Month: September 2018

After an uneventful night in Quito, we headed to Cotapaxi a beautiful national reserve around Cotopaxi volcano in the Andes, a minivan took us across the country side and up some windy paths onto the foot of the volcano. It’s very pretty and picturesque here, surrounded by lush green volcanoes in the distance and greenery all around us, with horses, cows, lamas and some super cute hostel dogs wandering about.

On the first day we arrived we went on a waterfall hike, it was only two hours and to be honest after our amazing waterfall hike in Mindo the waterfalls here were a bit underwhelming, but it was still a fun walk and we had to do a bit of rock climbing to get across deeper parts of the river which was fun if not a little terrifying.

On Thursday we decided to go horse riding, it was a bit costly at $35US per person but the scenery is amazing here (I feel like I’m in a Windows desktop!) and it was a fun way to explore the national park. We arrived at the horse riding place about 9:30am and we were all put on horses, of course I was given the grumpy old horse of the group, as soon as I got on he cranked his neck round to look at me and I’d never realised until then it was possible for a horse to look disapproving, he immediately began to wander off and ignored all of my attempts to control or lead him with the reins, he would just yank them out of my hands and continue doing whatever he wanted. I soon discovered it was futile to resist and I was actually a passive participant in this journey, we would go whichever way the horse wanted, which normally involved a much harder route, a gentle meandering path down a steep hill? Nope straight down the middle, with me clinging on for dear life, hoping we didn’t hit other horses on the way down, a concern my horse didn’t share. My horse didn’t like the other horses, he insisted on being up the front, despite being the slowest horse, and when another horse tried to overtake? It would barge into them and try and bite them, I felt like I was in the horse version of dodgems! At one point my horse decided, on a thin path on the side of a very steep hill with a river and a drop on one side, that he had had enough of the horse infront and would overtake at speed, with little regard for both of our lives. Although that was one of the few times my horse actually went fast, it would normally just plod along miles behind the other horses and refuse any command to go faster, at one point there was an open grass plain where all the other horses ran full speed across, but despite my best efforts my horse went so slow we almost stoped and the others had to wait 10 minutes for us. Although on the plus side the slow ride did mean I got to appreciate the national park we were riding in, it was absolutely stunning, I felt like I was in a painting surrounded by mountains and cristal clear rivers (that my horse would stop refuse to cross), the ride was 3 hours and we went across valleys, beautiful yellow and green grasslands, rocky cliffs it was amazing, I tried to get photos but I could only manage it on the open plains where the other horses where far enough away that I didn’t have to worry about my horse attacking them or it deciding to head down a steep cliff suddenly. At the end of the ride my horse finally decided to run, when he realised he was close to home (just when I started to take a video the little shit), although ‘run’ is a generous term, it was barely faster than walking, but somehow much more uncomfortable. Instead of normal stirrups it had these cloggs that my feet barely fit in so I had to stand on tiptoes everytime the horse ‘ran’, I couldn’t hold the rhythm in tiptoes and kept bashing into the horse, I now have a very bruised bum! Although Grace faired a bit worse and actually slid of her horse, luckily her horse wasn’t a dick and when it felt her start to slide it slowed down so she was fine. Despite the grumpy horse and tiny stirrups I still had an amazing time horse riding and we thoroughly enjoyed the three hours, Grace slightly more as she got a lot of enjoyment laughing at me trying to control my horse and being dragged about, and we both had a good laugh at eachother when we got of the horses but still walked around bow legged as if the horse were still under us for half an hour.

On Friday we decided to do the walk up thePasochoa volcano, it takes about 7 hours and you get up to a height of aroind 4200m. I was really nervous about it as for some reason I have really bad anxiety about hiking in groups, before we even set off I was shaking, when we measured my stress level on an app I had a resting heart rate of 110bpm, only 85% oxygen blood levels as I was shallow breathing and a extremely high stress level, I don’t know why I get so anxious but it really screwed me! 40 minutes into the walk I was breathing heavily and my lips started turning blue from lack of oxygen which was ridiculous because the start of the walk was the exact same route we had taken on Wednesday to see the waterfalls and then I wasn’t even puffed, we’ve also done much harder hikes on our own and I’ve been fine. I find it really frustrating that I wanted to do the hike and physically I was able to, but mentally I had made my body so anxious that I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t breathe properly but I was anxious that if I slowed down the whole group would notice and be waiting on me which was stupid because I was at the front of the group and there were people much slower than me, but I stressed out about it so much I started to have a panic attack, I felt so stupid shaking and crying out of nowhere, I just wanted to leave but felt too pathetic to explain I got anxious about being in a group. Grace bless her came up with the idea to say I had asthma, which worked great until the guide mentioned she carried and emergency asthma pump, which really threw a spanner in the works! We tried to bluff that I can only have one really rare specific type of asthma pump, which I couldn’t describe and for some reason didn’t carry it with me, for some reason this didn’t give her the impression that we were lying and just wanted to leave and she suggested we could just slow down as we were going faster than groups normally did anyway, and we could stop every 30 minutes instead of every hour, which was super nice of her and didn’t sound such a bad idea but then people started to ask why we had slowed down which started my anxiety off all over again so we decided to just tell the truth like mature adults and then run the hell away from there… We ended up having a really lovely relaxing day reading our books in the beautiful surroundings, but it worries me how I’m going to get over this anxiety as me and Grace both really enjoy hiking on our own and want to do the rainbow mountain hikes in Peru but I’m not sure how I’ll fair as they’re all done in guided groups, I guess time will tell.

We left Cotapaxi at 3pm on Friday for a ‘two hour’ journey to our next destination, Baños. An hour into the journey our driver droped us off on a motorway and told us it was just a bit further on a bus, after several creepy offers from lorry drivers to hitch hike with them (no thanks I like not being murdered), we finally flagged down a bus and hoped it was heading in the right direction. Two hours later we again got dropped on the side of a motorway and luckily some nice locals noticed we were white and guessed we would be heading to Baños and pointed us onto another bus as it slowed up along the motorway. We got our bags onto the bus and then it sped up and we had to run after it and jump on and this time we finally made it to Baños around 8pm. We were ready for an early night but we ended up seeing a kiwi guy we had met a few hostels back and he invited us for dinner with everyone we knew from the previous hostel so we had some lovely pizza and to much alcohol! I’m writing this now as Grace has yet muster the energy to move this afternoon and after she put up with me terribly hung over after her birthday I think it’s only fair I let her spend the day in bed without judgement!

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll get up to something fun.

I’ll keep you updated,

Lots of love,

Alice x

Ps. We here’s were we ate last night, it made us chuckle more than two adults should!

In the past few days we have been in Mindo a small town about 2 hours northwest of Quito. The main attraction here is the cloud forest, as the name probably gives away it’s a tropical forest surrounded by low level clouds. Our hostel here is tucked away in the forest and pretty quiet, there was hardly anyone else in the hostel, which was great as we got a dorm to ourselves and also our poor livers got a break for once. Weirdly, although it’s on the edge of a forest outside of a rural little town, the hostel had the best shower we’ve had in a while, it has both hot water and nice pressure! We are normally blasted by cold water or have warm water that dribbles out of what can at best be described as a modified hose pipe (and that’s still a luxury to be honest). The other attraction of the hostel, second only to the shower, is the beautiful surroundings, were right next to a river and the edge of the forest and just sitting eating breakfast we’re surrounded by hummingbirds, butterflies, capybaras and other nature things I don’t know the names for!

It was quite rainy on the afternoon we arrived so we watched a bit of Netflix and had an early night. On Monday we got up early ready to head into the cloud forest, we had read about a trek around waterfalls in the forest that was meant to be beautiful, it was supposed to take about 6 hours in total so we stocked up on snacks and headed the cable car you have to take to get into the trek starting point.

The cable car was a tiny cart that fit 4 people in, connected to a peak in the forest by a thin cable dangling above a vast forest. I was quite terrified to get in, as anyone who knows me will know I have a fear of heights, well specifically being high on things that feel unstable, which I would say is quite a fair and rational fear! But as the cable car cost us $10US(!! A fortune in Ecuador, the 2h30 bus to Mindo only cost $3US) I told myself at least some of that would be put into maintaining a good cable car I got in, we were also joined by a super cute dog, who obviously regularly made the journey as she knew when we were arriving and got up.

The dog (the guides had named her Poco – which means small) decided to come on our trek with us, the trek consisted of 7 waterfalls of various sizes and it was actually really useful having poco with us as she was obviously a seasoned pro and knew the way, even if she did make us feel a bit inadequate as she ran up the steep bits and then came back down trying to round us up when we were to slow for her! The forest was beautiful we saw lots or orchids, cool bugs and hummingbirds and the trek itself was really enjoyable, we were mostly up and down trails in the forest, although a bit of rock climbing and crossing rivers was involved. I got to use my Dora the explorer walking boots, after weeks of ridicule for bringing them, they showed their worth when they stopped me skidding on slippery paths and at one point when a misplaced foot ended up in the river I discovered they were also waterproof! Which was really useful until the next time when my whole foot went in up to my shin, turns out water can still get in the top when you fully submerge them! Luckily they also dry quickly….

Safe to say the hike was knackering, we walked back to our hostel covered in sweat and headed straight for some food, a traditional Ecuadorian plate of rice, beans and meat and then had an embarrassingly early night!

The next morning after a solid 11 hours sleep we booked onto a chocolate tour, it was a bit overpriced at $10US per person but I really enjoyed it, they took us through the history of chocolate and the whole process of manufacturing it, which they did on site. Showing us the Cacao tree and fruit that chocolate comes from, the cocoa seeds that chocolate is made from are surrounded by a fleshy pulp inside the fruit, which was news to me! We even got the try the fruit, you put the seeds in your mouth and suck the pulp off, it has the texture of pumpkin but tastes like passion fruit and lychee.

They told us that traditionally the seeds and pulp are fermented with bananas, this kills the stem inside of the seed which is what gives dark chocolate it’s bitter taste, modern chocolate companies don’t do this as it takes too much time. After fermentation the pulp is separated (the company here uses it to make BBQ sauce!) And the seeds dried out in the sun, once dried the seeds are crushed up, and the inside is melted down to make a concentrated Coco paste, (the company uses the shells to make Coco tea). We got to try the paste, it smells delicious but doesn’t taste so good, at this point the paste is either crushed to sperate out the liquid and dry parts to Coco butter and Coco Powder or sugar is added to kill the acidity and make chocolate. We then got to try lots of samples of dark chocolate, they consider milk chocolate or indeed anything less than 77% concentrated to not be real chocolate but a western butchering of it. I’m not a fan of dark chocolate but the samples we tried were a lot nicer than dark chocolate I’ve had before and you could really taste the difference the fermentation made, it was hardly bitter at all! But most of all I enjoyed the brownies they made with the chocolate, some of the best I’ve ever had!

After filling up on chocolate we made a run for the bus and just caught it, getting back to Quito in the afternoon, we’re staying here the night before heading to Cotopaxi in the morning.

I’ll keep you updated on what we get up to there.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Our flight from Santa Marta took us to Bogota where we stayed one night before our flight to Ecuador the next afternoon. In the afternoon we headed up on the escalators to Mont Montserrat viewing point, we’d already been when we first got to Bogota but the girls hadn’t so we took the trip again, although it was so cloudy at the top we hardly saw anything. That evening was our last night in Colombia and also our last night with Alexa and Laura so we decided to out for an early birthday meal for Grace’s birthday. We also met up with one of our friends from the Spanish school who was in Bogota and after the meal decided to go for drinks and then ended up in a club where they had a ‘Gringo Tuesday’ night which meant the music wasn’t reggaeton for once, which was a nice change. We ended up having a really fun night and even bumped into some people we met in Mexico. The best part was after a great night out we were still tucked up in bed by midnight as the club opened so early.

We flew to Quito the next afternoon, it’s cheaper to cross by land but we had heard the the boarder was chaos due to a huge influx of Venezuelan refugees fleeing from the civil war, so we forked out a bit more and got a flight. Quito is the world’s highest capital at 2850m and we really feel it here, it’s always worse when you fly in as your body has less time to adjust, so we spent the first afternoon just adjusting and meeting people in our hostel. On Thursday it was Grace’s official birthday I had decorated her bed with banners and she started off the day with a beer and a cake for breakfast which she enjoyed and a chorus of happy birthday which she didn’t!

We decided to join some people we met at the hostel and take the cable car ride up to a viewing point on Pichincha Volcano, the cable car ride is about 10 minutes and rises 2237m, it’s actually one of the highest cable cars in the world and at the top reaches just under 4000m high. We saw some stunning views of Quito at the top, we hadn’t realised how big the city was until it was laid out Infront of us, we also really felt the altitude there, I ran up some steps to quickly and got light headed and dizzy and after walking around for an hour all of our hands started to get pins and needles from the lack of oxygen, so after a few more photos we headed down.

On the lift down we noticed a fairground not to far away and decided to check it out, we had a great afternoon going on the dodgems and rides, although it was a little more stomach churning at altitude!

In the evening we decided to go out partying and fortunately the hostel had a night out already planned with a party bus that took a large group of us to a club, we had a lot of fun although we all learnt the hard way that altitude makes you get drunk more easily due to the lack of oxygen (or at least this is the excuse we’re all sticking too!) and as I write this I am suffering from the worst hang over I think I’ve ever had. (Sorry if the blog is sub par because of this, but honestly it’s a miracle I haven’t killed of the brain cells containing these memories!)

But so far we’ve had a great time here and Grace has had a fun birthday (I think) apart from having to look after one slightly too drunk cousin…

Keep you updated on what we get up to next here.

Lots of love,

Alice x

The last four days we’ve spent chilling by the sea, mostly because it’s hard to do anything in this heat and humidity but also because it’s the last few days in Colombia for the two girls we’ve been traveling with for the last month and they wanted to work on their tans before they head back to England.

So most of our days have been spent spent sunbathing and our evenings dancing on the beach and drinking too many cocktails. Now it’s September were starting to notice that it’s the rainy season a bit more, every other evening there is a downpour that lasts for an hour or two, unfortunately the hostel dog doesn’t like the storms so if you forget to put your mosquito net down you sometimes end up with a bed smelling of wet dog. Although on the positive side if you’re not caught in the storms and are tucked up inside dry and warm they’re really fun to watch, the other night we go to see a really cool thunder storm out to sea, it was lighting up the sky as if it was daylight.

We also got to see some really cool bioluminescent phytoplankton in the evenings if you splashed around in the wet sand it would all light up, which was especially entertaining on the drunken walk back to the hostel after parties on the beach.

This afternoon we headed back to Santa Marta as we have to catch our flights to Bogota here soon, we got a bus from the coast to Cartagena and I ended up sat next to a woman and a super cute toddler who was fascinated by me, he kept was staring and giggling every time I smiled at him, he kept stroking my skin and trying to play with my hair, probably not used to gringos yet.

When we were about 20 minutes from our hostel the bus got stuck in traffic and we saw two police motorbikes pass us, we waited for about 10 minutes and then saw people running past the bus shouting. Suddenly the lorry in the lane next to us reversed backwards at about 50mph and slammed into the taxi behind it crushing it into another lorry. People started screaming and we heard gun shots, we all threw ourselves down on the bus floor as the noise got closer. It was horrible, I was trying to help the woman get her toddler underneath us to protect him, he was still smiling at me it was so heart breaking. There was a bang on the side of the bus and the driver of the bus decided to get the hell out of there, he sped us down the side of the road into a steep gutter to try and get around the other cars infront of us, the windshields were smashed and we didn’t look to see the fate of the drivers. The bus started to tip so me and Grace shouted to everyone to crawl on the floor to the other side of the bus to balance it, we managed to keep it stable and get passed the unmoving cars and then sped off. Were still not sure why it happened or what it was about, were just glad to be back to relative safety. It’s really weird knowing all of these things are regular occurrences here but we’ve just been so sheltered in our travelers bubble that you start to feel distant and unattached from it, it was a scary reminder of the reality here, we could have easily have been in the taxi that was crushed or have gotten off the bus and had a very different outcome.

Its a shame to have such a shocking end to a wonderful trip here.

I’ll keep you updated on out next movements,

Lots of love,

Alice x

Sorry it’s been a while since the last post we’ve been in some more rural areas recently and have had either no internet or its been very patchy.

So we arrived in Taganga, a small little fishing village, on Wednesday the 29th. It was pretty and had hardly any non-Colombian tourists, we spent the day walking around the small village as we waited for Grace to do her scuba dive, apparently Taganga can be quite dangerous and that’s why there are so few tourists but we found everyone friendly and helpful and even followed some suggestions to visit a nicer beach a 20min coastal walk away. After Grace finished her dive she spoke to her instructor who suggested she get her advanced diving certificate before she dives in the Galapagos Islands as she would be able to do much more interesting dives there, after asking if it was okay with us she agreed to another 2 days diving and training for her advanced open water license. The rest of us (me and the two girls we’ve been traveling Colombia with, Alexa and Laura) spent the two days on the beach snorkeling and going for walks.

Alexa and Laura had heard about a really cool hostel on the middle of nowhere that was supposed to be amazing to stay at and stunningly beautiful so we decided to head there as they were also having a big party over the weekend. It was a bit of a trek to the hostel (El Rio hostel) but once we got there it was amazing, it was beautiful and set right next to a river, there were lots of communal areas and everyone’s meals were served on communal benches and there was no internet so it was super social and we met lots of people.

On Saturday night they had a party with djs flown in from Europe, although it was mostly techno music which I’m not a fan of it was still lots of fun and ended up going on until 9am the next morning. We spent most of Tuesday hung over with a big group of us sat in the shade, although it was beautiful at El Rio, like most of the North West coast it’s so humid! Which was not appreciated while hungover. On Sunday evening we just had a chilled night sat around chatting.

Monday we went on a lazy river tour, it was so cool we spent an hour or so trekking up the side of the river, it was actually a really nice walk except for the fact we did it barefoot and holding a massive rubber ring. We then sat in the rings and floated back downstream, stopping at various points along the way to jump off rocks and swing in on rope swings. The experience was also made 10x more fun as the hostel dogs decided to follow us on the trekk and then swim down with us. I don’t have any photos of this as I’m not rich enough to own a waterproof phone and someone (looking at you Grace) broke my waterproof camera, but here’s a photo of the dogs on my pillow, which I was not amused by but everyone else was! Update – here are some photos someone with a GoPro took.

On Tuesday we went to Tyrona National park and I got to feel like a wilderness explorer. We decided to stay overnight at the campsite furthest from the entrance, which meant a 3 hour hike across several types of terrain, It felt like a training montage from a film, except we did it in 38°C heat, so we looked a lot sweatier than they tend to in the movies. We went through tropical forests, dirt trails, rocky outcrops, beaches and mangroves. It was hard work but a very enjoyable walk, we saw two types of monkeys, a capybara and several huge trails of red ants. We spent the rest of the day on a beautiful beach, after 8pm the electric goes out and we were so knackered that we went straight to bed. Well to hammock, the only sleeping options there are tents or hammocks on the beach and we couldn’t bare the thought of being in a tent in this humidity. We opted for hammocks, doused ourselves in bug spray and wore long trousers and long sleeve tops and went to bed, safe to say it’s not the most comfortable nights sleep I’ve had and I still managed to wake up with lots of bites but it wasn’t awful, l a dip in the sea the that morning made it worth it.

About 10am we made our way back, on a not so great night sleep it seemed a lot harder, by the time we reached the entrance we were completely soaked through with sweat and looking thoroughly knackered, the poor people entering the park seemed to reconsider their hiking plans a bit when they saw the state of us. But we made it in good time and moved on to a hostel by the sea. I think we’re going to spend our last few free days in Colombia here before we make our way to Bogota to catch our flights out of here.

As always I’ll keep you updated (internet permitting).

Lots of love,

Alice x