Update

From San Agustin, we traveled up to Popayan and down to Pasto on an adventurous ride that took us over unpaved mountain roads in an inconruously clean and svelt-interiored bus.  The decor and cleanliness were unfortunately not representative of the engine condition.  Somewhere on an uphill slope in a sparsely populated dry mountanous region, the engine puttered and kicked the bucket, right infront of some unlucky familys cinderblock house.  Passengers held out hope while first the driver, then his assistent, then the rest of the males onboard gradually got out, examined, ofered advice and removed a liter of suspicious yellow liquid. The family´s mule looked on, expressing little confidence, from his post in the yard . Next the young children climbed out, looking lustfully after the family´s slices of watermelon. their mothers, and finally the rest of us followed suit after a final, fruitless attempt to start the engine.  We ended up flagging down other passing buses and our company must have paid the rest of the way for all of the pasengers to get to Pasto.  The bus is probably still there being eyed by an indignant mule.
The bus we caught was, not surprisingly full, so Tom sat shotgun, I perched on a padded stool , wedged between him and the engine box.  We rode down the winding pan american, enjoying the practically floor to ceiling views of some of the most impressive mountains and deepest gorges I have seen, stained purple in the dusk.  I had to hold on tightly everytime we went around a right-hand turn to keep from teetering over.
We arrived famished, filthy and exhaused in Pasto and commenced a huricane-like storm of face-stuffing,showering and collapsing into bed.  Pasto must be the south american capital of puff pastry .  the stuff was tasty and ubiquitous.
From Pasto we continued down to Ipiales and an impressive cathedral spanning a beautiful pine treed gorge.  We were also the victims of some head-scraching petty theft.  Toothbrushes, toothpaste, a broken hat, an old t shirt, and the bottom half of my long underwear.  At least we are contributing to the oral hygene of dim witted colombian theives.  Also unfortunate- gone is the beard-trimmer.  I´m not sure how sincerely disapointed Tom is.
Quito, such a high city, though it was a bit too cloudy to enjoy any views.  What we enjoyed most was Ana Cris´ home and hospitality and her mom´s blackberry juice! Ana Cris is working for the Ecuadorian branch of Nestle, for the time being until she becomes president and fixes everythin. Poor girl was subjected to countless interviews, no not Ecuadorian politics, but how Nestle processes chocolate . . . She also took us to the actual GPS calculated 0 0 0 longitude, where I balanced an egg on the head of a nail and was filled with delight to see water going down a drain in both directions ( counterclockwise n the northern hemisphere, no swirl on the line, and clockwise in the southern.. like our respective hurricanes)  so the simpsons had it right.

Next came an afternoon of shatterng Melanies dreams where Tom had to relay the inconvenient facts to me about the Quilotoa loop we hoped to hike.  It was 200 km long.  camping in between towns was unadvisable, hostals more likely. our packs were heavy.  we aren´t exactly in shape.  It was quite cloudy.  Crushing news.  which i hadn´t quite been able to wrap my head arround in my flufly north american dreams.  This inspired a frantic 4pm friday afternoon search for some guide company to get us nto the beautiful wildnerness. quickly!  The pollution and litter and poverty of south american cities and the painfully slow, stopping every 5 km to pick up or drop off someone, progress of the bus was getting to us. me.  we were, I guess, asking to be ripped off.  silly gringos.
We ended up on a 2 day , one night trip up to , Cotopaxi national park, an impressive active volcano-  probably more impressive outside the wintry cloudy season.  We hiked up to a refuge at 4800 m- an odd head swimming experience, then went down, not to camp in the wilderness- actually they don´t really do that in Ecuador?, but to a fenced camping area with white table clothed restaurant. We had some very tasty trout and a nice experience, but couldn´t quite figure where we´d been misunderstood.  The next morning we had a beautiful walk around the park, past semi wild horses and pre inca ruins and natural springs. Then were left uncerimoniously at a gas station to flag down the next bus.  lesson learned.

We passed briefly through Riobamba and Cuenca, which while wreathed in the usual depressing pollution, half painted cinder block and corrugated steel houses (please excuse my insensitivity) both have beautifully preserved colonial centers that you stumble into with no small degree of surprise.  the new cathedral in cuenca surely rivals or surpasses most european cathedrals.  Its expansive interior is coated in carrera marble and boasts a towering massive gold columned thing around the altar.

Now we´re in Villcambamba, beautiful, idylic, lots of hikes and nature preserves, marvelling at the flowers, discussing the relative advantages of visiting cloud forests, cuzco, machu pichu.  Are we crazy not to go to Machu Pichu?  Is this really our quotidian conversation?

 

 

This is La Casa de Francois- highly reccomended to anyone going through San Agustin.  Lots of Hammocks and friendly animals.

walking just outside of San agustin- bananas! and cows!  There were also many chickens, several of which crossed the road.

Last Saturday we decided to to a hike down into this ravine, up the other side and along to a tourist attraction of precolumbian sculptures.

bridge accross the Rio Magdelena

This is around noon after we had come up the other side with only some bread and jam.  After getting a little lost in some poor farmers coffee plants and redirected, we kept walking, and walking.  It would be a lie to say there wasn´t some hunger-induced crankiness, so handy Tom cut me some sugar cane. mmmmmm . .. sugar . . .

Altos de los Idolos, the goal of our hike, is a spot on top of a very high mountain where hills, which turned out to be burial mounds, were excavated in the 20s and 70s.  >Most of the sculptures are about 4 feet high and gard a small passageway to a burial chamber with a sarcophogus.  They also found pottery and gold objects in there, but those are now mostly in Germany. These particular ones date from 2000 years ago to 500 a.d.

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Fruits! Colombia has the most wonderful fruits!  This is papaya, lulo a round orange fruit with greenish seeds, kinda sour, and the speckldy orange one witha long stem is a granadilla.  Inside are slimy grey seeds that you have to slurp down like oysters.  Luis said he used to get them in his lunch box and they called them king kong buggers. mmmm

San Agustin

This place is paradise.  You watch the sun come up on green rolling mountans, roosters crowing and cows mooing from somewhere below in the lush vegetation, birds chirping and warbling from every direction.  Two blue-green humming birds are chasing eachother among the bouganvilla. They like to rest on the bare branches of the carob tree between fits of jousting. A chesnut horse with a white blaze is happily munching.  Yesterday morning was overcast, bringing out little crested sparrows, a bright red bird with black wings and a shy little pair gold-bellied birds.  The male had a black back anbd head and the female was a softer brownish grey.Warblers of some sort?
So much grows here. Outside our room are coffee plants, apples, bananas, oranges and limes, little lettuces and improble pinapples resting on spikey bushes like jaunty little hats. Never knew they grew like that. Ruffly pink hibiscus, magenta and lavender bouganvilla, wild irises and orchids.  I keep thinking how much my mom would like this place ("I'll be so happy when you're out of Colombia" she said).
So far, not a hint of a coke trafficker or FARC, only wonderfully friendly people, and plenty of other tourists in San agustine: french, dutch, italian, new zealanders- just no other americans!

bogota

Tom and Luis in the historic Candelaria district. Luis Showed us around one morning before going to meet a student for a Spanish lesson.

The buldings are all wonderful colors which contrast excellently with their tile roofs.  We still can{t figure out how the tiles stay on even after staying in a hostel where the ceiling is the underside of a tile roof.  mystery.

These are bells in the gold museum, which goes through the history, process and artistry of pre-columbian goldworking.  they hammered sautered and even used the lost wax method to acheive very impressive results. There were also teeny tiny gold animals, like wiskered rats and birds with moving wings.  Wish I{d got a photo of those- must have been altitude induced laziness.

really excellent graffiti in Bogota.  We also went to the Bolero museum(columbian painter who painted the very plum ladies with tiny feet).  The graffiti was by far much more creative and alive.

Departure

Vaccinated against multiple medieval sounding diseases and equipped with many a pair of wool socks, here we are on the eve of departure, listening to the rain with tingly stomachs.  Well, Melanie is listening to the rain.  Tom is, of course, asleep as its after ten.


Welcome to our first blogging experience as we travel through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina . . . to start, over the next 8 months.  We're both so excited to eat empanadas and asado and ceviche, see the Andes and temperate rainforests and patagonian planes, ride horses and tend goats, make cheese and artwork and work alongside some of reputedly the most welcoming people in the world.  We hope we will amuse you with many entertaining and wondrous tales of our adventures in the spectacular southern hemisphere.  
Although, it's just as likely to be a tedious account of innumerable hours of bus rides, mosquitos and cranky travelers with sore shoulders.
But here we go!
Thanks for staying in touch and being interested!


Mel and Tom