Ecuador

Chris and I finally took advantage of our flight benefits in October and went to Ecuador.  It was pretty quick but totally awesome and definitely worth it.  Chris had been there before when he was in high school (he and his brother went to visit their dad who was down there with the Air Force for a bit).  Chris has always wanted to go back, so we did.  Thankfully Chris is fluent in Spanish, because I hardly remember anything from my high school Spanish classes... and without him I would have been one lost little girl.  We got to Quito late on a Tuesday night and woke up to this beautiful city.

We ate breakfast on the roof of our hostel overlooking the city and then left to find the middle of the world.  A couple of buses later we found ourselves at the equator.  The sun really does seem so much brighter there...

After we got our fill of the northern and southern hemisphere's border, we hopped on a couple more buses which took us to Otavalo.

Our hostel was awesome AND it welcomed us with a robot.  My dream come true. 

 

The owner of the hostel recommended a restaurant for us... he said it was "a little pricey" but really nice.. we asked how much it was and he told us $5 or $6... We told him we could handle it just this once... and they came out with this beauty of a meal.  

The next day we got on a bus and then hopped in the back of some man's truck (accompanied by a solo traveler from France that smelled lovely) and headed up to Laguna de Cuicocha.  It was probably my favorite part of the trip.  It was BEAUTIFUL.  A huge crater lake surrounded by huge volcanic mountains...

Then we headed down to a couple of little towns and walked around the market... and found this really cool church.

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Later that day we went on a little walk along some old train tracks to a waterfall just outside of Otavalo.  It was really pretty and even bigger than I had imagined.

At the top of the big waterfall was a little cave we crawled through to find another smaller waterfall. 

Later on that day we walked a little bit further to the country to check out a couple more towns... it started raining on us for a good portion of it but we were determined to get there... We ran across an LDS church on the way too.  It was brand new and probably the nicest building we'd seen in that area... out in the middle of what seemed to be nowhere.. but it's pretty cool to know that there's something familiar no matter where you go. 

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Our last day we packed up and headed back to Quito to hang out for a bit before our flight home.  It was a holiday in Ecuador so there was a lot going on.  We stopped by

By the time is was time to head to the airport we were pretty tuckered out.  I think Chris might have been born in the wrong country... because he probably wouldn't have minded too much if we stayed permanently. 

The trip was awesome though and I'm so glad we got to go.  So grateful we were able to go and enjoy a different part of the world for a few days.