Today we did a lot of driving (sleeping), but we did get to visit another fortified church. And once again, we weren’t able to go into the bacon tower. They keep talking about bacon towers and special attic ventilation for bacon. Ancient life was built around bacon, as it should be. Do you know what I have not eaten since we got here? Bacon! Not a single meal they have served us has any bacon in it. It’s crazy!

Anyways, this was the fortified church of Biertan. It’s claim to fame is the divorce tower. Before you could get a divorce, the acrimonious couple had to spend three weeks alone in the small tower with one small bed and no silverware. The idea is that living close together in tight quarters will rekindle your love, but I think watching your husband eat with no silverware would have the opposite effect. The divorce tower does boast a high success rate. There was only one divorce in the history of the church, so the husband must have been a really obnoxious soup slurper.

Their other claim to fame is a super complicated and secure door lock. They invented it to take to the Paris World Expo, you know, the one they built the Eiffel Tower for. And the lock won first place! I don’t know if that means it beat out the Eiffel Tower, or if there were different categories, or if the Eiffel Tower wasn’t part of the competition. It is a pretty magnificent lock though and looks much older than 120 years old.

After all that excitement, it was time for a nice long nap on the bus until lunch. After lunch, we had a walking tour of Sighisoara. Now that I went to the effort to get that spelled correctly, I should write about it a bit. First of all, this is the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler. Secondly, it’s the oldest continuously inhabited citadel in Europe (or maybe the world). Thirdly, it is a UNESCO world heritage sight. I need to find a checklist of UNESCO sights so that I can check them off as I accidentally go to visit them. We have been to quite a few in Romania already. thetwinsontour do adore a good UNESCO world heritage sight.

In Sighisoara, there are these covered wooden stairs that go up the mountainside. They were built for the children to be able to get up to school. From the bottom, it doesn’t look like too many stairs. In actuality, it is 174 stairs. 174 stairs ancient, wooden stairs. 174 stairs? No problem. We got this! Except we had 15 minutes to make it up 174 stairs, take a quick selfie in front of 174 stairs, and then race back down them and get to the bus with a stop at the WC on the way. And, in typical twinsontour style, we made it with 1 minute to spare. Whew.

I covered the rest of Day 5 in the day 6 blog while this one was lost. Aren’t you glad I found it?

Love,

thetwinsontour

Fortified church

Inside the fortified church

The prize winning lock

From the front of the door you would never guess about the lock on the other side

Crispy hot dog & paper straws #saynotothestraw

Fortified church from below

After climbing the 174 covered stairs

The stag house

At the bottom of the student stairs

View from inside the fortified church

The divorce tower

View from the ground of the fortified church

The bacon tower. Guess what? Its closed to visitors!

Well I had written half of a perfectly good and incredibly boring post about Day 5 in Romania. And now its gone. I don’t know where it went! I didn’t accidentally publish it, and I don’t know how I could have deleted it. So maybe I will find it when I get back on the good wifi. Maybe day 5 will be forever shrouded in mystery and undocumented.

One mystery from day 5 that I will shed some light on is the KFC crispy hot dog. We had seen some billboards for this and were quite intrigued, as any normal person would be. So it is a crispy chicken strip in a stale hot dog bun with ketchup, mustard, pickless, and onions. Now that thetwinsontour have sampled this culinary delight (?), you need not fall to temptation to this regrettable menu specialty. On the plus side, thetwinsontour did not have to #saynotothestraw at KFC because they had paper straw!! Woohoo! Good thing we had already planned to go to the grocery store for chocolate pudding and snacks. Due to our disappointing hotdogs, we also picked up a yogurt.

So, onto day 6. This morning started out with a walking tour of Targu Mures to see the sights. Luckily, thetwinsontour explored this part of town the night before on our own and had already gotten millions of pictures of the beautiful Art Deco buildings without people in the way. Thetwinsontour hate it when tourists get in the way of their pictures! Local people are acceptable, sometimes. I’m not really sure why there were so many art deco buildings there (with a few ugly communist buildings mixed in) or why there was a building boom there in the 1890s (one of them said 1890 at the top). Anyways the buildings were quite beautiful and we loved them all.

Then we went to an ancient library that didn’t allow photos. I don’t know what it is with these places that don’t allow photos. It’s not so that they can make money on postcards because they didn’t have a gift shop or any postcards. What a missed opportunity on their part. But I can screenshot the few pictures they have on their website! (see below) The library was founded by a rich nobleman in the late 1700s who went around Europe on a book shopping spree and came home with thousands of books for his library. thetwinsontour wish they could go on a multi year shopping spree! We could excell at that for sure! Especially if our goal was gas station candy bars! We try to be strong, but every time we stop for a potty break we end up buying another candy bar, or seven. We just can’t help it. We are powerless against the wide variety of Milka chocolate bars available.

After that we were back on the the road again. Apparently it was a super windy road with lots of twists and turns through the mountains. I say apparently because after searching the woods for brown bears as we drove past and not spotting any, I quickly fell asleep for the rest of the journey.

After lunch we made a quick photo stop in Bicaz Canyon. We were also supposed to have time to shop in the souvenir stands on the side of the road, but obviously our tour guide underestimates the amount of time my sister needs to take selfies because we were the last ones back on the bus and we didn’t have time to buy a darn thing. The canyon looks more like you are standing in between some mountains than standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon. I wouldn’t have known it was a canyon if not for the name. I would have just thought it was a pretty photo spot.

Now comes the tricky part. Our final destination was Maldova! No, not the country that most of our faithful readers have probably never heard of, but rather the region of Romania called Maldova. I haven’t looked at a map to see how close we were to adding another country to the list, but at least we weren’t close enough to get a welcome to Maldova text on our cell phones because that would be tragic to be so close to another country, yet so far away. Maldova the country was a part of Romania before Communism, but then it was annexed and became part of the USSR and the other half stayed part of Romania. After the fall of communism the USSR part became it’s own country instead of going back to Romania because its mostly Russians that live in the country of Maldova now (even google lists the official language as Russian). See, it’s a little complicated.

On that note of confusion, I shall let you go for now.

Love,

thetwinsontour

PS- I haven’t mentioned this yet, but don’t forget to like thetwinsontour Facebook page. We are also on Instagram! but someone stole our name so we had to use underscores the_twins_on_tour so be sure to follow us there too. As soon as I think of a more creative way to use our name, I will be changing our Insta name. So go like the page now to avoid any confusion.

Art deco buildings

Art Deco selfie

No bears in the woods, but there is snow.

$8.53 of delicious snacks!

Our bus parked in the canyon

Romania out the bus window

Canyon selfie

Bicaz canyon

Haystack (out the bus window)

Is that Bernie Sanders at the library?

Library screenshot of a really old book and a really small book

Art Deco buildings!

Crispy hot dog & paper straws! #saynotothestraw

Canyon selfie

Armed with the warmest scarves ever created, even warmer than a wink from George Clooney across a crowded room (blatant plagiarism and I don’t care. A line that great needs to be repeated) we were ready to face the brisk October morning. Our first stop was the second largest outdoor ethnographic museum in Europe which is just about 10 minutes outside of town. Its usually closed on Mondays and was open just for our tour group, so we couldn’t go inside any of the houses, but we were able to walk around and see all of the buildings from the outside. I am usually not a fan of ethnographic villages because usually they feel contrived and really hokey, but I quite enjoyed this one. Maybe it was the beautiful fall weather, maybe it was just the magic of Romania, maybe it was the 5,000 steps I got. Just think how many steps I would have gotten if we had time to see the whole park. There are over 300 buildings from all over Romania that have been disassembled and reconstructed in a wooded park with a large pond. Still no bear sightings though, but there were a lot of uncooperative ducks.

Our next stop was Alba Iluila, a city here in Transylvania that dates back over 1,000 years. Our guide told us all about the history and importance of this town, but of course I can’t remember it now, and the wikipedia information is not super interesting. It is a fortified city– built in the shape of a star, because they thought that a star shaped citadel would be easier to defend. The star shape only dates back to the 1700s when they were worried about Turkish invasion. They also have some Roman Ruins inside the citadel! Everyone should know by now that thetwinsontour love Roman Ruins! Alas, it was just a small portion of a cobblestone road, but it was a Roman road. This citadel is a complete juxtaposition of time periods. So, we can stand inside a centuries old fortification and look out onto Soviet era communist apartment buildings. So, this is the fascinating part– in 1987, an architect decided that one of these buildings needed to be separated and a road put between the 2 halves. I am not sure how tall these apartments were, maybe 10 stories or so, but they were big. So, as part of the propaganda, they decided the residents didn’t need to empty their apartments first. They just separated 2 fully furnished buildings and moved them across the street using rails. I find this completely fascinating! I am still trying to wrap my brain around it too. From the front it looks like 2 large apartment blocks of varying heights, but from the back you can tell that they are distinct buildings that have just been built (or pushed) next to each other.

After that we went to Calnic fortified church. What is a fortified church you ask? Well that’s a good question. It’s a church with ramparts built around it. This one had a wine cellar with giant wine barrels (its important to save the wine from marauding invaders I guess), a bell tower, and a bacon tower where the parishioners kept their bacon (it’s even more important to protect the bacon!). Also in the walls are areas where each parishioner could store some provisions. We were able to climb up to the bell tower, but the bacon tower was closed much to my disappointment. Despite the lack of bacon, this little place was amazing. It’s in a small town in the Transylvanian countryside and absolutely gorgeous.

I have not described our meals enough, and you know my mother worries that we don’t eat enough when we travel. Rather than describe the delicious candy bars that I have scarfed down, I shall tell you about our dinner. We went to the small town of Sibiel for dinner. Sibiel happens to be located next to the stork capital of Europe. Its October, so they have already flown the coop back to Africa. However we did see their giant nests (out the bus window) on the top of every light pole. For some reason, we got off the bus and into horse drawn wagons, or as our guide calls them, boogies (buggy), to go the last kilometer or so to Sibiel. I guess it was for the rustic charm, but I felt sorry for the horse because I have eaten a lot of chocolate bars. Our dinner was in a private residence, but it is set up like a restaurant with a large dining area. Apparently after the fall of communism, this town quickly marketed itself as an agro-tourism destination which means a lot of people opened their homes as bed and breakfasts and let people live the farm life and milk cows! If we had known about this sooner, this trip probably would have turned out a lot different.

Anyways, dinner started with a shot of plumb brandy which may be the most vile local moonshine I have ever drank. We had a plate of appetizers with the prize for most interesting (disgusting) going to the bits of pork lard. Its literally just slimy, slightly gelatinous, bacon flavored fat. We also had homemade wine, soup, polenta, and cabbage rolls which were all quite tasty.

And that sums up day 4 in a very large nutshell.

Love,

thetwinsontour

uncooperative ducks

Citadel

ethnographic village

citadel

They decorate with bicycles instead of riding them

fortified church

Roman ruins inside the citadel

fortified church

fortified church

the bacon tower!

the bacon tower!

The apartment building that got cut in half (the two taller parts in the middle)

side view of where the building got cut in half

Standing between the separated buildings

ethnographic village

ethnographic village

ethnographic village

ethnographic village

view from the citadel

Puppy in the fortified church!

the fat is what looks like rectangular cheese

New hats! only 20 lei which is $5

Today our tour headed to Transylvania! Actually, I think most of our destinations are in Transylvania, but don’t worry, Romanians are not into vampires. We headed to the Carpathian mountains which is the longest mountain range of Europe. I wish I could describe the beautiful scenery, but it was a late night of fountain watching last night. I slept the whole way. One moment I am listening to our guide talk about life in communist Romania and how she lived on the 11th floor, but there was usually no electricity to power the elevator, and the next minute I am out. Dead to the world. Until we got to our first stop–a gas station potty break. Then I was out again until we made it to our destination–a monastery in a town famous for its therapeutic thermal waters. I have absolutely no idea how old it was, (but I may look it up when I get working wi-fi and insert that number here). Apparantly, rich people used to build churches so that they would have a nice place to be buried. Orthodox churches are much smaller than Catholic churches. You’d probably look at it and call it a chapel. Unfortunately, no pictures allowed inside. In Orthodox churches only the priests are allowed to see the altar (and men too. The only way a woman is allowed near the altar is if she has special permission from the priest to vacuum there.) So the altar is hidden behind a wall with doors that looks like an altar. I don’t remember the word at the moment, but you likely wouldn’t know the word if you read it either.

Then we were back on the road again (ie asleep fast). In between my sister’s snores I listened to the guide talk about Romanian wildlife. Romania has the largest undisturbed forest in Europe (after Russia) so they have all manner of wildlife. For example, 60% of all European brown bears live in Romania! Hunting brown bears has not been allowed since the fall of Communism, and I think a lot of that is because their communist dictator loved to hunt them so much, so part of them breaking free of oppressive communist rule was to save the bears. Bears are very territorial, so the big bears run the smaller ones out of the forest to the fringes of towns to eat garbage. She said that their are frequent news stories of bears in the towns, which means bears can’t hibernate because they are not getting enough to eat. Alas, we did not see a bear today, but we did see a bear crossing sign. So close, yet so far away. They also have Europe’s last population of lynx! Alas we did not see any of these big cats either. Nor did we see any deer, stag, or wild boar out the bus window. You know I would have jolted awake at the mere whisper of bear!

For lunch, we were on our own in the old town of Sibiu. Our guide suggested several restaurants, but she also mentioned pastry shops. So it goes without saying what thetwinsontour ate for lunch. There were several pastry shops on the pedestrian street with take out windows, and we weren’t the only ones waiting in line. Its pretty much the thing to do here. We got a gogosi which come in both sweet and savory flavors: salty cheese, sweet cheese, ham & cheese, something that wasn’t translated, apricot, berry, apple, and plain. So this is simliar to a cross between a fried pie and an empanada. Clearly we got the ham and cheese because it screams lunch. It was slightly more expensive than the other flavors at 4.50 lei, so that’s about $1.12 instead of the 4 lei or $1 that the others cost. And it was delicious! And we had plenty of time to wander around exploring the town and buy a couple of magnets. Fast, delicious, and cheap! That’s what I am talking about!

The interesting thing about Sibiu is that it is known as the city of eyes due to their unique architectural style. The attics have ventilation holes in them that make it look like there are eyes in the roof of the houses. This region was inhabited by Saxons (Germans) who had a mad love of bacon so they had to ventilate the attics properly to cure the bacon. I’m sure there is something more to this, but I prefer to focus on the bacon part. Because, well, bacon…

Today was a bit colder, ok really cold. Somehow I did not prepare for this properly. It was so cold and windy on our walking tour. I was frozen. I did bring my down coat that we took to Ecuador and Antarctica. I brought a fleece hoodie and a raincoat, but I didn’t bring a scarf or hat. I have a hundred scarves at home, but did I bring one? No! Why not? Because low temperatures of 40 degrees didn’t seem that cold. Did my neck get cold? Yes! Did I have to go to Zara (a discount Spanish fashion store) and buy a scarf? Yes! Was it like the most expensive thing in the store? Just about! Did I care? No! Is it the biggest monstrosity of a scarf that you have ever seen? Yes! Could it be used as a shawl or very warm blanket instead of a scarf? Of course! Does it make my neck sweat when I wear it? You bet! Do I love it? Absolutely!

And that pretty much sums up our day!

Love,

thetwinsontour

Greetings from Bucharest. We arrived here yesterday afternoon after a rather uneventful journey (except for the fact that this tale almost ended before it started. We got stuck on the airplane in Chicago because the airplane door wouldn’t open! For like 20 minutes! Luckily, we had snacks and didn’t have to slide down the emergency slide.) Since people always ask, we travelled from Kansas City to Chicago, had a 9 hour flight from Chicago to Vienna, and then an hour and a half flight to Bucharest. So, there you have it.

Your fair heroines are currently sitting al fresco, waiting on their orders of Moldovan Stew with polenta. Not sure what we ordered, but it sounds authentic. And, our mother loves polenta– at least she claims to every time she drags us to The Dinner Theater. Of course, despite the promising polenta, my mother would turn up her nose at this place– can you believe that they serve Pepsi instead of Coca Cola? Arggggg, such a tragedy!! It is quite cool– lower 60’s, cloudy, and breezy– which explains the patio heaters and blankets on the chairs. (Yes, we are currently shivering under a blanket that someone else has used. The GERMS! Ha ha! Don’t tell my aunts.) To top it off, since we are sitting outside in the fresh air, they brought us a clean ash tray. (We actually saw quite a few ceramic ash trays in the souvenir shops.)

This morning we had a city tour. By bus. That means taking pictures out of moving bus windows with very few stops for selfies. What can I tell you about Bucharest architecture? Some buildings are 500 years old. Some areas were destroyed by bombs in WWII, so they were replaced with Soviet style communist buildings. Bucharest is also prone to earthquakes. There was a 7.2 earthquake in 1977 that decimated the city. The dictator took advantage of the devastation to clear a massive area and build an administrative area, with a huge palace to house the government, intellectual buildings, and a boulevard to rival the Champs Eleysées. He only had to relocate 60,000 people to realize his architectural dreams. The palace– Piața Constituției– is the second largest administrative building in the world, after the Pentagon. However, it is the heaviest in the world, but only the third largest by volume. It weighs 4 million tons, largely due to the 5 ton crystal chandelier. Construction on this grandiosity began in 1984– to put that in perspective, that is the same year I was rocking out to Madonna and singing Material Girl at the top of my lungs. It took 13 years to build, which is lightning fast for this type of monstrosity. They had crews working 24 hours a day– think of the overtime! The building could probably have been finished more quickly, but they took a break after toppling the communist dictatorship on Christmas Day 1989.

Woo doggies. That is a lot of factoids on the Palace of the Parliament. It is built in a hodgepodge of architectural styles, but mostly French neo classical because that is what the dictator liked. So, it looks like an old building, but really, my Madonna Like A Virgin cassette tape is much older than this palace! The dictator had visions of standing on the balcony and waving to his adoring public just like Queen Elizabeth. Alas, he faced the firing squad before ever realizing his dreams. Only one person has ever stood on the balcony and waved, and that was the King of Pop– Michael Jackson! Of course, MJ thought he was in Budapest rather than Bucharest.

It is hard to top palaces on a city bus tour. Our afternoon is at leisure, which is why we are now chowing down on massive amounts of polenta– it is truly yummy!

What to do with an unscheduled afternoon in Bucharest? Thetwinsontour did not hesitate– their is a special Banksy exhibit at the Triumph Arch! Woohoo! Thetwinsontour love to see special art exhibits that will never, ever come to Kansas. Especially when they are by the most famous, influential, elusive street artist in the world!! It was a great exhibit– and it was housed within the Arcul de Triumf itself. That makes doubly cool. Plus, we took the subway to get there. thetwinsontour really love subways. And this one only cost 5 lei for 2 tickets, so about $1.12 toubd trip– super affordable.

We also managed to sneak in a visit to the Bucharest municipal museum. This was completely unintentional. But, we were walking to the subway station when we spied posters talking about Diego Velazquez and Las Meninas! Now, our Spanish teachers taught us right– we love all things Velazquez. But Las Meninas is the pinnacle of Velazquez’s painting superiority– not even Bob Ross or Banksy can rival this masterpiece. Then in the courtyard, there was a Menina, in Romanian garb. It was like a moth to a flame, it just drew me in like a blue light special. I tried to read the informational posters, but my Romanian is just not up to snuff, especially since I have only been exposed to it for the last 2 days. So, into the municipal museum we went. It cost 10 lei per person (about $2.50) But, if you want to take pictures, that is an extra 15 lei! Not really sure what I was supposed to get from this museum– their was a room of jade clocks– the signs were in English– but they were talking about dreams and the fluidity of time going backwards. Then there were displays about communism in Bucharest and famous Bucharesti people. Really, I just walked through there as quickly as I could. Do you know what was not inside that museum? Not one single mention of Velazquez! That Menina was just there to taunt me.

Of course, thetwinsontour don’t move too fast, so that filled up our day until it was time to go see the fountains at 8pm. Remember earlier how I mentioned the boulevard that is bigger than the Champs d’ Elyesée? Well, there are 41 fountains running down the middle of representing the 40 regions of Romania plus Bucharest. And, of course, if you have 41 fountains, that is just begging for a laser light spectacular set to music! It was a brisk 12 degrees Celsius and the spray from the fountains was drenching us, but it was all so fantastic that we didn’t really care! There were people all around us, just singing and dancing to the rhythm of the fountains while thetwinsontour just clicked away, examining every angle of the fountains. It was highly enjoyable, so we don’t regret being loose on the town eating pizza and drinking a cider (even the waiter thought that was weird. We ordered it, and he’s like, that’s beer, it has alcohol. And we were like, yes we know. But it was pear lychee cider and strawberry lime cider. How do you not try that? Even if it is nearly $4.) way past our bedtime. So much for getting to bed early!

Love,

thetwinsontour

We had a lot of rain over night, so the water level of the river was over a foot, maybe two feet higher than yesterday, and the ccurrent was fast. The only way in and out of the hotel is by canoe. It is on an island, so there are no ro\nads. Luckily, it temporarily stopped raining in time for us to leave. However, due to the water level and the tempestuous current, we took four boats for our group instead of the normal three. With our guide Wilson standing at the prow of his canoe just like Washington crossing the Delaware, (except it was a baseball cap wearing Wilson crossing the Amazon) we headed back to the town where we had left the bus 2 days ago. Except this time, instead of a 10 minute ride, it took us nearly an hour to make it to our destination.

After a couple of hours driving, we arrived at our first stop of the day–el Pailón del Diablo, or the Devil’s Cauldron–a raging and tumultuous water fall on the Green River. The river must have been named when the water level was much lower during the dry season because this was a raging, muddy mess of brown water. There’s an awesome (and slippery) suspension bridge to cross so that you can get closer to the waterfall. I’m not sure if I got more wet from the rain or the intense spray of the waterfall.

After that we were off to the town of Baños for lunch and a vegetable ivory demonstration. Vegetable ivory, or tagua, is a seed that comes from some kind of palm tree, and when its carved, it looks just like elephant ivory. I couldn’t get a good view of the carving demonstration because the group was in my way, so I shopped instead! (of course). I’m easily distracted by pretty things.

Then we were on our own in Baños for the afternoon with many possibilities. We could go bungee jumping for the low, low price of $30 (um no!); walk around the town, visit the cathedral, and shop (tempting!); or take a taxi up the mountain to a giant swing with amazing photo ops that has been featured in National Geographic (shut the front door! We are so doing that!).

So we hopped in a taxi (just $20 for him to drive us about 20 minutes up the mountain, walk us to the swing, wait with us, add a second bonus stop we didn’t know existed, and drive us back down the mountain to the hotel.) and we were on our way to Instagram glory and fame. Our destination: la Casa del Arbol or the Treehouse. They charge a dollar admission, and then everything else is included. There’s literally a giant swing hanging from a tree at the edge of a mountain and a man standing there that pushes you once you are seatbelted into the swing. If your sister stands at just the right angle it looks like you are flying way high in the sky. That’s why I had to do it twice because she didn’t get the proper pictures the first time! Sisters! Anyways, this man pushes you really fast as he jumps up and down to do it. It’s exhilarating just like riding an out of control roller coaster on the edge of the world. He kept telling me to put my hands in the air, but I wasn’t brave enough for that. I kept my hands tightly clasped to the swing where they belong!

Then our taxi driver told us that this was just a baby swing and that the daddy swing was about a kilometer down the mountain and that he would take us to see it too. Full of adrenaline from the “baby” swing and bursting with excitement to see the next swing, we headed down the nearly vertical mountainside path back to our yellow chariot.

The parking lot of the big swing was full of the open air tourist excursion party buses called Chivas (sorry, I didn’t think to take a picture of any of these) full of adventure and thrill seekers. There’s a tall tower and platform that you climb up to get into the swing, and you have to wear a helmet and climbing harnesses. Safety first! This swing is legit and they mean business. It costs $10 a person to do it, and they will video you for just $5 more. What a bargain! So after watching a few people swing, thetwinsontour had worked up the nerve to do it. We paid our money and got our gear on, but then we didn’t know what to do with our purses–our purses with our money, passports, brand new one week old cell phones, tic tac gum, emergency snacks, etc. You can’t take stuff on the swing and there’s no lockers or anything to leave them in. We were all alone because no one from our group wanted to do it with us. So the taxi driver said he would hold our purses. I was a bit leery about handing off my valuables to a complete stranger, but what was I to do? I needed to go on this swing. I kept out my cell phone though so that we wouldn’t lose everything if he took off with my official travel purse and everything of value in it. So we decided if my sister was going to leave her cell phone in her purse, we may as well have the taxi driver take some pictures of us too! Right? So she showed him how to use the brand new phone. But guess what, you don’t need the password to work the camera! So he wouldn’t be able to use it if he ran off with it. Sneaky! So with that, we began the climb up the stairs to our imminent doom. It was quite exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. We got latched into the swing, and all too quickly were swinging down the mountain with a scream coming from each of our throats. It’s a long way down. Then we were flying in the sky above the side of the mountain, literally flying in the air, back and forth, back and forth until the swing lost it’s momentum. Just like the taxi driver said, it’s really just the first swing that takes your breath away. After that the swinging slows down dramatically. I still can’t believe that we did this, but I would so do it again. Once we were off the swing, there was our taxi driver at the top– smiling and cheering us on. So of course we smiled and waved back, delirious from the swinging and the fact that he was still there with our purses.

And that is all of the excitement that a person can endure for one day, but there is one more thing. Our beautiful hotel had a resident peacock and peahen. That excitement nearly did me in. Peafowl roaming the gardens of the hotel with a backdrop of mountains shrouded in clouds. It’s nearly too much for one day. But I chased that peacock around the grounds working to get the perfect picture because I am not a quitter. Not when there are pictures to be taken!

That’s all I got for now.

Love,

thetwinsontour

PS-Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook so you can see some of these adventures in a more timely manner. And for those of you that inexplicably still do not have a Facebook page, or are too hip for that we have an Instagram page now too. But someone stole our name. The nerve of them! So look for the_twins_on_tour on Instagram.

PSS. I can’t upload the video to this blog because I don’t pay for the premium site. So no video for you here, just ads about indigestion and toe nail fungus. I am going to try to upload it to Facebook, so if that’s not enticement enough for you to join Facebook, I don’t know what is!

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