Our first week in Ecuador - Quito and Otavalo

Hola! Unfortunately the computer is giving us strife so we can´t load photos directly to the blog, but if you follow the link to the right (to ¨our on-line photos¨), and look under ¨Quito and Otavalo¨ you can see the matching photos for the following entry (sorry!) :

So we made it safe and sound to Ecuador and have been enjoying ourselves mostly in Quito, the capital. We spent our first week doing Spanish school for 4 hours each morning. After six intense days, however, we were exhausted and so headed north (crossed over the equator) to spend a relaxing weekend in Otavalo, a small town between two extinct volcanos and renowned for its Saturday markets. We stayed in a very chilled out hostal with a garden and hammocks. The garden was also complete with a very sociable resident parrot named ¨Monkey¨and the occasional hummingbird.

We started our Saturday very early in the morning at the large animal market. It was a bit of a zoo (no pun intended) with locals milling around inspecting animals, or leading animals, or loading animals in vehicles, or unloading animals. We saw lots of pigs from squealing piglets to massive hairy hogs, many cows and bulls, plus the occasional sheep, goat, horse, or llama. Everything was being led around by a lead rope and pushed, prodded, and felt up (we weren't quite sure what grabbing a bull's balls would tell you about it, but it seemed to be an important part of checking out the animal). It was definitely an interesting experience.

We then headed to the small animal market on the other side of town. Here we were surrounded by chicks, chickens, roosters, ducks, puppies, kittens, bunnies, and lots of guinea pig (coy, as they are called here, are considered a delicacy...yes, that's right, to eat). The rest of our morning was spent in the crafts market, which is a maze of stalls selling all sorts of woven goods, wooden goods, stone art, jewelry, paintings, etc. The market fills a square of the town and spills out down the side streets. The crafts themselves are beautiful, but the Otavalo natives are more interesting to see, particularly in their dress and their skills at carrying things (like babies or huge bundles of goods) on their backs using just a sheet.

One other note of interest from the day was that Ben's lunch soup (consome) contained a chicken's foot, heart, and liver....and he ate all of them. Ick. We leave Quito tomorrow to head to the Galapagos Islands for an eight-day cruise....this will be the most traditional "honeymoon" part of our trip (particularly in the cost!!). We'll try to post again when we return!

The last of the US - California to Pennsylvania

The end of our US trip has come and gone. Sorry for the delay in posting, but practical matters have been ruling our life lately (such as how exactly are we going to ship all of our stuff to Australia?). But we've snuck a moment here to post the last bits of the trip, from Southern California back to Pennsylvania, with a few stops on the way. We'd like to send out a big thanks to Christina and Jake for hosting us in Austin. Great place, great city, and great people - we really had fun!!

Joshua Tree -

If you want to see amazing desert plants, this is the place to go. Someone should have told Karen that, as she slept through the majority of the park (at least Ben took plenty of photos for her to "remember" it by!) Surrounded by these "trees" (they are actually yuccas and composed of only fibers and not annular tree rings) you feel as though you've wandered into a Dr Seuss book. Fantastic variety in shape and size - and like all desert-scapes, while they may initially seem empty and inhospitable, they have so much to offer.

Saguaro -

If you close your eyes and think of a cactus, we bet that these are the cacti that you would think of. These massive plants are full of character, some imposing with strong arms reaching for the sky, others comical or sad, with frost-damaged limbs drooping or damaged. They are very old and can weigh up to 10 tons! All the more amazing is that they only grow an inch in the first 8 years of life and don't start to branch until the latter end of their first century! The natives believe these to represent people or 'ancestral souls' - catching them at sunrise or sunset it's not hard to see why.

Carlsbad Caverns -

These caverns are huge, underground spaces filled with amazing structures. We took the natural entrance in (thanks for the tip Heather) and hiked the 1 mile down to the main cavern to fully appreciate the depth of these rooms. We also tagged on a worthwhile tour of the King's Chambers to see some really amazingly decorated rooms (that's decorated with stalactites and the like, not paint or furniture).

The highlight of the park though had to be the sunset bat flight when ~ 500,000 Mexican freetail bats made their way out of the natural entrance to hunt food during the night. We were awed by their massive numbers and mesmerizing spiraling flight out of the cave that was still going strong after an hour of watching - They created black 'ribbons' stretching out of sight into the evening sky and... well there's nothing quite like the smell of so much fresh guano!

Tennessee (Graceland and Nashville) -

From Austin, TX (where we hung out with Christina and Jake) we made a beeline up to Pennsylvania. We pulled out a map to see what we'd pass through on the way, and we realized that we could go to both Graceland and Nashville! Graceland was much more interesting than we thought it would be (we are only casual Elvis fans) - and it was really cool to learn more about this cultural icon. Besides, touring his house and jets were a trip....back to our childhood - classic 1970's decor, e.g. the jungle room complete with green shag carpeting on the floor and the ceiling!

We didn't take any pictures of Nashville, but we had a great time out on the town, hopping from bar to bar to hear live country music, and finally settling down to an excellent BBQ dinner, listing to more live country music, with rodeo on the TV! Yee-haw!!

To recap:

So, our US trip is over and it was truly amazing (see map below). This country contains many wonders - from desert to temperate rainforest, from farmlands to sandstone vistas - we feel very lucky to have seen as many of them as we did. For those of you on the East Coast, our advice is to take a trip out west if you can. Don't pass up the opportunity to see landscapes and animals that you will never otherwise see. To answer the most popular question about our trip (What was your favorite park?) we say this - they were all amazing. If we could only go back to one, it would be Yellowstone - we just didn't have the time to experience all of this varied and unique park. However, Olympic National Park also ranks high on our list - we didn't really have many expectations coming in, but we left in amazement of the trees, the wilderness vistas, and the amazing coastal life. And the best overall region to visit has to be Southern Utah / Northern Arizona - the high concentration of amazing parks in this area would make a memorable vacation for anyone!

The future:

Our departure for South America is rapidly approaching, and we are trying vainly to finalize all of the neccessary admistrative items before we go (who knew it would be so difficult to be bums for a year?). For those of you who are interested, here is our itinerary:

• Nov 10th - Fly to Ecuador. We have 4 months to spend touring South America.
• March 10th - Fly from Brasil to Italy. We're hoping to visit lots of friends and family across Europe in ~1.5 months.
• April 20th - Fly from Germany to South Africa. Our final ~2.5 months will be spent touring the countries of Southern Africa.
• July 11th - Our deadline to be back in Australia per Karen's visa (yay - Karen is a provisional permanent resident of Australia!!)
  

Hope to either see you en route or that you can tune in along the way - we'll try to keep it updated regularly and look forward to hearing any comments!

Take care - Karen and Ben