Quito and Santiago: Something Old, Something New

After returning from the Napo River, we spent our last days in Ecuador exploring Quito before heading to Argentina via Santiago, Chile. These two stops marked the end of nightly stays in hotels and the start of a series of apartment and house rentals. For all of us, we are glad to have more space, a bit more privacy, and a kitchen to cook our own food. Being in one place for longer periods of time will also allow Darius and Micayla to spend more time on home school activities -- yipee! What follows are their essays on "What was similar and what was different about Quito and Santiago?" Enjoy!


Quito and Santiago
By Darius

Both Quito and Santiago were amazing cities. Santiago and Quito were very fun to visit. We got to ride a metro in Santiago and climb down part of a collapsed volcano near Quito.

Here are some things that were the similar about Santiago and Quito. Both of the cities had poor people. We saw poor people in front of buildings, in alleyways, and on the streets. Some were old and some were kids alone or with their parents. They would wear blankets and other inexpensive clothing. In Quito and Santiago they would beg for money on the streets or on the sidewalk. And it seemed like there where no shelters for them, even in Santiago.

Both the cities had their own shopping areas, main squares, cathedrals, and amazing plazas. The plazas in Quito had a statue in the middle and benches all around it. The malls had shops and little boutiques. The malls in Quito where old and clean and full of people. Santiago had plazas that were also clean and packed with people. There was also a park that was clean and empty most of the time.


Quito and Santiago Main Plazas:




They both had a beautiful view of the mountains. Quito was in the mountains. The mountains that surrounded Quito were tall and some had snow. Santiago had mountains on one side and none of them had snow and they looked fairly small. But Santiago seemed to fill with smog at times (smog is car fumes and smoke mixed together) which would block the view of the mountains.

They both had good private schools but only one or two public schools are good. We are lucky that we have good public schools at home. Most people went to a private school but I don't know how many because I didn't go into any schools. A friend said that the private schools were the best.

Both of the cities had public transportation like buses in Quito, and a really nice metro in Santiago. We never went on the buses but they looked nice and the metro was very clean.

Here are some things that are different. I thought that Quito looked rustic, but when we went into a friend's house it was completely modern. Quito looked rustic because the buildings were old and looked over 100 years. The apartment looked like it came from a modern fashion magazine. We went there to have dinner with my mom's friend Stephanie. Santiago was modern but the house we went to was old fashioned. The city looked modern because there where glass buildings and other skyscrapers. Santiago had a metro but in Quito you could walk or take a bus or taxi, so Quito was much more expensive for transportation.

Quito and Santiago's currency where both different. In Santiago they used the peso, so 624 pesos was worth 1 dollar. In Quito they used the American dollar.

Quito had a different feel than Boston, but Santiago made me feel like I was back in Boston. Quito had a rustic feel to it and i didn't know my way around it. Santiago made me feel like i was in Boston with all the hustling and bustling.

In the end Santiago and Quito were really nice to visit.



Things that Were Similar and Things that Were Different By Micayla

Last week I was in Quito, Ecuador and Santiago, Chile. Quito and Santiago are both big cities that are close to mountains, and they are capitals of their countries. In both of them, we walked around and looked at plazas, ate chicken, rice, and noodles at restaurants, had dinner mom’s friends house in Quito and her friend’s parent’s house in Santiago, and saw a lot of neat things. I thought that they were both cool to see, but they were also different.

One of the things that was different is that Quito is close to the equator. We went to the equator museum and we got to put one foot on one side of the equator and the other foot on the other side. We also got to do other stuff like balance an egg on a nail. Quito was also high in the mountains. Santiago is farther south and low and close to the sea. Since Santiago is close to the sea, they got to have some place that has sea creatures, and that’s what I am going to tell you about. We went to a fish market and they had everything. They had all kinds of sea creatures! They had fish, of course, and octopus, crabs, shellfish, shrimp. But Quito did not.



I also noticed that Santiago was much hotter than Quito. Even though Quito is close to the Equator it is cooler than Santiago because the higher you are, the cooler it usually is – at least that is what my Dad told me, and he is always right, or at least most of the time. Since it was much hotter in Santiago, we wore shorts and t-shirts. Since it was cooler in Quito, we wore long sleeves and long pants.

Quito had big parks in the middle of the city. The parks had trees and a big statue in the middle. In one big, big park, you could do horseback riding, go on paddle boats, climb on sculptures, go in a huge flower garden, and go on a bus shaped like an inchworm that went around the park. But Santiago had parks out side of the city. We did not go to any of the parks because we were in the middle of the city and the parks were outside of the city.

Quito had an old part of town, but Santiago did not. The old part of town had old buildings that had nice moldings on them. They were two stories high, and some were painted blue, some were painted yellow, and some were white. The roads were very narrow and made out of stones.



In the new part of town, the buildings were made out of bricks, glass, and metal. The streets were wide and they were made out of concrete. In the middle of the streets, they usually had bus lanes where only buses could go.

Santiago did not have an old part, it was almost all newer buildings. The buildings were made of glass and were very tall. The streets were wide and were filled with cars. When we went downtown, there was a lot of people walking around.

I really liked both Quito and Santiago. Now we are in Argentina going to new cities. I hope that I like them, too.

The Amazing Amazon

By Darius and Micayla (with details added)

Our adventures started in Coca, a large river town. When we arrived in Coca after a short plane ride, we were met by our guide, Jeremy. He was from the United States but had lived in Ecuador for the past two and half years. He loaded us into a small open bus that reminded us of a mini-trolley. The bus took us to a dock on the Napo River. The river was very wide and filled with dark brown water that was flowing fast toward the Amazon River. The Napo River is classified as a white water river because of the enormous amount of sediment the river carries from the Andes. The sediment makes the river banks very good for farming.

We got on a long, thin boat that had two 100 horse power engines. For three hours we rode in the boat down the river. We saw lots of trees, water, and birds on the way, but very few houses and only one other village. After 70 kilometers, we changed into a smaller canoe that had a small engine. This boat went down a small river that led to an even smaller river. After about 20 minutes of driving up the smaller river, we reached a lagoon. We then paddled across the lagoon to Sani Lodge.

Sani Lodge was kind of small, but very nice. All of the buildings were made out of wood and thatched roofs. There were about 10 buildings including a bar, a dining area, and several sleeping houses. Our room was in the largest building that had four rooms. We were on the top level and had a very large room with a queen bed, two double beds, and a hammock. There were lots of large windows that were made out of screens. Out our back door there was a small balcony with a hammock that looked out over the forest.



View From Bar and Dining Rooms:


Sani Lodge was built by the Sani Community. The Sani Community was formed by six families that came to the area in the 1930s. They claimed the land which was about 90,000 acres. Over the years, the community grew to include about 400 people and the Sani land is now the largest privately owned area of rainforest in all of Ecuador. Each family is given a piece of property along the river that is 250 meters wide and one kilometer deep. They can do anything with their property, but most people use their land for their houses and small farms. They grow things like yucca, plantains, bananas, cacao (which is what chocolate is made from), pineapples, corn, and grapes (but these are different than the grapes we have at home). They also have chickens and maybe a cow. A couple families also have pigs.


Cacao Plant and Open Pod:


During the 1980s and 90s, an oil company wanted to use their land to get oil and to build a pipeline. The Sani did not want them to do this, but the government supported the oil company. In the end, an agreement was reached and the Sani let the oil company explore their land for oil in exchange for the oil company building a school, community center, medical center, providing them with a doctor once a week, and providing funds to build the lodge. The Sani Community then built the lodge and now runs it themselves. The lodge is an important part of the Sani Community's two goals which are the preservation of the land and the development of their educational system. All the profits from the lodge are used to support these goals.

While we were at the lodge, we did a lot of hikes in the rainforest, went for canoe rides, and watched birds from the top of a 100 foot tall observation deck built around a tree.










Bird Tower and View From Top:


On the hikes, we saw all kinds of birds including parrots, macaws, toucans, potoos, an owl, kingfishers, hawks, egrets, herons, and many more birds that we don’t remember the names of. We also five kinds of monkeys, frogs, and lots of insects. One night we went for a night hike and saw five kinds of tree frogs including a poison dart frog. We also saw two tarantulas, several types of stick insects, giant grasshoppers, katydids, and enormous millipedes. Some of the millipedes were about 8 inches long. When we were walking in the woods, we were surrounded by giant trees, huge ferns, and lots of roots. There were also enormous conga ants, fire ants, and leaf cutters that carried leaves along the forest floor. Some of the trees were covered in vines and something called a strangler fig. Jeremy said that sometimes the vines and figs get so thick and heavy that they pull the tree down. We also heard lots of birds calling and singing, and insects. Sometimes we also heard monkeys screeching. There was one monkey called a howler monkey that made a really loud roar, kind of like a jaguar or lion.

Centipede and Conga Ants:


Stick Bug and Leaf Cutter Ants:


Butterfly and Tarantula in tree:


One night we went out on a canoe ride on the lagoon to see caimans. Caimans are reptiles that are similar to alligators. We would shine our flashlights across the water and wherever there was a yellow reflection on the water, there was a caiman. When we saw one, we would paddle to it and try to get a closer look. The biggest one we saw was about 10 feet and we got within 10 feet of it. It was cool to see it. When we were looking for another caiman that was near the shore, a frog jumped off a tree and landed on daddy’s knee. The frog was bright yellow and had very sticky fingers.

On one day, we went across the Napo River to see some clay licks in Yasuni National Park. The Yasuni Park is a little smaller than the size of Connecticut and has over 500 species of birds, over 700 types of plants, over 150 species of mammals, and more than 100 species of amphibians. They say this amount of biodiversity is similar to that of the entire United States!

The first clay lick was a large wall of clay on a hill. The parrots came there and would lick the clay. The clay helped them neutralize toxins that build up in their stomachs from all the fruit seeds they eat. There were about 1,000 parrots there. They would hang out in trees, fly down to eat some clay, then fly back to the trees. It was very loud because all the parrots were squawking. At a different clay lick, parakeets came to eat clay. This clay lick was much smaller and looked like a small cave the birds had dug into a hill. When we first got there, something had scared them away. We waited for an hour while the parakeets slowly worked their way down from the trees. Finally one parakeet came all the way down. A few seconds later there were hundreds of them flying in to eat clay.

One morning we visited the Sani Community’s center. We got to see the school. There are about 120 students from pre-school through “high school”. The school is really only two small buildings. One is for pre-school and the other has about 5 classrooms. In the classrooms, there is a chalkboard and several small wooden desks. The students were working on math when we were there. There were no decorations in the room, but there were drawings painted on the walls. It looked like the walls had not been painted for several years and there were only one or two light bulbs in each room. On two sides of each room, the top half of the wall was open to the outside to let light and air in. Next to the schools, there were a few small houses on stilts that were for the teachers to live in. There was also a small health center that doctor came to about once a week. The community used both traditional medicine from plants and modern medicine from the doctor that came once a week. One of their traditional medicines was from a tree called “dragons blood”. When you cut the tree, red sap came out that was good for lots of things like cuts, head aches, and other pains. They also used sap from rubber trees to put on cuts, kind of like a band aid. The community had just started to build a drying center for cacao and were hoping to start making their own chocolate. It was neat to visit the community center, but it is hard to imagine living there all the time. It is nothing like living in our house or going to our school.

While in the rainforest, we also learned how to use a blow gun, got to eat ants that tasted like lemons, and tried fishing for piranha. Unlike fishing for other fish, we did not have to worry about being quite. Instead, we would put meat on our hooks, drop it in the water, and then bang on the water to create splashes similar to an animal struggling to swim. We had lots of bites, but it was hard to get them hooked!

Everything about the Amazon was awesome.

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.