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| The electric shower... |
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| The whole room... notice the toilet seat |
This past weekend we had a 3-day weekend and decided to travel to Tulcán, Ecuador for two days and John could have a climbing day on Sunday. Tulcán is right on the Colombian border in the north of Ecuador. After a few failed bus attempts we finally landed some seats on the Express Transportation bus to Tulcán. A not so express 5 hours later we arrived at our destination. The first thing we did was wander around town looking for a place to spend the night. We learned from past experiences that I (Amber) needed a room in the hotel without windows (surprisingly they do exist here). We checked out no less than half a dozen places before settling on the Plaza Hotel on Bolivar Ave. The room had no windows (except for a small window to the stairwell in the bathroom) and cost $6 per person. Some interesting things to note about the bathroom in the bedroom were: 1. no toilet seat 2. electric shower (that does not warm up) and 3. awful smell when the window is closed. Obviously this was a very classy place.
After dropping our stuff at the hotel we went looking for food. The place that was described in the tour book that sounded interesting no longer existed (SURPRISE!... how many times has that happened now?) Since we had not really eaten since breakfast we just went to the closest place that we could see. We got meriendas (or the local set dinner). It was pretty good. Some kind of soup, chicken (which I gave to John), rice and a beet/potato salad. They happened to have some amazing mayonnaise too... homemade I think. For dessert we sampled the sweet empanadas and morocho (hot sweet drink of milk and corn) that the lady was making in the door. I wish I could say that we went out and did amazing fun things afterward but in reality we went back to the hotel because it was rainy and cold and I was tired.
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| Hanging out with the giant heads |
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| Making friends with the bushes |
We woke up bright and early (much thanks to our neighbors and the church bell). Seems like we are always up early on vacations... oh well, it doesn't bother us much. It was a brisk morning out and I regretted leaving my hat in the hotel room. We were up so early that the places we wanted to go (like breakfast) were not even functioning yet. We decided to walk part of the way to Columbia (6km away). I would say that we walked for about an hour in total and didn't even make it half of the way. Fortunately by the time we got back in to town the cemetery had opened. A cemetery you say? Oh, but not just any cemetery... this one has amazing topiary gardens in it. The bush sculptures ranged in size and shape from large chickens and armadillos to huge Andean faces and people. The place was much bigger than I thought it would be and very impressive. My favorite sculptures were of the Andean faces and the detailed archways. We wandered around here for almost 2 hours but could have easily gone at a slower pace and spent longer. There were multiple places where you could climb a set of stairs and see out over the whole cemetery. For some time we were lucky enough to see the Chiles Volcano in the background. This volcano sits right on the border of Columbia and Ecuador.
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| A small garden at the entrance |
By this time we were getting a little hungry and decided to check out the market to see what was cooking. We didn't have much of a variety still (seems like people in Tulcán like to sleep in). We went to what looked like a popular place with the locals. It is said that usually good food is found where all the people are hanging out. This reasoning didn't fail us. For $1 a plate we got about 3 cups of rice, noodles in some kind of sauce, possibly goat meat (again John got mine), two potatoes and a cup of coffee. Can't.Beat.That. I was stuffed afterward and I assumed John was feeling the same until we passed a bread shop and he mentioned that the bread on the bottom looked good. We ended up buying 5 rolls for 50 cents. The "bread" turned out to be a banana crumb cake swirled with regular bread and icing on top. They were crumbly and really good. While walking and eating we decided it was a good time to start heading back to Quito since it would likely be a 6 hour trip. Thanks for the topiaries Tulcán : ) [More pictures on Facebook]
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| Looking down the valley |
I (Johnny) left the apartment at around 4:10 a.m. to meet up with my climbing group to go climb Imbabura. It is one of the many extinct volcanoes in the region, and it overlooks the famous Andean trading village Otavalo. This mountain was probably one of the easier ones I have gone up so far. The hardest part was the 3-4 hour bus ride to get there and back. This mountain is notorious for being rainy and cloudy and today was no exception. It was cloudy all day and rained and snowed off and on. Most of the day we could only see as far as the next valley over or sometimes only 100 ft, but for a brief 5 minutes at the top, it cleared out and we could see all of Otavalo and the neighboring Lake San Pablo. Not an incredibly eventful day, but I guess that's a good thing sometimes in the mountains.
Interesting fact: John and I cannot receive packages that weigh more than 4 kg (or about 8.8lbs). My mom recently put together an amazing care package and shipped it down here for $70. The package weighed 12 lbs. John and I were so excited to get it. Little did any of us know that Ecuador has mail restrictions. It is called the 4X4 rule. Nothing over 4 kg and nothing costing more than $400. Still unaware of the rules we tracked the package through the states and finally in to Ecuador. The package never showed up at the address that it was intended for... so we kept waiting. I checked the mail tracking website daily and no changes. Finally, we went to the post office to see what the problem was and discovered that I would be forced to send the "overweight" package back to the states (paying for shipping yet again). Ugh! How frustrating. Lesson learned: If you are going to send something... send it light or send it with someone. Thanks for trying mom : )
