Josh Comes to Ecuador

Josh at the equator monument

One of my best friends, Josh, came down to visit us for two weeks.
Here's what we did.

Josh arrived Saturday night, so all we could really do was get something to eat.  We went to a small hot dog stand called Los Hot Dogs de la Gonzales Suarez.  It's a very popular place that serves hot dogs with onions, tomato, mustard/mayo/ketchup, and crushed Ruffles potato chips on top.  Pineapple jelly is optional, but recommended.  We actually always got the Doble, which is the same thing but with two hot dogs in one bun.  Ecuadorians are very innovative with their hot dogs.  We ended up eating here several times during Josh's visit.

The "real" equator at Intiñan museum

Equator according to me

The next day we toured Quito.  We took the buses out to the equator to get some obligatory photos.  There's two equator museums.  There's one with the tall monument and then a short walk north is the "real" equator.  I guess the first one is off by a few hundred meters.  My GPS showed that the equator is still a few hundred feet north of the real one, in some random driveway. Who knows where it really is? We both liked the real equator museum better than the one with the monument.  We then met Amber in the Old Town/El Centro area of Quito and walked around the colonial streets.  It was Sunday, so not much going on, but it's still a nice place to walk around.  While on La Ronda street, we stopped in and got a giant empanada de viento.  It's kind of like an elephant ear but without cinnamon and stuffed with a little cheese.  Pretty tired, we went back to our place and relaxed.  I think we went back for more hot dogs that night.

Our massive empanada

The next morning we made our way to Baños.  We got there in the afternoon, got our hotel, and then just wandered around the city for the rest of the day.  Baños is pretty dead on a Monday.

On Tuesday, our goal was to rent some bikes and ride down the highway toward the city of Puyo.  We got some functioning bikes for 5 dollars a day and took off.  This is a popular ride, because it passes by many beautiful waterfalls and follows the river to the beginning of the Amazon rain forest.  We took our time and made many stops to look at the beautiful views.  There's zip-lines and bungee jumping along the way, but we didn't care to do any of that.  We did take a cable car that went right over one of the larger waterfalls.  We thought we could reach Puyo, but our late start and many stops left us about 10 miles short.  No big deal.  Not wanting to ride into the night, we flagged down a bus and took it back to Baños.  After returning the bikes we went to one of the public hot springs that Baños is famous for.  It was pretty crowded, but beautifully situated next to a tall waterfall.

The beginning of the rain forest

A random stream we climbed up

On the cable car

Today was a day of bus rides.  We needed to get to Cuenca from Baños, and that can take a while sometimes.  There's no direct bus to Cuenca, so we had to get one to Riobamba and then transfer.  We got up early to catch the 7:15 bus to Riobamba. We arrived at the bus station in Baños around 7, and a worker asked where we were going.  We said Riobamba, he motioned to follow him, and he took off in a dead sprint across the parking lot to the highway.  I guess the 6:45 bus was running late and we could still catch it as it was rolling away.  Caught the bus, and made it to Riobamba by 8:30.  Our bus to Cuenca left at 9:45, so we went across the street for some breakfast.  They had one of my favorites, Seco de Chivo, and we both ordered that.  It's goat stew with a huge pile of rice and some potatoes.  It was delicious.  Our bus ride to Cuenca was uneventful, but the views are spectacular.  Typical of Ecuadorian bus rides, they played a very violent movie to keep us occupied.   The death toll was in the hundreds.  We arrived at Cuenca in good time, around 3:30 pm.  We picked a hostel named Hostel Tourist del Mundo.  It was only $7 a night and had a nice view of the river.  The rest of the day was spent wandering the city.

Josh in the quinoa fields

Standing on the ruins

On Thursday we woke up and went to my favorite breakfast spot in the market (see our previous post about Cuenca).  We didn't really have anything planned for today except roam Cuenca.  We checked out the Incan  ruins, Pumapungo, and then walked across the valley to the Rio Yununcay.  We wandered around some more, but went to bed early to rest up for our big hike.

Rio Yununcay

 This one is going long, and the hike might be better as a separate post.

Interesting fact:  Everyone in Ecuador is crazy.  Not really, but a common nickname people have for each other is Loco.  Kind of like how we say Dude.  I often hear people answer their phone like, "Alo, Loco" or "Que fue, Loco?"