izhcayluma and cuenca

we spent our first three days in ecuador at a resort called izhcayluma just outside of the town of vilcabamba. vilcabamba is full of ex-pats evidenced by the big beautiful homes dotting the hillside....lots of people retire here.  i can certainly see the appeal.....the valley is a lush beautiful green, with mountains in the back-drop of town.  the weather is not too hot and not too cold.  the town itself is super laid-back with lots of 'gringo' owned shops....we even had a delicious falafel for dinner one night!

izhcayluma is a resort that sits on a hill looking out over vilcabamba.  it has all the typical resort amenities but at budget prices and so is popular with backpackers....they have dorm room beds for only $9.50 per night!! we decided to splurge a little and got a private room for four (still only $55 per night).
the grounds were so beautiful!!

......there was a pool!

......and a pool table!

......and a yoga shala, with free yoga classes every morning looking out over the mountains.....what a treat!

hammocks everywhere for relaxing and enjoying the view.

.....not to mention a yummy breakfast of fresh fruit, granola, yogurt and homemade toast....plus ecuadorian coffee every morning!  it was so so delightful!


we mostly just hung out at the resort and relaxed but one day the kids and i went for a horse-back ride.

i forgot my hat so i had to borrow one....the kids thought it looked goofy but i think it helps me look like a real rider!

views of vilcabamba from the top of our ride

lucy loved it...riley liked it...and i was more than ready to get out of the saddle after a couple hours!!

instead of the ride todd went for a 5hr hike at a near-by national park which he very much enjoyed.  he said the hike was great but mostly he loved having time to himself....we are all together all the time and sometimes its just nice to be alone with your own thoughts.
i carved out a little 'me' time and got myself a massage.  the resort advertised a 75min full body massage for $22.  i usually don't get resort massages because i feel like they just finger-paint on my back and i leave disappointed, but in this case i figured for twenty bucks how bad can it be? plus we have slept in a fair number of crappy beds and i was due.  it ended up being great. i just had to say 'poco mas fuerte, por favor' a couple of times and in the end got a decent massage!



the last couple days we have been in cuenca which is a good-sized but lovely city that feels very cosmopolitan.  there are beautiful colonial buildings, a river running through town, parks with green grass (a rarity in our travels so far!) and an overall pretty chill vibe.
we strolled around town and took in the sights.

as usual there was a big cathedral on the central plaza.....it was huge and mostly brick with blue tiled domes. todd felt this was the most beautiful cathedral he has seen so far in south america.

we also climbed up to the top of the cathedral and enjoyed the views over the city.

one morning in cuenca we spent at a great museum which depicted various aspects of ecuadorian culture and history....including the amazonian tribes who would shrink the heads of their enemies....not sure how that process was done really.   (please forgive me, todd made me promise to include this picture!)

the museum also had a bird sanctuary with some gorgeous macaws.....(much nicer pictures to end on!)

and i can't forget the hat picture.  this hat is widely known as the 'panama hat' which it turns out is made in this region and not at panama at all.  it got called the panama hat because they exported it to panama early on.  anyway it is the hat of the region.

and that basically sums up our couple days in cuenca.

all and all our first week in ecuador has been a good one!
tomorrow we are going to volunteer at a dairy farm just outside of cuenca for the next week.  fingers crossed this volunteer gig goes better than the last one!
hasta luego!

mancora and good-bye peru!

there is something about the beach that turns time into molasses.  we spent four wonderfully chill days in mancora, which is a little surf town in northern peru (about an hour or so from the border).  mancora is known for the best beaches in peru but is also known as a bit of a party town.  as i said before we hadn't intended to stop here, but with a few days to spare we decided the beach would be a great place to spend our last days in peru.

we found this little place at the far end of the beach....away from the beach bars and party scene (todd has already been offered cocaine several times despite our efforts to stay away from all the crazy!).  it was a very chill place with nice rooms and hammocks.....and just steps from the beach so the waves lulled us to sleep every night

a simple breakfast was provided in the mornings...

the owners also had a puppy....one of those weird hairless dogs! they feel so bizarre!

....being in a surf town we did rent a couple boards and the kids spent an afternoon learning how to surf.

 todd hardly surfed himself he just mostly helped push the kids on the boards.....for hours (what a good dad!).

lucy managed to ride several waves in on her knees...

riley stood up a couple times for just a few seconds.....but it counts as standing!

they all had so much fun and were also pretty darn sore the next day from all the paddling and boarding!

we also spent a couple afternoons just playing in the waves sans boards, which was really fun.  the water was just warm enough that you could get in all the way sans wetsuits and the weather was hot enough that it felt great!

we enjoyed our last night in peru on the beach watching a gorgeous sunset!

we left peru yesterday morning.....a long eleven hour bus day.   it seems ironic that we spent our last four days in peru on the beach because peru has been mountains mountains mountains for us.  i always feel a little sad leaving a country and we had such a wonderful adventure in peru.  machu picchu the highlight of course but so many other unexpected gems as well including the amazing cordillera blanca mountains and even mancora.  we had a fantastic volunteer stay at arcadio's farm and another at the casa lena school (it all seems forever ago!)  riley is already missing his all-time favorite street food papas rellanas and todd is already missing the ceviche.  we will remember it all fondly!

but alas we have crossed the border!

we are now in vilcabamba in southern ecuador at a resort that caters to backpackers.  we plan to be here for a few days before heading north to cuenca.
hasta luego!

a swing and a miss....

we had our first big miss.  our intention was to volunteer at a wwoof (world wide opportunities on organic farms) site in the northern highlands of peru for a week.  we took a bus to cajamarca...which was a little 'meh' as cities go.....and we thought we were going to be at a farm about 40min outside of cajamarca.  we met our host humberto in cajamarca, who guided us to the combi's (mini-buses) that would take us to the site. certainly we may have missed something with our sub-par spanish but we didn't realize until we were on the combi that were not going 40min away but in fact we ended up traveling about 3 hrs....most of it on rustic dirt roads!  from a parent perspective this was far far too remote to take the kids and we never would've agreed to this particular site had we known.

we ended up in a small town called sorochuco which given how remote it was actually had an impressive amount of infrastructure....paved roads within the small town, street lights, a bank.

the second surprise was that instead of the the "eight rooms and five bathroom" accommodation for volunteers promised on the wwoof site, we would instead be sleeping on the floor in one big room with humberto's whole family.....including his parents (both in their 70's), his brother and his brother's two kids and then us.  apparently there was a farm 40 min outside of cajamarca and there was a big house with lots of rooms, but the woman who owned the house died and her kids divided up the property. so humberto still being the contact from the wwoof site just started to take the volunteers to his home village and farm....failing to update what is on the website.  once this all sunk in we were not happy.

let me be clear for our potentially worried families.....we never felt that we were in danger and nothing ever felt sketchy at all.  we were safe, but we were just not where we thought we would be when we agreed to this volunteer gig.

that said we would've left the next day but the icing on the cake of this whole thing was that the only combi out of this town back to cajamarca leaves once a day.....at 4am!

humberto and his family were quite friendly...humberto himself was very enthusiastic about having volunteers. the family generally loved having foreigners....and enjoyed parading us around to friends and family in town.  the grandpa delighted in calling lucy 'gringita' which basically means 'little white girl'.  grandma spent all of her time cooking over a fire and the food was simple but good.

the four of us were in one big bed together.  they had pushed together a couple mattresses or actually one twin mattress and one pallet with blankets (boy was i dreaming of the massage i will be getting when i get home!).  grandma and grandpa were on a bed in the corner, the brother and his kids (who were visiting from cajamarca) were on a bed in another corner, and humberto was on a twin bed on the floor as well.  there was also an alter in a corner of the room complete with old incan skulls, dead eagle and skunk bodies, a pile of coca leaves and random dolls and action figures.  i really don't mind a 'home stay' but the kicker was being all in one room together....no privacy to change clothes so we all slept in what we were wearing.   the second night was a special treat in that grandpa got drunk and then tried to get it on with grandma in the middle of the night.  the kids were fast asleep and i sleep with earplugs (travel tip: always travel with earplugs!) but todd was fortunate enough to listen to the entire encounter.

our bed

the alter

 it was actually quite beautiful back up in these peruvian mountains....

we helped with one day of work.  it took two hours to climb up the mountain first to where the horses are kept and then to the field.

grandpa and the horses

then there was a couple hours of just hanging out while everyone socialized and drank (this was very reminiscent of the peace corps especially for todd in thailand....lots of hanging out and waiting, nothing happening very quickly.  you have to shed the american notion of productivity)

eventually we helped in the harvesting of some grain....

it was interesting to watch the process.....they use the horses to separate the grain from the husk

as a random aside, one the the boys would blow this shell.....i think this was a novelty and not really something of cultural significance but he did it so often during our stay that i had to include a picture.

and of course the hat picture.....these hats might be my favorite so far!

she is spinning wool into thread

so we were only there for less than 48hrs.  these folks are very poor and leaving after just a day could easily be seen as a reflection on their living conditions.  we tried to be as gentle and diplomatic as possible, and i hope they understood.
one of the goals of this trip was for the kids to see how others in the world live, especially those in poverty.  i think this was achieved here.  i also think that i might be too old to show them anymore details in this regard on this trip and future poverty experiences will have to wait until they can do it on their own.

we are now back at the beach.  we are in mancora a town in very northern peru close to the ecuador border.  it is sunny here and the water is warmer.  we weren't actually going to come here at all but when we bailed we needed a place to land for a few days and this seemed a good choice.  we will enjoy our last days in peru here and then head into ecuador.
hasta luego!

huanchaco

huanchaco is a what used to be a small fishing village on the coast of northern peru, and is now it is a surf town, though it retains its fishing roots.  we spent five days here relaxing and it really felt delightful to do nothing!

we stayed at a hostel called 'frog's chillhouse' which was not in the slightest bit peruvian and we felt like we could be in a surf-town anywhere......though in it's favor it was very 'chill'.

the kids did a fair bit of this....

the adults did a fair bit of this...

todd and i also managed to have a cocktail together which made it feel all the more beachy!

we spent our days playing games of family soccer on the beach,  taking walks, and wandering down to watch the fisherman come in on their traditional reed boats....

we enjoyed the marine wildlife and views off the pier...

i don't think the pelicans are quite this big in the northwest!!

we ate our favorite lunch of papas rellanos which we bought from the beach stand lady every day.

and we watched the beautiful sunsets every evening........

we did not end up learning to surf in this surf town.  the shore was fairly rocky and the water was pretty cold, such that one needed a wet suit.  we decided that if the kids wanted to try surfing we'd wait until ecuador where the beaches are a bit nicer and the water warmer (or so we've been told).

very close to huanchaco are these pre-inca ruins called 'chan chan' so we did a day trip to check them out.  these ruins are sooooo interesting and like nothing we've seen so far.  built by the chimu people, eventually conquered by the incas and ultimately pillaged by the colonials......however mostly destroyed by erosion and the elements.  amazing to walk around ruins that date to 1000 yrs ago.

on our last day in the area we stayed in trujillo, which is actually a decent sized city about 20min inland from huanchaco.  the colonial buildings of trujillo are very colorful and worth a stop.... though i am glad that we spent most of our days in the beach town of huanchaco.

in trujillo we stayed at the hotel colonial which is an old mansion turned hotel.  it was beautiful.  i am a sucker for the old colonial manses.  part of me wishes i was a richie rich back in the day and could have lived in one of these places........minus the lack of women's rights and increased mortality due to poor healthcare of course.

tomorrow we head a bit more north and back into the mountains for another volunteer stay just outside a city called cajamarca.  this will be another farm where we will help out doing a little of this and a little of that.
hasta luego!