Ok so following on from my last blog... After our night salsa dancing we got up at a reasonable 9am and David took us for a city tour where we walked by the river that seperates the old town with the new town which is typical of most cities in Ecuador. Then we went to meet Alberto who is the master weaver of Panama hats, apparently he is quite famous and he was in a national geographic documentary. His vocal cords have been damaged from when he used to make the hats with sulpher so his voice is almost completely gone. But he was a lovely man and he showed us around his house and we tried on some of his hats.
We then were shown around the market place where people sell fruit, veges, medicinal herbs and meat. David taught us about the different uses for all the herbs and Steve got to try a protein shake that had a mixture of nasty looking ingredients including a eggs, malt drink, honey and a natural viagra. Walking through the meat section was fairly disgusting both for the eyes and nose.
We checked out the new cathedral, built in the late 1800s and then walked past the flower market and a crafts market.
From here we went to a museum to see a ethnographical room which showed all the different people of Ecuador which David recommended we see. It was really interesting, there was abut 15 different indigenous groups each with their own distinct looks, clothing, traditions, ceremonies and beliefs. We even saw some real shrunken heads and learnt the process of shrinking.
We then went to the mall and supermarket where we had lunch, claire and i struggled with all the choices and ended up getting burger king. The supermarket floor was marble and very slippery and my shoes have no grip so i had a ball of a time sliding all over the place.
That evening we went out for a final dinner in Ecuador, we went to a place called eucalyptus and they were meant to speacialise in dishes from other countries. So i got the Thai green curry, as i have been craving it for a while and was very disappointed to get something that tasted nothing like it, they had failed to add coconut milk or use jasmine rice rather just overloaded it with lemongrass. We presented david his tip for the 10 days he had been our tour guide and took a few group photos. David had then arranged for us to go play pool and most of the group went along. As this was our last day in Ecuador we were all down to our last few US dollars as they aren´t much good to us in Peru. I had $2, Claire had 5, Jill had 1 so we didn´t do much drinking that night. Claire and i were able to afford one Tom Collins between the two of us. We played pool for a few hours, Claire and I won maybe one game and although we failed to win anymore David help me sink a few good shots so we still had fun. Finally around12.30 we headed back to the hotel, the streets were absolutely dead so we taxied cos apparently it was too dangerous to walk.
The next day we took a 5 hour bus ride to the border of Peru. I personally found it hard leaving Ecuador and David because they made up my best experiences so far. David had been hoping to come with us to Peru for one night but the hotel didn´t have any free rooms. We met our Peruvian guide Diana on the Ecuador side of the border and we had been warned that the area was dangerous but we were surprised a how careful they were being. It was the most serious we had seen David the whole trip, he made us walk in a single file line, close together, with diana at the front and him at the back with our day packs on our fronts. Apparently they had had some bad experiences in the past. We said our goodbyes to David and then got in mini van to head into Peru. I felt like everyone was still being very cautious as we arrived in the first town to get money out but after we reached a really nice beachside hotel away from all the towns. It was nice to be able to relax at the beach after quite a few very busy days. It was the first time we were able to swim in a beach since Rio.
Anyway i´m still not caught up but there´s a pool in this hoteland its beckoning me...i´ll finish this tomorrow!!
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