First Taste of S.A.

I arrived safely in Ecuador’s capital city of Quito 5 days ago, and have already am having a great time.

To my relief, James and Jordan were waiting for me at the hostel in Quito on day number 1. Quito, the second highest altitude capital city in the world (around 9,000 feet), is quite a spectacle.  Around 3 million people live there, and most of them are quite poor. The streets are narrow, the concrete buildings are worn out and in need of repair, the air smells dirty, and there is graffiti everywhere. The city sits between high Andean mountain peaks which are dry like a desert. The vegetation reminds of Kamloops, BC, except with bigger cactuses. 

After hearing the stories of our fellow travelers about muggings, we didn’t feel very safe wandering the streets of Quito. Once we had visited the site of the official latitude 0 degrees, we bussed it to the nearby town of Otovalo to take in a traditional marketplace and try our hand at haggling. The market was loaded with el paca wool textiles and the locals were dressed in traditional South American clothing. 

In the evening we went on a mission looking for a cockfight that was supposed to be happening in town. Sure enough, our Lonely Planet map of the town led us to a non-descript building housing a cockfighting ring packed with excited Ecuadorians. Since James has been to cockfights before in Asia, he was able to explain what was going on to Jordan and I. The people who want to fight their roosters take them into the middle of the ring, and test each other’s roosters to see how angry they are. Then, the angriest roosters are chosen to fight, and the others leave the ring. They attach little blades to the bottom of the fight and then release them. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as gruesome as I expected, and the atmosphere in the ring was pretty intense with all the fans placing bets and cheering on their favourite cock. The last fight we saw was the best of the night, with the roosters fighting for about 10 minutes, before one of the roosters laid down in submission and the other (dubbed Old Yeller by Jordan and I) cock-a-doodle-dood in victory.

 The next day was spent bussing to another town called Mindo, much deeper into the Andes Mountains. We spent yesterday in Mindo, and are spending another day here today. Mindo is surrounded by what the locals call “cloud forest”, but what I would call rainforest, and is famous for bird watching. There are tons of hummingbirds, and they dart around our hostel. Yesterday we did some zip-lining in the jungle as well as a “Tarzan Swing”, which was insanely scary. They strapped us into a rock-climbing harness attached to a big rope 25 metres above the ground, and then released us. James went first, and we were shocked to see him free fall out of sight below us, before swinging out away from the platform. I don’t think my heart rate has ever been so high in my life as when they let go of me and I dropped straight down towards the ground.

In the afternoon we hiked through a path in the jungle down to a waterfall and did some cliff jumping. It was really beautiful, and they had even built a big waterslide that went from the jungle into the river. I wish I had Colin’s go-pro camera for the day, because we could have got some incredible footage.

 

Today, we’re hoping to see some more birds and maybe some more of the local wildlife. I really like Mindo, and I think it will be pretty hard to top some of the things we’ve done already. Next up, we’re going to be taking a long bus ride down to a town called Banos to hopefully do some mountain biking and take in some natural hotsprings.

If you look closely you can see James jumping from the cliff!

Vamos!

Hello family and friends,
Welcome to my personal blog! I am going to be using this webpage as my journal while I travel around South America this year.

I'll be posting some pictures along with my writing so that you can see what I'm up to and follow along as I go. If you want to receive automatic email updates every time I post a new article on my blog, please sign up by typing your email address into the bar on the left.

As I type this, I'm sitting in the airport lounge at 5:20am on August 25, 2011 in the Halifax Stanfield Airport. I'm so excited I've hardly been able to sleep the last few nights. For those of you that don't know, I'm heading out on a tour of South America with two good friends of mine. We heard that Stephen Harper was doing something similar, so we decided to pick up the slack and visit all the countries that he missed on his trip. I'm going to miss Halifax, Dalhousie University, and all my friends here -- but I had a good send-off last night where Grant,Blair, Chace, and Dan and I reminisced on all the good times we've had in University. Hasta lluego Halifax!

So far its been a great start to the journey: the airport shuttle driver bought us all free drinks, I got through security without any hitches (there could have easily been a few based on what I've packed in carry-on), and the planes are on-time. My two good amigos and travel companions James and Jordan are already in South America, in Ecuador's capital city of Quito, so I will be linking up with them once my hodge-podge of connecting flights are finally done by 7pm tonight.

The general plan is to make our way around the Southern parts of S.A., taking time to do whatever we want, when we want. The only certainty at this point is that I'll be flying home to Calgary on December 15 from Rio de Janeiro. The goal is to find as much adventure and have as much fun as possible within that time, and of course to stay safe (that's for mom).

Since I booked my flights about a month and a half ago, I`ve been studying Spanish with an audio program. I`ve never been motivated to learn a language before, but I tell you nothing is more motivating than an impending trip to many countries that speak little to no English. One of my other goals for this trip is to become fluent in Spanish. By combining my spanish audio program with complete language immersion in the countries I`m visiting, I think this goal's not unrealistic.

I plan to post updates every 3-4 days, but it could be more or less often than that based on internet connectivity, or many other factors. Jordan also has an awesome travel blog going, which you can find through this link http://www.offexploring.com/johombre/home
The only picture I've taken so far is my gear right before I packed it. Hopefully there will be some more exciting pictures coming soon!