After finishing the volunteer work I headed back down to Riobamba and on to the beautiful town of Cuenca. I walked through the streets of town early on sunday morning, women were setting up stands with flowers, an old man shaved in front of the mirrow at the entrance of his panama-hat shop, women in tradicional colourful skirts were walking by the cathedral facing the "Parque Calderon". We found a nice bar where we spend a lot of time, too. Early monday morning I took a bus back up to Chunchi to join in for a hike to the "lost pyramid" of Puñay, certainly the highlight this week...we climbed up for about 2-3 hours till we reached a rock where you had an amazing view: the clouds were actuelly below, huging the surrounding mountains...we walked up the rest through "fields of gold" to the very top, where we camped out to see the sunset- with the clouds below- looking like a huge salt lake or a foaming ocean - STUNNING!!!!!! I didn't sleep much that night because it was quite cold and I was relieved when I finally saw the sun reappear behind the mountains in the morning, but it was soooo worth it !! I did quite a lot of hikes this week, I've been to several National Parks like Cajas and Podocarpus, spotting birds ( cheeky hummingbirds who would stop for a second right in front of you just to be off the very next moment) and just being out in nature ( the word relax doesn't fit though - too much hiking).  The last place in Ecuador I've been to was Vilcabamba, were I did some horsebackriding, before I took a night bus to the peruvian border, sneaked across it at 3.15 this morning and headed straight to a city called Chiclayo, in dusty Peru......

 

  

I started to work in the "centro ecologico Zanjarajuno" east of Puyo 2 weeks ago and enjoyed it a lot. During the first week we ´ve been rebuilding paths (while the monkeys passed in the trees above us), which meant cleaning up the old path, carrying bags of gravel up and building boundaries by choping pieces of wood with a machete to stop the gravel from being washed away by heavy rain.  Rain around noon told us that it´s lunchtime, and helped us to get rid of at least a bit of the dirt. We also fed the animals, lots of monkeys, a weasel, different parrots and turtles, aligators, a guanda ( looked like a huge rat), and - last but not least- a tapir ( the guy of the center was very concerned about that one,as it might be hunted and eaten by someone, so he went looking for it all the time ). Lot´s of funny scenes come into my mind when thinking of the animals....one of the monkeys picked up a glove, put it over his little hand and waved at us through the window.... once he managed to get into the house,he stole an egg and jumped up and down in amazement before he crashed the egg on the table....... a cheeky parrot jumped at our table and made us laugh, and as he was imitating us in a perfect way, we had to laugh even harder...a "cusumbo" visited us at night now and then to have a banana and a sip of water out of the toilett......other scenes are for others to tell......we fell asleep in company of cockroaches and mice to the sounds of the jungle and woke up to the sounds of monkeys banging at our roof. I spend the weekend in nearby Banos, a nice town surrounded by mountains. The road between Puyo and Banos is quite scenic, lots of waterfalls to have a look at and lush green vegetation. This week we did some reforestation - planted little plants along a path all the way down to a river ( the ecuadorians where singing all the time as loud as they could) and went for a refreshing swim in the river at noon, marveling at beautiful huge blue butterflies flying along the shore. One night after sunset we went out with 2 biologists in heavy rain and thunder to check on the population of a frog called "Atelopus spumarius" at a certain stretch of jungle, getting all muddy while making our way through the dark; also spotting other frogs, insects, moths, grashoppers and crickets and returning  home somewhen after midnight.

 

 

I left Otavalo and headed back to Quito, and traveled further south to the Cotopaxi National Park. We hiked up to the end of the glacier on the volcano, at about 5000 meters above NN, for a "breathtaking" view. I went on to Latacunga, a good starting point for hikes in the surrounding like the Quilotoa- Loop. The Quilotoa-Lake is a beautiful crater lake, whose colors - blue and green - never seem to mix up, but create new looks and shapes all the time. I took a bus south to Riobamba, vendors hoping on and off all the time, selling everything from antibacterial soap, dvds, "fritatas" to madarinas. I started to work as an volunteer in the animal rescue center at the "centro ecologico zanjarajuno", east of a small town called Puyo a week ago, more about that next week....

I kept on discovering Quito at the beginning of the week, and took spanish lessons aswell. Thursday morning I took an early bus up to a town called Otavalo, a very good time to leave Quito as it turned out. Otavalo is well know for it's (saturday) market, but there are also nice places to go to in the surrounding, for example the Cascade de Peguche (waterfall) or the Laguna Cuicocha, a crater lake. Well, on saturday we went down to town early, but the market was in full swing already. We went to the animal market first, were you could buy pigs, chicken, cows, guinea pigs and many other animals. It was interesting to watch the local people: A vendor trying to convince an old couple to buy on of his pigs, women standing close to each other, negotiating about the prices in a very quiet and subliminal way, a man puting a shreeking pig in a bag... but not only the animal market was crowded, the whole city had turned into a huge beehive, on most of the streets there were stands, people selling and buying fruits, veggies, shoes, clothes - and at the central place -the plaza de ponchos- locals were selling beautiful handicrafts and textiles, but as those were things to be bought by tourists only, this place was rather deserted while the other streets and places were thriving and bursting with life.