Recovering in Ecuador

By Micayla & Darius (with added details)

We did not realize how tired we were from exploring the Galapagos until we reached Alandaluz. After learning that we would be in Ecuador, a friend of a friend offered us her cabana for a few days. Located on the coast, Alandaluz is a small resort filled with gardens that spill out to a long, sandy beach. When the tide is out, the beach is flat, wide and great for long walks. On it, crabs run back and forth trying not to get hit by the waves.



In the sand, we found several sand dollars. We had never seen a live sand dollar before and it was fun to have our palms tickled by hundreds of “feet” moving the sand dollars across our hand. When we were not on the beach, we spent hours swimming in the pool that overlooked the ocean, playing cards and billards in the game room, and having leisurely meals in the open-air restaurant.



On New Year’s eve we returned to Guayaquil. On the way, my mom and dad saw a tayra hunting on the side of the road. They said it was all black except for its head that was white and that it looked like a giant weasel with a very long bushy tail. We also passed several cars carrying huge paper mache dolls in the shape of all kinds of characters. There were super heros (hulk, spiderman, batman, etc.), Sponge Bob, Bugs Bunny, the Simpsons, Kung Fu Panda and many more. Many were larger than our dad.



Later that day, we learned that the dolls are called "old years". They represent the passing of the year and all of the hardships that it caused. These puppets are filled with fire crackers and newspaper and sawdust. The tradition is to burn them at midnight--and so burn away all the hardships of the past year. As we walked through town that night we saw many families carrying their "old year" puppets. We went to bed early that night because we had an early flight the next morning, but we were awoken at midnight by millions of fire crackers and fire works that filled the streets with noise and the skies with color.

The next day, we got up at 6, had breakfast, and then went to the airport. When we got there, the airport was almost empty and we found out that our flight had been canceled. We were the only ones who were going to be on the plane! Later that morning we flew to Quito, which is the capital of Ecuador. Quito is very nice and is surrounded by tall green mountains. The streets are very modern, there are huge parks, and there is also an old section of the city that has buildings from more than 400 years ago. It is cool to see so many new things so close to the old buildings.

On one day, we went to the largest park. We walked around a botanical garden that had plants from all over Ecuador. There was one section that contained hundreds of different orchids. Unlike the ones we saw near Machu Picchu, many of these orchids were blooming. Most of them had bright colors like yellows, reds, and purple. But there was one that was mostly black and looked like it had a cape. It was called the Dracula Orchid. After the gardens, Darius went horse-back riding in the park.


Today, we went for a ride outside of the city. First, we went to the top of a huge volcano that collapsed a long time ago. The inside is now about 2,000 feet below the rim and looks like a flat valley. About 100 families live inside the volcano and have farms.

We also went to the Equator Museum. It was right on the Equator. We got to put one foot in the northern hemisphere and one foot in the southern. We also did several experiments that prove we were on the equator. For one experiment, we looked at a sun dial and an annual calendar and saw how the sun hits the dial and calendar in special ways when it is the equinox. We also got to see how water goes straight down a drain when the drain is placed right on top of the equator. It was cool because when they moved the drain just a few feet to the south, the water swirled in one direction. Then, when they moved it a few feet to the north of the equator, the water swirled in the other direction. But on the equator, it did not swirl at all, but went straight down!


Northern Hemisphere:

Southern Hemisphere:

Straight down the Equator:

Darius was also able to balance an egg on its end on top of a nail. This only works on the equator because gravity pulls straight down on the egg. When you are not on the equator, gravity pulls a little more on side of the egg than on the other, which makes it impossible to balance on a nail.

Tomorrow, we will be heading to a river in the Amazon basin. My mom is nervous because there are giant spiders that live there. She does not like the small spiders that live in Wellesley, so we think she will really not like the ones in the jungle.

We have been traveling for just over a month now and my dad made us each write about the most interesting things we have seen so far. Our essays are below.


By Micayla
Three Things That Were Most Interesting To Me

There have been a lot of things that have been interesting this past month. These are the three things that I think are most interesting.

Machu Picchu was a really, really interesting place. I thought it was interesting because it was ancient history. Machu Picchu is where Incas used to live. Today, the Incas are extinct and Machu Picchu is a famous place that is now filled with ruins. All the ruins were made by hand. They are big stones stacked up on top of each other to make houses, baths, walls, and terraces. The baths are for when the people went to the temples. The terracing was where people planted their crops. Machu Picchu was cool because the ruins are still standing and on some of the big rocks we could see chinchillas.

The Galapagos was very interesting because there were lots of animals like iguanas, seals, sea lions, turtles, and all different types of birds. The iguanas got brought to the island on logs that floated in the ocean and landed at the Galapagos. Pirates came to the islands a long time ago and then whalers came. The pirates and whalers ate the inside of sea turtles. Darwin found the Galapagos a long time ago and now it is a national park. The animals were cool because you could get real close to them except when there was a baby and a mommy.

We went to a hotel called Alandaluz. We rented a car to get there and the car ride took three hours. Alandaluz had a lot of plants around it, a pool, and it was on the beach. We would go swimming every day and we would get snacks, like banana chips and popcorn. We would also walk on the beach and find live sand dollars that we held in our hand and then put back. When we put them back, they would dig back into the sand. On the beach there were a lot of really fast crabs, and we caught two of them. They pinched my dad really hard when he caught them. There was a lot of interesting food. One was shrimp in a coconut. Another was tin foil with a banana leaf inside of it with fish inside of the banana leaf. I got to try a pina coloda too.


Two Things That I Wish Were Different:

I wish we were not traveling for so long because we would see our friends sooner.

I also wish that we could bring more clothes because then we would not have to ware the same close so often.


By Darius
Things That Were Most Interesting To Me....

Over the last month, we have done so many interesting things in South America. Here is a top five list of the favorite things I have done in Peru and Ecuador.

1. It was fun to play with the sea lions in the Galapagos, especially one baby that came up to me and my friend Michael. The baby sea lion just sat there and watched us play. Then we went over to him and walked away to see if he would follow us. He followed us and tried to play with us. We kept having to run away because we weren't allowed to touch the sea lions. If you get the smell of a human on a baby sea lion, its mother will not be able to find him and he will die.

2. Machu Picchu was great. I was a little disappointed because they were restoring parts of it and it looked nothing like the post cards. But it was still numero dos. To get to Machu Picchu we took a bus up a twisty, turny road. The Incas built Machu Picchu up high in the mountains to be closer to the sun which was their main god. There where lots of mountains, a giant drop off on one side, and a river flowing below you. First we explored the agriculture zone, the royal living space, the town, and the astronomy tower. Then we hiked up the Inca trail. Afterwards, it was really fun to hike down 3,000 feet to the bottom of Machu Picchu, but I wish it did not start raining at the end of the day.

3. We were in a park in Guayaquil, which is a huge city in Ecuador with a population of 3 million people. The park was filled with iguanas that were 2 to 6 feet long. They were in trees and lying on the ground. We walked under a tree like every one else and plop, out of the tree came a twinkie sized iguana poop that landed right on my mom’s arm. When it hit my mom she went, “a, a, ahhhhh!” She sounded just like a bird. Then the poop slid off her arm and onto the ground with a big plop. She scraped off what was left on some grass. It was hilarious.

4. Snorkeling in the Galapagos. Even though the water was cold, it was worth seeing all the fish and the sea turtles. It was different than seeing them in pictures and the aquarium because they were right in front of you and you could go under them, over them, and touch them. There were also sea lions swimming, manta rays, sharks and minnows. It was special for me because they were right there in front of you with no glass or paper separating you from them.

5. The equator museum in Quito, Ecuador. I got to stand on the northern and the southern hemisphere at the same time. We got to see water go down a drain. It goes strait down when the drain was exactly on the equator, it doesn’t spin one way or another like at home. We also balanced an egg on a nail. There were also traditional houses that where rebuilt. They showed us how different tribes in the Amazon made shrunken heads. They shrink the heads without any bones in them. They even had a real head, but it was made illegal to do it to people so they started shrinking animal heads. We got to see a shrunken sloth head. We also got to shoot a blow dart into a cactus and look at a bunch of animals like anacondas, fish, etc.






Three Things That I Wish Were Different Are...

1. Not moving around so much. I like to stay in one place for at least a week, but we stayed in some places for only two days.

2. Not having to worry about food water and illnesses. We haven’t really gotten sick yet, but I don’t like having to worry about what I eat and drink.

3. Not having every one speak Spanish. Seriously, I can barely speak Spanish and in Ecuador they speak so fast it is really difficult for me to understand them.