Today was the day we had been looking forward to–our Amazon jungle adventure. The Amazon is a mythical place and everyone has different expectations. For me, I would have liked to have had a chance to venture deep into the heart of the jungle where no human has ever ventured and the plants are so thick no light can permeate; to discover a cancer curing plant that has never been documented by modern science; to narrowly escape being crushed and swallowed by an 18 meter long Anaconda; to witness monkeys swinging from branch to branch; and to spot insects larger than my hand. But that is a lot to accomplish during a 3 hour hike.

We started out in the canoes again, and headed to the hotel’s private reserve in the Amazon. We had to wear the rubber boots again because of the mud. (This means that we did not need to bring those darn hiking boots that take up half the suitcase and weigh a hundred pounds! Two trips in a row where we took boots and didn’t need to use them. Ugh!). We decided that since we were wearing ill-fitting Wellies, the hike couldn’t be too tough, so we also left behind our new trekking poles we bought on Prime Day. As soon as we got there, though, they said everyone grab a stick. There weren’t enough to go around, so the guides quickly disappeared into the forest with their machetes to cut some more.

Then they said people who want the easy hike, go to the right. People who want the hard hike, go to the left. And thetwinsontour chose…..to go to the left! That’s correct! We were ready to brave everything the Amazon had to throw at us.

We sloshed through mud puddles, climbed a few steps, and stopped to talk about a lot of plants. The most interesting to us was the iron tree. When you tap on it with a machete it sounds like metal clinking against metal, but that’s not the interesting part. The cool part is the root system. It has a lot of straight roots above the ground, which look for water. These roots effectively act like feet as they look for water, they make the tree walk. I don’t remember how many meters they can move per year though. I stared at it for quite a while willing it with my mind to start walking, but watching a tree walk is even slower than watching paint dry.

Then we got to do a tiny zipline chair to cross over a deep valley! It was slow going because only one person could go at a time, and then they had to manually pull the chair back for the next person. It was just a short ride, but it was still pretty awesome. We also walked one by one over a suspension bridge.

The whole while I am thinking this is a really easy hike, and wondering how easy the easy hike is. Then our guide said you two go that way. It took me a minute, but then I realized that he was putting the slowest people at the front of the line. Yep, I am the slowest and proud of it! But to be fair, part of the reason I am slow is because I stop to take pictures. How can you go to the Amazon and not take some selfies?

Anyways, we immediately started climbing steps and more steps. We made it to the hard part of the hike! It still wasn’t super hard though–there were random railings to keep us from falling into an amazonian abyss. Mostly it was just a ton of muddy steps and an uphill ascent. We finally made it to a panoramic vista with incredible views–perfect for a few selfies! Then it was time to go back down. Again he put us at the front of the group, but it was them other people that had trouble keeping up with me, the expert Amazon trekker. Nothing slows me down, not even all of the butterflies we saw– because they were way too fast and fluttering all over the place. I never even had a chance to pull my phone out of my pocket before they were gone.

Did I mention, that this hike was also slightly awkward due to the fact that I was wearing my swimsuit underneath my clothes? Well, it was. Why did I wear my swimsuit under my clothes for a hot, sticky Amazon hike you ask? Well, because we were riding on a balsa wood raft after the hike to cool down, and you get a little wet on the raft as it rises and falls with the swells of the river.

Our guide said put all of the young people on the first raft, so thetwinsontour quickly jumped on. We weren’t the youngest on the trip, but we are definitely young at heart.We got on the raft and as more people got on the cold water seeped through the logs, and sloshed us. We pushed out into the river and the guide promptly pushed one of the guys overboard, and then he jumped in as well. After a minute’s hesitation, I decided to jump in too. It was even colder once I jumped in, but I got accustomed to it real quickly, in like 10 seconds.

I got back on the raft– really graceful like when I get out of my ladder-less pool and roll around on my deck like a beached whale, but then I realized that most of the people were staying in the river, so I jumped back in too. After all, how many chances do you have to swim in the Amazon River? It was actually a tributary to the Amazon, but it was a river in the Amazon jungle. And you didn’t need to swim. You just float in your life vest and let the current take you downstream because the current is quite fast. But these are just minor details. It was amazing to float in the muddy brown waters and just watch the amazing scenery as you pass by.

Somehow our boat got way ahead of the other 2 boats in the group, so I am glad that I got on that first boat of “young people” because the other people didn’t know that they could swim instead of sit on the raft. I think 97% of them would have stayed on the rafts anyways, but I hate to think that I would have missed this incredible experience had I gotten on a different raft. As one of the people in our group said, he can check this off the bucket list. He didn’t know it was on the bucket list until he checked it off. I feel the exact same way!

I’m not sure how long we floated, but it felt like forever and yet just a few minutes at the same time. As we got to a shallow rocky spot, we had to get back onto the raft. Then the canoes showed up and we had to transfer from one moving vessel to another to head back to the hotel for lunch. Just picture it– thetwinsontour standing on a raft in the Amazon, surfing down the river, trying to leap from a raft to a canoe, without falling. I am sure this is exactly what it is like to leap from the roof to roof of moving train cars like in the movies. Anyway you look at it, I was pretty bad ass.

I decided to take a quick shower before lunch, and it was a good thing that I did. My body was covered in sand from the brown river water.

After lunch we went on a chocolate plantation tour and to the animal rescue. I didn’t care much about the chocolate tour, but I was really keen to see some animals. It’s basically a zoo full of rescued macaws that squawk like crazy whenever someone walks by. I’m sure these beautiful yet extremely evil birds drive the poor monkeys crazy. Some were rescued from smuggling in the black market pet trade and others were rescued from abusive captivity. They try to release the animals back to the wild where they belong, but if they have injuries or were in captivity too long they would never survive in the wild. They also have a caiman that someone was keeping in a home aquarium, and a jaguar and leopard that I think were rescued from drug dealers. Both of the big cats have large 1 acre enclosures and were of course hiding from us.

On the way back to the hotel we found some monkeys in trees along the river bank, so our guide fed them some fruit by putting it on the end of a long bamboo stick. I am pretty sure that I am morally opposed to this, as it’s probably not a good idea to feed the monkeys because they may start to attack passing boats wanting yummy Ecuadorian bananas (and– thetwinsontour have tasted Ecuadorian bananas and clamor for them as well), but it was amazing to see them. I was in a different boat than the guide, so I didn’t get as close to them. Luckily I had my good zoom camera with me. My sister was in the third boat, so she was even further away than I was. After a few minutes one of the monkeys pulled the bamboo stick out of our guide’s hands and it fell into the water. That was our sign that it was time to leave.

And that pretty much sums up our Amazing Amazon Adventure (don’t you just love alliteration?).

Goodbye for now.

Love,

thetwinsontour

Today was literally a travel day as we headed to the Amazon. Apparently it rained a lot yesterday. Like enough rain to wash out parts of the road and take out a bridge. A bridge that we need to take to get to our Amazon destination. So we had to take an alternate route–a two hour longer alternate route. Since we had 2 hours extra to drive, we had to leave 2 hours early–which is well before the 6:30am sunrise. Everyone knows that thetwinsontour need lots of sleep, but that sure didn’t happen because we had to have our luggage ready–it’s so painful to say–at 4:45 am and ready to leave at 5am. We knew that we would both sleep on the bus.The problem is that thetwinsontour both awoke with splitting headaches–the kind of headache you only get when staying at 11,700 feet above sea level. The magical coca tea was a necessity for survival. The other benefit of coca tea is that it gives you energy–too much energy to be able to immediately pass out upon boarding the bus. So the first hour or so was passed with my eyes closed trying to sleep and not groan in pain– the remaining 5 hours I mostly slept. Which is what you are supposed to do on a bus, especially when the road twists and turns through the Andes mountains and your driver keeps passing on double yellow lines. Sometimes you just have to close your eyes until you arrive at the next gas station potty break.Our guide did also stop to buy us some local bananas which as you know, thetwinsontour loved. We had the little tiny delicious ones with a really thin peeling. This goes without saying, these are far superior in every aspect to the Cavendish bananas we can buy at home. Ecuador has about 400 types of banana plants and 47 that produce edible bananas. (Our guide even mentioned a PINK banana, but I don’t think we will be able to find that. So sad.) Despite the wide variety of Ecuadorian bananas, they only export one kind. Apparently they only export the ones at the top of the tree and then they feed the ones at the bottom to the COWS AND PIGS! That’s how superior all the other bananas are here. Ecuadorians don’t like the ones they export and only feed them to livestock! You can buy a pile of about 200 leftover Cavendish bananas for a dollar. Yes, that’s two bananas for a penny. That’s how awful the bananas we eat at home are. The Cavendish banana is the Red Delicious Apple of the banana world–plentiful, cheap, and absolutely flavorless. But we all eat them anyways because that’s all there is at the grocery store.I could rant about bananas forever, but I think that is enough for one day. But I will tell you about guinea pigs instead. So, our guide says all Ecuadorian families have a guinea pig– or maybe just the ones in the countryside. He never mentioned raising them to eat– probably because we are Americans and can’t handle the thought of eating a cute, furry little guinea pig. Evidently, guinea pig poop is a superior fertilizer to that of chickens, cows and pigs. Guinea pig fertilizer lasts for a whole year! So, if you are a farmer, your guinea pigs can poop in your garden, so that you can grow organic bananas– that you don’t export and keep for yourself instead of sharing with thetwinsontour. See how I refused to give up the topic of bananas?!Six hours later we finally arrived at our destination, the Amazon! On a side note, it’s at 800 feet above sea level. It took our ears a while to adjust because it felt like there was water in our ears.Our hotel is basically on an island, so the only way to get there is by canoe. But don’t worry, we didn’t have to paddle because if that was the case we would still be out there, adrift on the Amazon river, waiting on a caiman to take pity on us and eat us for lunch. This is a large 10 passenger canoe with a motor with no rowing required.After a quick lunch in a torrential downpour with blowing winds that forced us to physically move the table farther inside the wall less restaurant, we were off to our next activity wearing our trusty Dollar store ponchos–a visit to a local home that was just a short canoe ride away. I’m not really big on the built in “cultural” activities, so I don’t have much to say. Basically our guide talked about life in the Amazon. We did learn one interesting fact: each house has a lime tree branch hanging up in the top of the rafters. The thorns on it keep the bats from hanging out in your house. This could be a very useful tip, so don’t forget about the power of a lime branch. I forgot to take a picture, but there was a lime branch in our hotel balcony too.The local lady showed us how easy it is to make chicha which is their homemade alcohol from cooked, mashed yucca and some shredded sweet potato. There’s no need for the women to chew and then spit the yucca anymore because of the shredded sweet potato helps with the fermentation rather than spit. Then you let it ferment for 5-7 days and then you have a strong alcoholic beverage. We didn’t get to try it because of our delicate first world stomachs.That’s all I got for now. Tomorrow we get to hike in the Amazon.Love,thetwinsontourPs. you may get this quite delayed (after we get home) because the email distribution list didn’t pull through to our new phones. Do you know how you can get more timely updates from thetwinsontour? That’s right! Like our page on Facebook! Just type thetwinsontour in the search bar to find us!We also have a new Instagram account, but someone stole our name! Look for the_twins_on_tour on Instagram.

T

his morning started out quite cold–we could see our breath as we walked to breakfast! We are in the Andes mountains at a pretty high elevation, so it gets cold (ergo the warm crackling fire and chicken water bottles in our room last night). Luckily, we researched the weather (about 2 weeks ago) and realized that Ecuador may be on the equator, but it’s not necessarily hot due to the mountains and the elevation. So we brought our winter coats with us–the same ones we took to Antarctica! Thetwinsontour try to always be prepared. Some people in our group did not do their research and had to buy sweaters to stay warm, unlike thetwinsontour who bought ponchos and sweaters because we wanted to!

Our first stop of the morning was a waterfall. Don’t you just love a good waterfall? We sure do!

Do you know what else we llove? Llamas! And llama selfies. Just like magic, as we were leaving the waterfall a guy appeared out of no where with 2 selfie loving llamas named Marta and Luna. He charged a dollar to take pictures with them, and that was a dollar well spent! It goes without saying that we were first in line. We just llove llama selfies!

After a quick bathroom stop we were off to our next stop–the Indian market. I am going to go ahead and answer the question I know most of you are wondering. Like many bathrooms around the world, it’s not always free to pee in Ecuador. However that’s included in the price of our tour, so the guide paid for all of us to tinkle. The cost to go pee pee at a waterfall in Ecuador? It costs 15 cents or 20 cents if you want toilet paper. Toilet paper you are not supposed to flush down the toilet. And he was even trying to negotiate the price to pee. I am not sure if he was successful or not.

Now on to the Indian Market. It was a plaza full of stalls selling Ecuadorian handicrafts and souvenirs. And alpaca sweaters. You can’t forget about the alpaca sweaters. (The alpaca sweater is machine made with real alpaca wool.) Do you know how powerless I am to the words, hey lady buy an alpaca sweater? Obviously you do because you know thetwinsontour llove llamas and alpacas too! And we love to buy things. Obviously, there is now an alpaca sweater crammed into each of our suitcases. How much is a genuine machine made alpaca sweater going for these days? My sister was skillfully able to negotiate the price down to $20 each. It wasn’t much of a struggle, so we probably could have gotten an even better price, but we would have paid double!

During our time at the market, we were also supposed to eat lunch. Our guide had recommended a coffee shop that sells bagels too. After our time consuming lunch yesterday, we decided that that would be the much quicker option and leave us with more time to shop. We should know better by now. Quite a few people from our group had the same idea as well. More than thirty minutes after placing our order (which took a while to do as well) our bagels with honey nut cream cheese were finally ready. I have no idea why it takes 30 minutes to toast a bagel. I checked on them a couple of times. As I peeked into the kitchen, I could see that all of the staff was frantically working. I just have no idea what they were doing.

We had a few things left to buy, so I left my sister guarding the alpaca sweaters in the coffee shop and ran back out to make a few purchases. I was sure that by the time I returned with my Ecuadorian treasures, our order would be ready. But I was wrong. It seems we are destined to spend most of our time in Ecuador waiting for lunch. We couldn’t even get the wifi to work at the coffee shop, so we were forced to talk to each other. Yuck!

We had to scarf down our food as soon as it came. The bagel was tasty, but it left me hankering for a little something more. Like a chocolate covered banana popsicle stuffed with chocolate. Yep, thetwinsontour are powerless in the face of local ice cream confections, but you knew that already.

Our guide was rushing us because we were on a mission to get to Papallacta. Go ahead and say that 3 times fast. Papallacta is up in the mountains– like way up. Like almost 12,000 feet up. Like we aren’t in Kansas up. Like they recommend coca tea to help with the altitude. And, thetwinsontour don’t do tea, but coca tea is acceptable, almost palatable able if you add a pack of sugar to it, and it sure helps with altitude sickness lickety split. It’s simply magical.

Our hotel is located at some hot springs and they had a hot springs pool directly outside our room. Before enjoying the hot springs, we decided to go on a hike at 12,000 feet. Despite the altitude it didn’t seem like I was moving slower at all. Our guide said when he does the hike alone, he does it in 30 minutes. When he does the hike with guests it takes 45 minutes to an hour. So, one hour and thirty minutes later we were back at the hotel! Again I don’t think it was the altitude slowing any of us down. It was the selfie taking for sure. Around every bend there was an amazing view of the raging river. And we all just kept taking pictures. Lots of them.

And then there were the llamas! Yes more llamas! Llamas twice in one day? This may be the best trip ever in the history of trips. These llamas were not as fashionable as Marta and Luna, but they were still LLAMAS IN THE ANDES MOUNTAINS! (behind a barbed wire fence) But they were there for us to love and admire and gaze longingly at whilst we took a million photographs.

How can anyone do a hike in an hour when there are llama picture taking opportunities?

Then we were back to the hotel and the thermal pools. I didn’t even have to dig out my sandals because we were so close to the pools. Seriously, 10 steps, and I was wading into a thermal pool. The soft, wispy waves of steam were beckoning me to come relax in their depths. The water was heavenly. I think it was like 100 degrees. I am not sure what the air temperature was, but I was wearing a down jacket on my hike, so it wasn’t super warm. But, that thermal water–oh my. I thought I could just soak there forever–basking in the glorious waters. I think time must have slowed down, because I was sure I was in there for hours–I was starting to get warm, my blood was starting to boil, my liver was getting toasty, so I decided I had spent enough time in the water. I looked quickly at the time and discovered that it had only been 28 minutes.

And that is it for our second installment of We Adore Ecuador.

ciao,

thetwinsontour