In no particular order…

Top 10 Things We Loved
1. Ecuadorian Spanish – The Spanish here is spoken relatively slowly and people seem to enunciate very well. It was great for those of us who were very beginners (Sarah) and for those that were trying to brush up as well (Ted).
2. Overall value – From great accommodations for $20/night to delicious lunches for $5 and cheap, cheap bus rides anywhere you need to go – Ecuador is a steal of a deal.
3. Our time in Pucará - We loved getting off the beaten track, having the opportunity to live with a family and take Spanish lessons. A big thank you to our friend Peter for making it possible.
4. The evening of our homestay in Pijal – The community warmly welcomed us – teaching us how to make their rolls for dinner, sharing sips of sugarcane alcohol with us, and dancing and playing music until it was time to go to bed.
5. Our guide Jose – Jose was very good to us over the 3 days we spent with him – from hiking around lakes that only foreigners like to walk around (his joke), to arranging a mid-hike snack (popcorn and juice) at his mother-in-law´s house in a nearby village, to helping us with our Spanish. Jose was a treat.
6. The Black Sheep Inn – The whole experience. I loved our warm hosts, our amazing accommodations, the friends we met there, the delicious vegetarian meals, the beautiful hike, and the list goes on.
7. Pailón Del Diablo Waterfall (the Devil’s Cauldron) – This amazingly powerful and gigantic waterfall was a 10-12 mile cruisy downhill bike ride from the tourist town of Baños. We didn´t know what to expect but it entirely exceeded our expectations and blew us away.
8. Montañita - Courtney and Jed were warm and welcoming hosts and we got to play on the beach, go surfing and eat a lot of seafood. Si, perfecto!
9. Whale watching – I´m a water girl and I could barely contain myself from jumping in and swimming with the beasts. I couldn´t believe how many we saw and how close we got to them. It was incredible.
10. All the spectacular volcanoes – We knew Quito was at altitude (around 10,000 ft.), but we didn´t know that it was surrounded by so many gigantic volcanoes. We lucked out and finally got to see them on a clear day – some over 20,000 feet!

Top 5 Things That We Didn´t
1. Getting our stuff stolen – Hands down, this was the biggest bummer of our time in Ecuador.
2. Upset stomachs – We each had a bout with it and it isn´t fun. Obviously.
3. A bus ride that Lonely Planet quoted as 8 hours (ugh), taking closer to 10 (double ugh).
4. Wine costs the same as it does at home and beer comes only in the pilsner variety.
5. Adorable puppies. Normally puppies are not a bad thing but when they are roaming the streets and most likely homeless and potentially rabid, you shouldn’t be petting them, and that is just torture.

Top 5 Favorite Foods and Drinks
1. Jugos and batidos! Name an exciting tropical fruit flavor – they´ve got it!
2. Intag coffee – Straight from the source, a community-driven economic success story and delicious.
3. Set-menu almuerzos – Hole-in-the-wall shops serving a multi-course meal for a total of $1.50 to $2.50 per person. It usually came with a delicious soup and the main consisted of some meat (either beef or chicken) with rice and salad. Muy bien!
4. Popcorn – I know this isn´t that exciting but I love popcorn and they serve it everywhere, and it is delicious.
5. Fresh seafood – We ate the majority of our seafood when we were on the coast in Montañita and loved it loved it.

Top 5 Things We Learned/Found Interesting/Found Entertaining
1. There were significantly less tourists around and particularly American tourists than we had thought there would be. No matter what “touristy” things we did (hot springs!, waterfall hikes!, gondola rides to the tops of mountains!), we were always pleased to see significant numbers of Ecuadorians there with their families doing these things along with a couple Germans and maybe some Brits thrown in.
2. Outside of the big cities (and quite a lot IN the big cities as well), nearly every structure – home, shop, school, etc.- is made from cinder blocks. Sometimes they´d get plastered over and/or painted to make them look nicer, but for the most part not-so-much.
3. How prolific and useful knee-high rubber boots can be – from hiking in the rainforest, to working at a minga, to getting the mail.
4. Ecuadors biggest exports are: oil, bananas, flowers and shrimp. In fact, 1/3 of the roses purchased in the U.S. for Valentine´s Day are from Ecuador.
5. It´s perfectly normal for a woman speaking Kichwa (the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the region), clothed in her traditional dress with a baby strapped to her back to be walking down the street on her cell phone.

After 4 weeks of exploring our first South American country, we are officially hooked.  While we’re pleased with the amount of ground we were able to cover, as always when you’re traveling, we discovered more that needs to be done.  We’ll be back for sure – the Galapagos and the Amazon are calling our names.

For a few more highlights of our time here, check out our ‘Best of Ecuador’ photos.

In planning for our trip I booked two nights in a hostel in Quito so we would have somewhere to stay when we first arrived. I remember when booking online how excited I was to learn that our ‘Deluxe Private Double’ would be a whopping $26/night. Not sure exactly what you’re going to get when you book online, we were pleasantly surprised/relieved to learn that our little room had a double bed, a nice-sized private bath (with hot water), and a cable TV. Our hostel also has an amazing terrace overlooking the city and a welcoming lobby full of fellow travelers, day-trip information, computers, etc. Not bad at all.

In addition, the hostel is run by a lovely couple that does everything from changing the sheets and making breakfast to calling the airlines to help travelers find their lost luggage (see previous post!).

In addition to cheap lodging, our meals here (we’ve only had two so far!) have each been at total of $3. Yep, $3 for coffee, a croissant, an egg and a fruit cup for each of us. And $3 for arroz con pollo (rice with chicken, beans and plantain) and sopa de cameron (soup with shrimp and potatoes).

I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities to spend well beyond these reasonable prices, but it’s good to know that we can sleep comfortably and eat deliciously and remain well within our budget.

Upon arriving we were reminded that Quito is at 9222 feet so though it is quite close to the equator, it’s actually cool with temperatures probably in the 60s today. We also learned that South America is much closer than you would think – our flight was only 3 hours and 40 minutes from Miami. We’re on the same time zone as Chicago and Minneapolis which is crazy to think about because we FEEL like it shouldn’t be so.

We spent the day wandering around by foot and exploring different plazas, churches and windy roads of the ‘Old Town’. The ‘New Town’ is on the agenda for tomorrow.

Ted has had to quickly dust off his knowledge of Spanish and is doing quite well. We’re told that the New Town (aka ‘Gringolandia’ – seriously!) has quite a bit more tourists and I imagine English speakers will be more common there, but for now we’re getting by with what we’ve got and are quite enjoying it.

Well, I think that’s about it for now. As we continue to decompress from our last few insanely busy days in Colorado and adjust to the wonderfully overwhelming new sights and smells of Ecuador, I imagine we’ll become more descriptive and exciting bloggers and storytellers!

In the meantime, we’re safe, we’re happy and we’re excited to see what comes next!