Volcano Tour – By Horse

I’m no fan of horses. I guess it’s because I had a bad experience as a kid, but still I just don’t see the point. I’d rather walk than put my life in the hands of a strong-minded animal. So naturally I was disappointed when I learned that the only way to see the huge active volcano on Isabela Island was on horseback. But I really wanted to see the volcano, so I convinced myself that I could do it.

Long story short, we both survived and it was worth it. The horses were very tame and we didn’t have any problems, although I was completely terrified the entire time.
 

The volcano is called Sierra Negra, and it’s a huge crater that is constantly letting off steam. It’s actually the largest active volcano crater in the world (one crater in Africa is larger, but inactive).
 

After seeing Sierra Negra, we hiked to another active volcano called Volcano Chico. This one doesn’t look like a volcano at all, it’s more of a general area of volcanic activity. We walked around in lava fields with cool-looking cactus, and enjoyed great views of the rest of Isabela Island.
 

An Evening in Isabela

Our first night on Isabela, Kristina, who worked at our hotel, took us around town. We ended up at a cool bar with a wall full of iguanas. Lucky us we also happened to be there right in time for a few games of volleyball!
 

Isabela Bay Tour

We took a tour of the bay near Puerto Villamil, which is gorgeous with clear blue water, black lava rock, and green mangroves.  We saw a billion iguanas, a few penguins, one blue-footed boobie, and then went snorkeling with sea turtles and a big sting ray. After a hike around one of the islands, we returned to find a sea lion hanging out in our boat. I think this happens a lot, because the boat owners seem to be a bit disgusted with the sea lions. But I got a kick out of it.
 

Tortuga Bay

One day in Puerto Ayora we walked to Tortuga Bay, which is a large beach 40 minutes outside of town. It was fairly uneventful, except for some amusing iguanas on the beach. If you got too close to them, they’d start to run which looks pretty funny with their short legs.
 

These cactus trees are all over the Galapagos. The cactus evolved to grow into tall trees so that the giant tortoises and iguana wouldn’t eat them.  I’m not sure the photo captures it accurately, but they look really cool.
 

A peek at the Galapagos

After our 4-day cruise, Ben and I stayed 6 more nights on the Galapagos islands. Our primary reasons for staying longer were:
    a) we had time before our flight out of Ecuador
    b) we heard that you can stay on the islands cheaper than a cruise and take day trips.

So we ended up on the main island, Santa Cruz (Puerto Ayora) and another island Isabela (Puerto Villamil) for three nights each. Staying on the islands gave us a completely different perspective of the Galapagos. When you’re on the cruise, you see these pristine, uninhabited islands with the native plants and animals – virtually unchanged for millions of years. The guide talks about history and preservation and you almost feel like you’re getting a secret glimpse of another planet. It’s not that this impression is misguided, it’s just a very different picture than you see from the Galapagos towns.

Four of the 15 islands are inhabited. The biggest city, Puerto Ayora, feels like any other island or beach town. Paved roads, taxis, markets, pharmacies, banks – you name it, it’s a regular city. In the highlands, people are farming and raising cattle, and on the coast they’re fishing and taking tourists on snorkel and diving tours. Over the last 100 years, immigrants and tourists have brought countless plants, animals and insects to the islands, many of which threaten the endemic species. The National Park and Darwin Research Center are working to combat this, but there’s already been a lot of damage, and some species are already extinct. It’s a sensitive issue, because the local population believes in their right to live off the land and sea as they have for many years, but as a visitor, it seems so wrong to destroy one of the few untouched places on Earth.

  

The other island we visited, Isabela, is much less developed. It’s a small, laid-back town with dirt roads and friendly residents. Our 20-something hotel manager became our local city guide and walked us around town and hung out with us the first evening. Our taxi driver became our tour operator, hooking us up with a bay tour on his own boat and a volcano tour with a local guide. At first we felt totally out of our element – we aren’t used to a place where tourists are a small minority. But after a day I really enjoyed being off the beaten path, especially in such a beautiful and unusual place.

Anyway, it was very interesting to see this side of the Galapagos. At the end of our 6 nights, we both agreed that it was a little long. Although it was interesting and we enjoyed a few fun activities (more on that in the next post), I think we could have skipped the island stay all together – especially if we traded it for a longer cruise. The magic of the Galapagos is on the uninhabited islands where you feel like you’re witnessing something special, not in these port towns that exploit the land and tourists pocketbooks. I’m very interested to see what happens in the Galapagos in the future. It seems inevitable that the introduced species will continue to fight off the native ones, and the population will continue to grow, along with tourism. Maybe Ben and I will return in 30 years and compare. I hope that nothing has changed.

Here’s some of the animals we’ve seen on the Galapagos:

Blue-footed Boobies
The symbol of the Galapagos, these birds are found everywhere. Unfortunately we didn’t witness their funny mating dance, but I’m sure we can find it on youtube.

Red-footed Boobies
We saw tons of these guys on Genovesa. They really do look at us with an expression that seems to say “and who the heck are you?” Their babies are adorable white furballs.

Nazca Boobies
Grey feet? How boring

Seals
The laziest-looking animal on earth, all they seem to do is lie around all day. It’s fun to spot them though, as they tend to park themselves in all kinds of precarious locations.

Sea Turtles

There are plenty of sea turtles in the islands, and we even saw a couple while snorkeling. We’re pretty sure the tracks on the left are from sea turtles crawling onshore to nest.

Giant Tortoises
Some of the largest tortoises in the world inhabit the Galapagos Islands. We spotted 3 in the wild, but these photos are from the Charles Darwin Research Center where they’re breeding them.

Penguins
Although the Galapagos Islands lie on the equator, you can find tiny penguins here due to the cold water coming from the south.

Iguanas
There are iguanas galore in the Galapagos. They vary by size and color, but they all have a kind of bad-ass look. Even though they’re relatively small, they seem to say “back-off, you don’t want to mess with me!”

Crabs
The bright red crabs here are both beautiful and creepy. They crawl and jump around on the black lava rocks with ease, which makes them look like giant spiders with claws, yikes!

Frigate Birds
These birds are thieves; they don’t hunt their food, they steal it from boobies or other birds.

Other Birds
There are tons of birds in the Galapagos, especially on a remote island we visited called Genovesa.

The Galapagos Islands are a totally unique place on Earth, so we decided to check them out while in the neighborhood (they’re off the coast of Ecuador). To see the different islands and animals, you have to take one of many expensive cruises. We found a great last-minute deal on a short 4-day cruise, and then decided to extend the trip by staying 6 more nights on the islands themselves.

We were lucky to get a First-Class boat for our cruise, called “Tip Top III”.  Compared to economy boats, this seems to translate to nicer cabins, better food, and a better guide and crew.  The boat holds 16 passengers, whom we got to know pretty well within the 4 days. We even exchanged emails on the last day. Overall we were really impressed with the entire operation and would definitely recommend this boat.

Every day we went on excursions like hiking and snorkeling, and every night we motored to a new island. For anyone who’s been to the Galapagos or is thinking of going, these are the locations we visited:

Day 1: Black Turtle Cove (Santa Cruz)
Day 2: Rabida & Bartolome
Day 3: Genovesa
Day 4: Santa Cruz Highlands & Charles Darwin Center

My favorite part of the cruise was visiting Genovesa. Due to it’s location far away from other islands and on the edge of the Galapagos plateau, Genovesa is home to thousands of birds. I’ve never been anywhere with so many birds all around and not the least bit affected by my presence. It was amazing to be standing in the middle of such a unique place.

Next post I’ll show you some of the really cool animals we saw.

Not the Las Cajas Visitor Center

We went inside and learned that the bus driver had dropped us off deep in the park, probably as a little joke at our expense because the actual visitor center is hard to miss.  But the helpful people at this strange local restaurant suggested a scenic hike that would take us to the visitor center where we could catch a bus home.  So we set off.

It was rainy and windy but not especially cold, so we weren’t really worried.  We set off on a ~5 hour hike toward Tres Cruces across beautiful alpine scenery.

Around this time we started joking that it felt like the beginning of an episode of “I Shouldn’t Be Alive”, but we weren’t worried.

Beautiful Scenery

Alonna

Ben

The hike was long and challenging and the wind and rain were gradually increased continuously.  Eventually we were soaked in spite of our rain jackets and the increasing altitude began to have a noticeable effect and we started to get really cold.  As we neared Tres Cruces after 5 hours of uphill hiking (never encountering a single other person), we were cold and wet and miserable and doing the high altitude stumble, barely able to put one foot in front of another.  (Tres Cruces pass is at 13,671 ft).  We talked about how nice it would be to sit in the visitor center and warm up with some hot chocolate.

Cold and miserable - you can't see the wind or the rain in the photo, but believe me it's there.

Tres Cruces

When we reached Tres Cruces, however, there was no visitor center; we had somehow misunderstood the map and directions.  Worse still, we had passed to the other side of a mountain and were blasted by wind and rain that we had apparently been mostly protected from for most of the hike.  Freezing cold and wet, it was not a pleasant moment looking at a sign that said nothing but “Tres Cruces” wondering if we would ever be warm again.  We headed along the road toward Cuenca and soon found a sign informing us that the visitor center was another 3.3 km on.  So we hiked down the road for 2 miles, assaulted by wind and rain.

Colder and more miserable

Eventually we got to the visitor center and things actually got worse from there.  Normally we’re pretty rugged travelers and wouldn’t even mention an unheated visitor center or having to wait outside in the wind and rain for an hour for a bus (the Visitor Center is 100 meters back from the road so you can’t wait there), but that was the icing on a very miserable cake.

But we survived, and I don’t think “I Shouldn’t Be Alive” will be optioning our story any time soon.  I’m not sure if the moral of the story is “be prepared” or “don’t trust Ecuadorian bus drivers”.  Probably both.

Lake Quilotoa

Our first stop was Lake Quilotoa, which is a large caved-in volcano with a sulfur lake in the crater. Supposedly in sunlight the lake is a bright blue/green and very beautiful. Unfortunately, we arrived when the area was thick with fog, and although we could see the lake and we enjoyed hiking around a bit, overall it was a bit disappointing. We did catch a cool rainbow though. Also, the ride out there was really interesting. We drove on a windy road through barren high-altitude land (this is in the Andes), with indigenous huts and villages.

Baños

The four of us spent four nights in Baños, a cute touristy town in a beautiful valley in the mountains (if it sounds familiar, I went on a school trip to Baños two weeks ago). I really love this town – it’s touristy but most tourists are Ecuadorian; it’s cheap ($7.50 for a private room in the best hostel I’ve ever stayed in!), there’s an active volcano, and lots of fun activities. This trip the weather was much better. In fact, driving into town at night we were able to see the volcano, Tungurahua, spitting lava into the air (sorry, didn’t get any photos).

One day Stephanie and I took a taxi up to a ridge above Baños with great views of the volcano. You could hear the rumbling of the explosions, a couple times there were some really loud ones. We hiked across the ridge and back down into town, enjoying views of the city and the volcano.

The photos below are from “Casa del Arbol” a great place to view the volcano. Unfortunately it was completely foggy when we were there, but we could hear very loud eruptions constantly. Carlos Sanchez lives and works up here monitoring the volcano. He excitedly told us all about the volcano, past eruptions, and his work.

Later we hiked across the hillside above Baños and saw great views of the volcano eurpting.

Cuenca

We only had one day in Cuenca so we spent it doing touristy sightseeing activities. First, we took one of those double-decker sightseeing bus tours around the city for 2 hours. I’d never done one before, and I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed it. However – it was a bit dangerous since we passed under a whole bunch of low-hanging wires, which we literally had to duck down to avoid. Many people where standing up off and on to take photos, and there were some close calls. I’m not sure how they do this every day and avoid decapitating tourists.

Cuenca is a really beautiful city settled in the Andes mountains just like Quito, but with a small-town feel with warm and inviting streets. I’m glad that Ben and I will be going back for three days before heading to the Galapagos Islands.

The last two weeks have flow by; it’s hard to believe I’ve completed my last Spanish class and homestay in Quito. My Spanish has definitely improved and I’m having fun trying to speak it. I hope to continue to practice for the next month while I’m in South America.

I can’t say enough great things about my host family here in Quito. They welcomed me into their home and made me feel like part of their family. They have a lovely house just a block away from the school and very close to La Mariscal, a popular area for tourists with restaurants, bars, cafes, and shops (in fact, it’s sometimes referred to as “gringoland” since there are so many white foreigners).

In the house, I have my own room and bathroom upstairs with everything I need. When I arrived there was a huge bouquet of beautiful pink roses in my room as a belated birthday gift!

My host mother Dolores is so sweet and always asking about my day and how things are going. She works in the travel industry and is gone most of the day, but always has a warm smile when I see her. My host father Pancho works from home and takes care of baby Ignacio. He has been so helpful and friendly during my stay. Any time I need anything – to find an ATM, a sim card for my phone, etc – he goes out of his way to help. Little Ignacio is 15 months old and has adorable curly hair and big brown eyes. By now he’s warmed up to me and is always running around saying “na-na”, just like my nieces did when they were little! I’ve also met Dolores’s parents and brother, who are all very nice as well.

Pancho and Ignacio

Ignacio

Out for dinner with my extended host family

Front of the house

My room

 

The good:

• Location - Baños is a beautiful city nestled in a valley with lush green mountains, a river, hot springs, and lots of waterfalls.
• Friends - The group was really fun and we all got along well despite the cramped conditions in the van (see below). I roomed with my new friends Stephanie from the US, and Christina from Germany.
• Activities – There are tons of fun activities to do in Baños. On Saturday we road bikes and explored a few of the waterfalls. Two of them we hiked right up next to. Sunday I indulged a little and got a great 1-hour massage, while others went ziplining and horse-back riding.

The bad:

• Weather – it was cloudy and rainy the entire weekend. There are huge mountains and an active volcano, but we couldn’t see anything through the fog.
• The Van – We took a private van that had “seats” for 15 people… and crammed 15 people into it. Three seats were facing backwards, the three in the back bounced up and down with every bump on the road, and 2 of the seats were folded-down and didn’t have head rests. To put it nicely, it was uncomfortable.
• Lack of Organization – Well, this really only applies to me and Stephanie (possibly now known as the picky Americans). On Sunday we wanted to go to the Spa, nothing more. But somehow we spent ~4 hours driving around the city in that terrible van, despite our repeated attempts (in Spanish) to ask to be dropped off at the Spa. Finally they took us to their highly recommended spa, which turned out to be expensive and mostly focused on cleansing treatments. So we made them bring us to a different one, which turned into another hour of driving around in the van. Lesson learned… get out of the van and take a taxi!

Anyway, here’s some photos of the trip. I’m heading back to Baños next week with some friends, and I’m hoping for sunlight and better photos.

The van

Me & Stephanie

Manto de la Novia (Bride's Veil)

Manto de la Novia

We got drenched

This one you could walk behind

Christina and Paion del Diablo

The town of Banos

Our hostel

This is how the mountains looked all weekend

 

In case you’re wondering, yes, Baños means “baths” or “bathrooms” in Spanish. No, it’s not named after a toilet, but instead because there are tons of hot springs in the area due to a very large and very active volcano. Apparently you can see the red lava at night, and it’s particularly active right now. Let’s hope my next visit has clear skies, and an active-but-not-too-active volcano!

My teacher is Gerardo and he’s great. I have 1-on-1 lessons for 4 hours per day. It doesn’t sound like much, but trying to speak and listen in another language is a bit exhausting. I’m doing okay at Spanish so far but I hope I can get a lot better. I just need to keep reviewing the grammar and vocab that I’ve forgotten, and then practice practice practice!

Today a group from the school took a field trip to a small town called Saquisili that has a huge market every Thursday. They sell live farm animals (pigs, cows, sheep, etc), lots of produce, grains, etc and also clothing and tourist items.

The little pigs are about $40 each, or four for $120!

And this is what happens when those cute baby pigs grow up (they cook and eat the entire pig – sorry vegetarians):

And to prove how much I’m learning here, look, I made this drink myself!

La casa de mi familia

Although I don’t have many photos yet, I wanted to say hello and share a little about my time so far in Ecuador. In summary: so far so good!

I arrived Saturday night and met my fantastic host family here in Quito. Francisco, Dolores, and 1-year-old Ignacio live in a beautiful and cozy home in the city, very close to my Spanish school as well as many shops and cafés. More on them later, but let’s just say that they’ve made my first days alone in a faraway city very comfortable.