Ecuador Volcanoes Expedition Dispatch

November 23, 2015 – Leaving Quito and Entire Team is Finally Together

Today was a long day. Early this morning, we had a delicious breakfast together at the Marriott. During breakfast, we enjoyed a few group stories such as Paul and Howard’s:

It seems that from the moment they checked into their hotel room, they had left the air conditioning on and didn’t bother to turn it off. Both being used to the North and cold, it didn’t faze them until last night, while playing their nightly game of scrabble, Paul noticed Howard wearing his big down jacket inside the room. At that point, they both realized that their room was too cold and decided to turn off the AC. Paul and Howard were definitely acclimatizing not only to the high altitude in Quito, but also to sleeping on the mountain “refugio-hut”, where we will be in a few days.

Before leaving Quito, we made a quick stop at one of our favourite shops: a small local factory that makes little figures with marzipan (a sort of bread mixture). It is amazing hand crafted work with incredible attention to detail.

We also stopped in Cayambe, a city known for being the 3rd biggest rose exporter in the world, after Holland and Columbia. You can easily buy 25 roses in Cayambe for one dollar. We also visited a biscuit factory, where we got the opportunity to watch the famous Cayambe biscuits being made.

Of course we tried a few with some dulce de leche while sipping on a hot chocolate. Sam was really excited about trying the biscuits and dulce de leche for the first time. She is now planning on buying some when she gets back home and introduce the South America dish to her husband and children. You can easily find dulce de leche all over North America.

We made it out to Otavalo, in the Imbabura Province of Ecuador, where we will spend the next three nights at the Hacienda Cusin; a restored 17th Century estate.

We had lunch at a beautiful restaurant by the lake, San Pablo, and left Puerto Lago in the rain. Our plan was to visit the Otavalo Market and we almost cancelled due to the rain, but ended up following Joaquin’s mother advice; if you are not happy with the weather, walk five blocks (or wait five minutes). So we did. Sure enough, by the time we arrived at the market, the rain had stopped. We enjoyed the shopping and everyone found something they were looking for or just couldn’t pass on the opportunity to purchase something unique.

Later, we arrived at the Hacienda, just in time to walk and explore the grounds until our dinner.

Tonight Martial and Marie-Jo finally arrived from Switzerland! They were the last two members of our team to arrive and now we are all together. They met us for dinner around 8:00pm, after a long day of flights between Genève, Madrid and finally Quito. Once in Quito, they were picked up and transferred to our Hacienda arriving quite tired but still had time for a great dinner before they crashed for the night.