalo, Ecuador. We have an upstairs room with a balcony, hammok, and fireplace, which makes for very cozy evenings when it is very cold outside! The days have been beautiful here, sunny and clear in the morning, with views outside our room of both Imbambura and the snow capped Cotacochi. But the nights are very chilly. The town is celebrating another annual festival (if you remember, the last time we were in Otavalo they were in festival also!) During this festival called Yamor, which lasts over a week long, they make a special alcholic drink that is specific to this region and this time of year, so we are going to go try some at the most famous place in town, open only during this time of year.
We plan to meet Marco, Yoli, Carlos, and Marco tomorrow and stay with them again for the week. We are going to study again and get back in the swing of things with the es-pan-yol. We had been doing pretty well when we were in Colombia, speaking spanish, but towards the end of our stay there we got lazy and spoke English.. a lot.
We are looking forward to a visit with Enma, a girl that my parents sponsor through World Vision. She lives in a little village near the mountain Cotopaxi, near Quito. We plan to see her next week. We will bring pictures from the family and a few gifts all the way from Portland.
Well, time to go try some Chicha!