Back in Quito - 24 hours to the Galapagos!!

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  Quito, Ecuador
Tuesday, July 4, 2006

Buenos Dias,

We are back in the city after an amazing weekend at the Haciena Cusin just outside of Otovalo. The Hacienda is a collection of restored Hacienda (farm) buildings that were built in 1609! The Hacienda itself is at the base of two mountain peaks, one 14,000 ft , the other 16,000!! The hotel was very cool, outside of the electric lighting, we could have easily been back in the 17th century. The property had all kinds of gardens, a Monestario (with a secret entrance to the tower over looking town - quite happy to say we found it!), libraries, game rooms and all kinds of neat little out buildings. The people there were very kind and actually upgraded Court and I to this private little cottage in the back of the gardens. It was incredibly nice, very ancient but very cozy. Every night they would come in and light a fire in our room. This was a great hotel and I highly recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in Quito!

Getting up there was a little crazy though. We thought we were used to the crazy driving in Latin America but our taxi driver introduced us to a whole new level of insane. The road itself is a fairly new but very winding and sometimes very narrow right that passes straight through the heart of the avenue of the volcanoes. Despite the hairpin turns, lack of anything remotely resembling guard rails and the many 1000 ft cliffs, our driver never managed to drop below 70 mph!!

Once there, we just chilled and enjoyed that silence that only seems possible outside the city. After a spectacular meal and a great night´s sleep, we headed off to the famous Otovalo market. It was pretty cool, lots of many colored textiles and paintings. My apologies to all of you who I would´t let Court buy things for. Despite the many beautiful and very inexpensive gifts, the prospect of lugging them around South America for the next month was not very appealing! Hopefully I can hold Court off from buying anything until the day we depart for home!

After the market, we returned back and took the Hacienda´s horses for a ride through the Andes. The scenery was AMAZING and we really enjoyed ourselves. My horse was rather stubborn and obstreperous but heck with Court for a wife, I should be used to handling that by now :)Court´s horse wanted to be the leader all the time much like myself. We had a great time!!

The following day we visited the nearby Condor preserve and saw a great collection of all the Andean raptors - including the endangered Andean Condor (quite huge, it has an 11 ft wing span!). Although I think the preserve started as a place for injured birds to heal, they are now all in big enclosures which for birds, some the size of my sofa, is rather depressing.

After that we returned back to Quito, this time with the much saner hacienda driver. Being back in the city is a bit of a let down. Dirty, loud - just like any city in the world. But, we are getting everything ready (snorkeling equipment, sunscreen, tons of batteries for the camera) for our Galapagos trip and we are very excited to take off tomorrow. Oh well, time to go wake Court up! Who would have thought that I was the morning person but the car alarms, planes flying directly overhead, loud obnoxious people wandering our hallways at 2am getting a good night sleep in Quito has not been easy!

We will be back to the the mainland in a week heading to Peru.
Ciao till then

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