Doing a blog with spanish prompts

is really difficult. Would you know that Crear means to create? Well, it does. Didn´t know what I was missing by doing all my posts via my onboat email. Still in Quito and I just read Rich´s post. He summed up our bus trip to Quito very well. I´ll add that the rapidly running mountain streams and huge varriety of vegetation made me ever so happy. Can´t imagine a nicer trip. My eyes were jammed up against the window the entire 8 hours-a true feast.

In the last 3 days we saw fantastic art and interesting history descriptions as well as viewing amazingly preserved artifacts dating as early as 1000 b.c. That was day one. Day two we visited a variaty of churches. Some so well preserved that they glittered with the original gold leaf applied in the 1800´s and others so dismally maintained that we are not sure how much longer they´ll be standing. Rich had a very interesting observation. Everywhere we looked there were paintings and statues of the Virgin Mary and other women indoctrinated into sainthood. His question was "how could the catholic church rever women on one hand and then treat the general populace of the same sex as lesser and subservient beings?" Hummm. Very interesting.
Today, day 3, we took the TeleferiQo to the top of Rucu Pichincha to the altitude of 4,200 m. Photos will follow soon. After taking the tram to the top we then spent 2 hours walking further up the mountain. What a rush. At that altitude we both had to take many breaks but so enjoyed the views. We stopped and chatted with a South African couple who are on the way to Galapogos and then Peru before heading back home.

Tomorrow we are off to Mindo. From what we hear it is a small town in the middle of beautiful country side. The highlights are bird and butterfly viewing and playing in waterfalls. I´ll write more after our visit. Land travel is so different than our cruising in Ceilidh. I am enjoying this trip and have to admit I´ll look forward to going "home". Well, all for now and love to you all.

from the yin side