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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