A snippet of the countries we visited recently.  More on each country to come in 2017.

Our world travel update. After really seeing Ecuador as travellers, including several places that neither of us had been to before, it was on to Quito, to visit our friends and family.  Quito is obviously very special to Alex, as it’s where he’s from and where his family still lives.  For me, it clearly holds a very, very special place in my heart, for both its beauty and the family I now have there.

We ended up spending several months there, including setting up our own AirBnB apartment in La Floresta.  Alex and I call many places home, and Quito is clearly one of themc.

Whilst staying in Guaranda we decided to do a day trip to Mount Chimborazo, only some 50 kilometres away. Whilst it had been thought to be extinct, new studies show that it is actually active, having erupted at least seven times during the last 10 000 years; nothing on record however. The mountain was once considered the highest on the planet but was dethroned by the Himalayan and Peruvian peaks. According to the Earth’s geometry, however, the summit of Chimborazo is considered to be the farthest from the Earth’s centre.  This huge mountain is the highest point in Ecuador and has the highest peak near the equator at 6268 metres.

Carnival Guaranda, Ecuador.

Soon enough we were off to Baños de Agua Santa, or Baños, as it’s more commonly known. The area around the small town has to be the jewel in Ecuador’s jewel-encrusted crown! This tourist-happy town is the gateway to the Amazon. The town itself isn’t a bomb of excitement, and in peak season it can feel garish and overcrowded with backpackers and tour operators trying to lure you into the den of mountain-biking, rafting, hiking, bungee jumping and partying. Having said that, nobody leaves without some great stories and a big whopping smile across their face! Luckily for us, it was low season, and we were able to hang out and do our thing. You can sometimes see the nearby Volcan Tungurahua erupting.  Saw it erupting in 1999, no such luck this time!

Sangay.

We’d been to or through Macas a couple of times over the years, and this time we would pass through on our way to a  remote part of Ecuador’s Amazon basin, to see Alex’s Uncle Jorge. It’s also known as the “Emerald of the East”, due to its location just east of the Andes mountains.  Few tourists actually make it to the town with so few tourist trappings, but it’s raw, it’s real and it’s worth a look-see. We ate some decent food and went on some lovely walks with Jorje, from where we could see the perfect snow-covered cone of Volcan Sangay (5230 metres).  It’s Ecuador’s seventh’ highest mountain and one of the world’s most active.  It can be glimpsed on a clear day … we saw it in all of its glory.  Lady Luck was on our side!

Zamora street art.

It was now time to get off the beaten track.  We had seen and done so much in Ecuador over our various trips over the years but had never been to the south-eastern part of the Oriente (Ecuador’s Amazon, where the Andes meet the lowland areas of rainforest in the Amazonian basin). We looked at a map and said, “Right, where to”? For all of Ecuador’s beauty and fascinating places to see, the government does an appalling job at promoting tourism, and information, especially on places not oft visited is scarce.  But we were determined!  Ummmm, Zamora?  We were able to scrounge some information from the internet: “The bus ride here is itself worthwhile, with the road snaking down from the sierra past numerous waterfalls, giving occasional views onto miles of densely forested hills.” SOLD