Mid-trip Crises

Vilcabamba

On one of our horseback riding trips. Hmmmm. How lovely it was.

River running through the cloud forest outside of Vilcabamba.

"Bridge" crossing.

On our porch in Vilcabamba.

Sunset over Mandango. I heard many tales of UFO sightings above Mandango. Laying down in my bed, I could see Mandango and I waited for strange lights or something. This was the strangest lights I ended up seeing.

We left Vilcabamba yesterday, after almost 3 weeks there. It was really hard to leave, especially since we kind of signed a one month lease the day before. However, after some careful thought we decided that we didn´t want to spend our last weeks in one spot, without seeing more of Ecuador. Shay flies out of Lima on Nov. 14 or something like that. We told the Carpios (the landlords of the house we moved into) that we would be staying there 3 weeks, helping Christina at the Community Center. I was really excited about helping her and working with kids, however, I also realized that I wasn´t ready to settle down for that long. Vilcabamba was awesome. Leaving there was almost as hard as leaving home. I felt really safe and comfortable there. That´s part of the reason I started thinking I should leave.

So, yesterday, we got on a bus to Cuenca. We´re here now. It´s kinda a big city. Very different from what I´ve become accustom to, but I like it. Just a lot less impersonal. I loved Vilcabamba because after just 2 weeks, I knew so many people in town. Everywhere I went, I was waving, being honked at and got smiles from most everyone. I hope I can find another place like that.

I´m starting to plan what to do after Shay leaves. She has to get back down to Lima so I think we´re going to go a little further north into Ecuador and then we will part ways somewhere around Quito probably. I think I will go into the Amazon in Ecuador probably or maybe just head north to Columbia. I was "talking"/listening to these two old obnoxious Americans last night, one straight from New York (accent and sleazy haircut and all) and the other, a non-spanish-speaking Minnesotian that wants to move here. The New Yorker was telling me how dangerous Columbia is and how I shouldn´t go there, but everyone else I´ve talked to have said that Columbia was their favorite place in S. America. Everyone says that because of columbia´s bad reputation, the people do everything they can to disprove that. So I think I will check out Columbia. I met a German girl in Vilcabamba that had flown from Bogota (where I could stay with a friend of a friend), to Leticia, which is in the Amazon right on the Brazil, colombia, Peru border. I could then (as the German girl recomended), take a cargo boat down the Amazon from Leticia to Iquitos, Peru. There are lots of jungle trips I could take around these areas to see small villages and wildlife. There are fresh water dolphins in the Amazon River. They are pink. And they don´t look at all like the dolphins we´re used to seeing.

Cuenca, Ecuador.

Cuenca: Storm coming in.

El Rio de Cuenca.

Cuenca has a real European feel to it.