Photos are in the photo gallery.

The most recent videos are:

1. A short clip from the tango show we went to at El Querandi in Buenos Aires.
2. A boot-stomping gaucho dance from our visit to La Cinacina estancia in San Antonio de Areco.
3. A short clip showing the awesome power of the Garganta del Diablo in Iguazu Falls.
4. A fountain in Cordoba performing a “water dance” to Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.

Hope you enjoy them!

Here’s a fun little before & after for you:

Before (March 2007)

After (April 2008)

Those flowers have definitely seen better days…

Our time spent in Quito waiting for Cindy’s pannier to be constructed was pretty uneventful. save for a few tourist activities we got in. We spent a day on the bus going north of Quito to Otavalo, a cute little town in the mountains that has a large craft market. The bus ride was pretty horrendous—there was construction on the main highway from Quito to Otavalo, so we had to take a much more sinuous route on a skinny dirt road that turned a 2 hr ride into a 4 hr ride. Both of us were pretty carsick when we arrived in Otavalo. We went mid-week, so we didn’t get to see the market at its most active, but there were still plenty of people hawking their wares. Since we were both feeling a little cold in Quito, we bought a couple of wool sweaters there…we were assured by the person that sold them to us that we were getting a good deal because it was dead and we were the only tourists there. Well, at least the second part (the town being dead) was true. After cruising the market for a bit, we ate lunch and ran into somebody that was on our Galapagos cruise with us. We delayed our bus ride back to Quito as long as we could with a little Internet time, but eventually we had to face up to the fact that we were going to have to take that same crappy bus ride again. Reminiscent of our market experience in Chichicastenango, Guatemala, we ended up on a bus for 8 hrs to spend 3 hrs in Otavalo, of which probably less than 1 hr was actually spent at the market. Cindy ended up getting sick later that night…we weren’t sure if it was the bus or food or both, although I ate pretty much the same thing she had for lunch and I wasn’t nearly as bad off as she was. Anyway, we’re all even now at one puke for each of us on this trip—not bad for almost 9 months on the road!

We spent another day visiting the Mitad del Mundo “city” (also north of Quito), which celebrates the passing of the Equator. This excursion was much closer than Otavalo, but still somewhat of a logistical nightmare, as we had to catch 3 different buses to get there. We didn’t know it at the time, but we happened to go on a very special day—the equinox (I guess you can’t really call it spring or fall equinox when you’re on the equator). The Mitad del Mundo complex consists of a giant monument on the equator that houses a museum, and then a bunch of craft shops and restaurants. They had some groups performing traditional music and dance on the main plaza, and I think we managed to get some pretty good pics we’ll post at some point. Here’s a video of one of the acts. However, the thing is that the Mitad del Mundo isn’t really on the equator—although it was measured as accurately as possible at the time, it’s about 200 m south of the actual equator. So we went to the Intiñan museum up the road where the equator really is (according to GPS; see photo above). There were some interesting aspects to the museum, such as talking about various indigenous groups that used to live in the area, and how they lived and worshipped the sun. But then they throw in a bunch of BS about how the laws of physics are actually different when you are standing on the equator versus when you are standing a few meters away from the equator. Cindy and I just kind of rolled our eyes as our guide ran us through these tests. The museum was good fun nonetheless.

After Cindy’s bags were finished, and my achilles tendon got back to normal, we finally got back on the bikes. It’s been pretty slow going so far…pretty hard to believe how little we’ve ridden in the 3 months since our robbery. The mountains here are not super steep, but the climbs are long. We met some Colombian bikers in Latacunga who started in Popayan and are heading to Punta Arenas, Chile. After chatting with them a bit, we learned that they rode from Quito to Latacunga (about 100 km) in one day, where it took us three days. We said goodbye to each other, and they said “maybe we’ll see you on the road”, but we knew that unless something unexpected happens to them, they are moving too fast for us to run into them again. But we do expect to bus through quite a bit of Peru, so maybe we’ll catch them that way

We have taken one detour from the Panamericana so far to visit the town of Baños. The ride to Baños is pretty spectacular, a 40 km ride east from the Panamericana, dropping about 1000 m of altitude through a beautiful valley to a very cute (but touristy) town. We decided to spend a couple of days relaxing there before continuing south. Our first day there, we didn’t do too much (we had ridden almost 90 km the day before) except visit some of the thermal baths that give Baños its name. It was very relaxing to go between the pools of different temperatures, and then cool off by spending a few seconds underneath some runoff from a waterfall that had been diverted to the pool. Wow, that water was cold!!! One popular activity for tourists visiting Baños is to rent bicycles and continue on the road east (the “avenue of the waterfalls”) to the town of Puyo. It’s a 60 km ride, but mostly downhill, and you can put your bike on the bus to return to Baños. We only made it 20 km to the waterfall called Pailon del Diablo (amazing, but we couldn’t get any good pics because the spray was also amazing), although we did ride back uphill to Baños from there, which was not too horrible considering we weren’t carrying our bags.

After Baños, we bussed back up to the Panamericana and started south again. Cindy has been having some problems with her knees that have been due to her seat being too low. Apparently, when we reassembled the bikes after our flight to Colombia, we didn’t get the fit right, and it’s taken us until now to ride enough to see the problem. Note to self: mark the seat position next time you take the seat posts out! We are hoping that now that the seat problem is better that the riding will come easier for us.

Everybody we talked to and everything we read before we decided to go to the Galapagos Islands told us the same thing: you will spend an obscene amount of money and it will be worth every penny. It was truly an amazing experience for the both of us. Originally, our plan had been to meet up with my parents for the cruise, but unfortunately those plans didn’t work out, so we decided to soldier on without them We arrived in Quito in time for us to pick up our travel packet on Friday from the travel agency we booked with. Then we flew out to the islands on Sunday the 9th of Sept for an 8-day cruise. One small issue I have is that the last “day” of the cruise wasn’t really a full day—we made a small landing on North Seymour Island for an hour and were at the airport by 8:30 AM or so.

Anyway, when we arrived at the dock in Baltra, there were several sea lions lounging there waiting for us, totally oblivious to the passengers coming and going around them. And the week would continue for the most part to be like this—the wildlife going about their business with nothing but the slightest concern for the people snapping pictures nearby. We took a dinghy out to our boat, the Aida Maria, and were impressed by the accomodations. We were in a two-person cabin with bunk beds; it was somewhat cramped, but we were on the main deck of the boat, so we had nice big windows. The food was really outstanding for most of the week. We had to make sure we went out on all the snorkeling trips possible to try to keep pace with the amount of yummy food we were putting away.

The snorkeling was both the highlight and lowlight of the trip for me. I have never been snorkeling before, and was a little trepidacious about the whole thing (I have a pretty big swimming/water phobia), but the opportunity to see tropical fish and other critters was able to outweigh my fear in the end. After having seen sea turtles waddling on the beach in Costa Rica, I was really excited to see them in their element. And of course, the chance to swim with sea lions couldn’t be passed on either. We bought a couple of waterproof cameras in Quito hoping to snap a few good pics while we were swimming. Our days usually consisted of a landing in the morning with a walk, return to the boat for lunch and siesta and/or cruise to another location, and then another landing in the afternoon that consisted of a walk and a snorkel for those who were interested. The first snorkel opportunity was as a bit of a dud as overcast skies and murky waters limited visibility. And at this time of year, the water is quite cold…if I were to do it again, I’d definitely hire a wetsuit before going on the cruise. That actually was the lowlight of the snorkeling, as after we got out of the water, I would spend the next hour or so shivering and trying to recover the feeling in my hands. The highlights, of course, were swimming with turtles and sea lions, which we eventually saw on our subsequent snorkel trips. The photos with the disposable cameras don’t really do the whole thing justice, as the colors didn’t really come through well on the film. We were lucky that we ran into a couple of teenage sea lions that came by to check us out—at another landing someone from another boat tried to get close to a mama sea lion and her pup frolicking in the surf and got a nip on the hand for it…a gentle reminder that no matter how close you can get to them, they are still wild animals

I’m not usually a bird person, but the sea birds on the Galapagos were fascinating to watch as well. I now have a favorite bird—the blue-footed booby! Their calls and mating antics on land were entertaining enough, but watching them feed on the coast by diving for fish (often in synchronized groups of 3-4) was a treat as well. And on our last day we got to see the courtship behavior of frigatebirds, where the male puffs up a large red throat sac to impress his partner. Although this time of year isn’t the best weather-wise (the mornings were overcast and often misty), it is breeding season for several Galapagos animals. We saw several very recently born sea lion pups, including one so young that the mom hadn’t completely finished delivering the placenta yet.

In the end, we were sad to go and leave the beauty and communing with nature behind, but on the other hand, we were both getting pretty sick of feeling queasy on the boat (no actual puking ocurred, but the seasick pills didn’t eliminate everything). We got the impression that Ecuador is working very hard to both preserve the natural beauty of the islands while ensuring that visitors can continue to visit and bring their tourism dollars. One unfortunate aspect of the park though seems to be a bit of antagonism between the scientists who come to study there and the locals. Our guide (a 3rd or 4th generation native of the islands) related that apparently it is really difficult for Ecuadorians to do research at the Darwin Research Center on Santa Cruz. This is a sentiment that was echoed by the people living in Parismina, Costa Rica about the people there studying the sea turtles. I’m not sure if this is just a reflection of the relative lack of advanced education in Latin American countries, but one would hope that the foreigner scientists in these places would welcome the opportunity to encourage scientific careers among the people in whose countries they study.

We’ve posted some pictures in the photo gallery and some videos on our YouTube page of the trip for your viewing pleasure. We are hanging out in Quito this week, getting re-acclimated to the altitude and getting a new pannier built for Cindy before we head south to tackle the Ecuadorian Andes.

Spring parade in Patzcuaro

Monarchs in flight

P.S. OK, figured out how to embed the movies, but they don’t work correctly on the PC at the internet cafe I’m at. Can anybody confirm they can watch these?