Montañita Redux

Visiting Ecuador again has been a blast. Just seeing the city and visiting my host family brings back so many good memories of my first time here. I´ve been staying with my host uncle´s family in their small Villa in a gated community on the outskirts of town and hanging out quite a bit with my host uncle´s son. This past weekend we decided to make a trip to Montañita, that fabled town of endless beach, hippys and dancing late into the night. Upon arrival I was surprised to see how much the little town had changed in two years. It had grown to about double the size it had been and many of the hostals had been newly renovated and expanded. Where just two years ago the town had the reputation for being a getaway for hippys (read drug addicts according to my host family), today one finds police patrolling every street on foot and motorcycle. For everything that has changed, more has stayed the same. The hippys were still there, (although their drug trade was by necessity not so explicit), the ceviche still upset my stomach and the bump and grind of the discos still lasted well into the wee hours of the morning.

Machu Picchu

Honestly, I have been trying to figure out how to describe my experience walking the Inca Trail and visiting Machu Picchu and I can´t come up with a good way to do it. So instead of giving a play by play I am just going to post pictures of the hike, some of the people I met, our guide and finally the Old Mountain itself for you all to see. There really are no words to describe the experience and honestly the pictures won´t do it justice either. It really is an incredible site worthy of the title Wonder of the World. So I think you should vote for it at www.new7wonders.com


With pictures!

Sacsayhuaman (sound it out)

The trip has started off great. Lots of family time... We´ve spent the last few days in Cusco the tourist mecca of Peru. Our first day took us to the ruins of Sacsayhuaman (don´t say it wrong, the locals get offended) just outside of town where I stood a foot from a real live condor hugged a 128 ton boulder transplanted by the incas on rolled logs and met Jose. Maybe it was his terrible english accent or just his love of the subject matter but we ended up spending the next two days with him. He took us around to similar ruins in the Sacred Valley in the shapes of llamas and pumas and through"cheap" mercados. On our second trek to the sacred valley we saw a Catholic church built on the stone foundation of an Incan temple, a site of concentric circles that the Incans used for agricultural experimentation and the salt mines that provided salt to the entire Incan empire and is still used to this day for the inhabitants of much of Peru. Needless to say, with the altitude combined with the long days, I´m pooped. Looking forward to our four day trek along the incan trail to Machu Pichu!

El gringo returneth

As anyone who has checked this in the past year and a half (sorry Lauri!) has probably guessed, I am no longer in Ecuador. But good news! I'm headed back to the land of choclo, locro and the matagringo for more adventures this summer! So check back!