Mountains and more mountains!

¡Hola! Como estas! Nosotros estamos bien!

Just updating you all here from baños! Thought we'd better give you the rundown on our last week!
Last Sunday we left Quito for a farmhouse just out of Machachi! This was part of our travelling Spanish program, so our teacher Sofia came with us for the week!

On the Sunday we were booked in to climb volcano Cotopaxi (the largest active volcano in the world at 5890m!!!) it's a 2 day walk to the top so we only climbed to the refuge at 4810m! As we arrived by bus, we got a glimpse of the snow capped volcano, however within minutes it was swallowed by clouds! It was so cold, it was hard to believe we were only a few hundred kilometers from the equator! As you can see we had to hike through some snow! This was my first time seeing and touching snow so I was pretty stoked! Once we reached the refuge and had some warm soup and hot chocolate, we returned to the bus to pick up our mountain bikes in order to ride the rest of the way down! Our bikes were rubbish! The brakes were back to front, and the rear brake was basically non-existent! And then it decided to snow in our faces, so for a while we were without vision and brakes, two important attributes to riding a bike! We got down in the end through a really shite road with lots of corrugation so my headache from the altitude loved it!!! Overall, it was really cool and I think the I am getting a little more acclimatised to the altitude!

On Tuesday we went on a horse ride around the farmland, which gave us some stunning views of the highlands around Machachi. Jacqui couldn't contain her excitement about going on a horse, and I tolerated the activity! Well, let's just say I liked it until the horse started trotting! I think the main reason why the worlds population exploded after the industrial revolution was because the men didn't ride horses anymore! My balls copped a flogging!!! Each trot was equivalent to a kick square in the nuts! Towards the end of the ride, I started to work out a way for it to be bearable, but my technique was far from graceful and required to much energy, so I resorted to pleading that we go slow!

On the Thursday we went on a tour of some of the local Indian markets out of town. The first market was a local animal market! It was where the farmers buy and sell their pigs, sheep, cows and llamas. In scenes reminiscent of four corners, we decided to move through these fairly quickly! We then went to another Indian market that sold clothes and crafts. It was ok, but they all sold pretty much the same llama jumper. After the the markets we visited a volcano crater called quilatoa. It was similar to the blue lake in mt gambier, except it was MASSIVE!!! We walked down to the beach to check it out, and then had lunch back up the top.

We were meant to return to Quito that night, however in a couple days we were due to head south to Baños. So we decided that we would stay in Machachi for the night and head to Baños in the morning. Two Israeli guys were thinking of heading there that night, so we made the hasty decision to head to Baños that night with them, as the hostel in Machachi was full apart from a room that costs $45 a night. So we got the tour bus to drop us off at the bus stop so we can get to Baños. I use the term "bus stop" rather loosely, instead they dropped us off at a toll booth on the main highway and told us that a bus to Baños would drive through soon. We would have stopped about 10 buses before we found one that went to Baños! All in all we were on the side of the highway for almost an hour waiting for our bus!



We arrived in Baños at about 11 at night, and the two Israelis took us to the hostel they stayed at a few weeks ago when they were here. As we checked in we noticed something peculiar about this hostel. Whilest it was clean and cheap ($7.50 a night incl breakfast) we realised it was a hostel run by Israelis for Israelis! Every sign was in Hebrew, and most travelers staying there were speaking Hebrew! It's hard enough trying to learn Spanish, or finding English speakers, let alone try to communicate in Hebrew! They didn't have any vacancies the next night, so we happily moved on and are now staying in a cool little hostel for $6 a night with our own bathroom!



I'll eventually update you on what we're doing in Baños and how our Spanish is going, but right now I want to sleep so hope you're enjoying our posts and keep commenting so we know what's happening over there, like who should be coaching the crows now that craigy's quit!

¡Hasta luego!

One week down!!!

One week complete of Spanish school!!! We are slowly getting bits of the language, and are able to kind of communicate with the hostel staff and restaurant staff!

We know how to ask for certain things like scrambled eggs, and how I like my coffee! We can ask how much something is, and if they have change for a $20 note. However, we can ask questions, but when they speak back to us we have no idea what they say! Well, we are starting to pick up certain words and work out the gist of the sentence. I'm struggling to hear the numbers, when they tell me the price! It's really hard for my brain to adjust to a new number system, after 26 years of English numbers! I normally turn to jac to know how much they say something is!So we haven't been able to do heaps this week because of Spanish lessons from 9 till 1pm, and it's been raining heaps over the last couple of days. However, on Wednesday we took a bus down to "centro historico", which is the old town centre from the colonial days. It was amazing! We thought we'd transported ourselves to Europe! The streets were beautiful, all the buildings had awesome architecture and we got to see some cool churches!
One of these churches, "La Compañia", was breathtaking! Try and google it if you have a chance! The entire inside if the church is covered in gold! The detail in the gold carvings are brilliant, and all the handcrafted wooden confession booths in amazing detail. We weren't allowed to take photos inside the church, so you'll have to rely on google to see it!
Another church that we saw was huge! It is apparently an exact replica of Notre Dame! It was ridiculously big, but seemed boring after seeing the gold church.The people here in Quito are so kind it's not funny! We have had so many instances of people going above and beyond to make us feel welcomed!

In centro historico an old man helped us find the churches. In front of one the churches he started trying to tell us something in Spanish and some broken English. We had no idea what he was on about, but he kept trying to tell us! He then started to point at his member, and then at this statue of a baby! What is this guy on about?! . But then on closer inspection, this statue of a baby had a massive wang stuck onto it!!! There were 4 of these statues, but just one of then had a shlong attached! We were on the floor laughing!!!
And then another guy at our hostel drove us to the market, while telling us all about ecuadorian politics! Ps the markets are so good! We bought 3 big bananas for 25cents! So we'll be in touch, and will write again soon!

Hasta pronto!!

¡Yo estoy aprendiendo español!

Hola! ¿Qué tal? ¿Cómo estás? Yo estoy muy bien!

We have just had our first Spanish lesson here in Quito, and our brains are very sore! Talk about información overload! (I just used a Spanish word, guess where).

We had an intense 4 hr lesson with our teacher Sofia, and get the feeling that learning Spanish isn't going to be as easy as we hoped! Our first lesson was basically a lecture where she went through words upon words in Spanish, and we where busy writing everything down!

So for those who haven't rushed to google translate, the title of this post means, "I am learning Spanish!", followed by, "hello, what's up? How are you? I am very well"

So as you can see, we've got a few basics, but need to memorize them better! At the moment, we are just saying sí (yes) and gracias (thank you) to everyone!

I'll update you on our Spanish conquests in a week, so hopefully we know a bit by then!

On the language front, only one worker at our hostel speaks English, and he was nice enough to walk us down to the markets on Sunday. At these markets Jacqui's dreads got the attention of a local street vendor, and then he went on to offer her weed! Haha

We also found a big public park, where there were heaps of markets, and also a street performer! The crowd loved the street performer, but we had no idea what he was on about! We also tried our luck on some street food. We saw some meat, sausage and banana on skewers for a buck, so we gave it a go. They were pretty nice, but I would have liked to know what I had eaten!

Food is ridiculously cheap here! Most meals cost $2, and often include an entree and small dessert and drink!

In other news, we had to change rooms because our toilet got blocked after una grande Jacqui poo!



¡Hasta luego!

Location:Quito

And we're off!......in style

The time has come and we have left for South America! After brilliant night with our families we had about 3 hours sleep before we had to leave for the airport!

We said our final goodbyes at the airport, which was awesome yet sad as we won't be able to see any of those guys for ages! Special mention goes to Alanah for the most tears and mike for having the driest!

On the flight to Sydney, I was starting to get a little more excited, yet worried that we would miss our connection at Sydney. That was until the pilot announced halfway through the flight that we were due to land 15 minutes early! PRAISE THE LORD!!!!!!! Once we got off the plane, everything started to click! The fine people at Qantas had a bus waiting to take us to international, and we were in the terminal at the time the plane was originally meant to land! We then had enough time to go to the LAN checkin to ask for a cheeky upgrade....

So we asked the lady if there were any way we could upgrade to business class. She said no, as she had already upgraded her quota that morning! Bummer! So we handed her our original tickets to checkin, and she looks at her screen and says, "oh, you were 2 of the people I upgraded this morning, you're already in business class!"

"WHAT??!!!"

We went from being walking zombies from our first flight, to excited school children!
We then had to go through customs, oh wait, Jacqui decided now would be a good time to cancel her phone with 3!

But that didn't matter in the end, as business class customers ( ie. Us!) can use an express lane through customs, so it took us 2 minutes to get cleared and onto the plane with about 10 minutes to spare!

So business class...... Possibly the best thing ever!!! And we a milking every minute of it! As I write this, I have my legs up in my recliner than turned into a bed, while receiving from a three course dinner!!! As we arrived we were given drinks, and the flight attendants address me as Mr. Archer! Gold!

We had the crazy though in Auckland that we might be able to use the Qantas lounge, as we now have higher social standing! Turns out we were correct, and we grabbed some more free food and drink and made good use of there wifi.

Well that's probably all there is to report at this stage, ill have posted this when we land in Santiago, and I may update once we're in Quito!

Adios amigos!