So sorry for the 5 months of total neglect – we have most definitely been slacking on the blog but otherwise have been plenty busy.  So unfortunately for us we have A LOT to catch up on but we are going to attempt to rehash the last several months and keep this blog going.  It will probably be mostly highlights but it was been an incredible time and we’d hate to neglect this huge portion of our trip. So here goes nothing….

February 11-14, 2014

After a good but hectic time in Peru, we were both feeling a bit weary of the traveling lifestyle.   In a way, things lost their luster and we were beginning to lose our appreciation for the incredible things that we were experiencing.  We weren’t quite ready to throw in the towel and head home but we were both feeling the need to make ourselves useful, learn something new, and stay a place a while.  So we holed up in Lima for a few days, ordered some dominos pizzas to get a cheap, greasy, taste of home and consulted Workaway for some volunteer opportunities. Two Domino’s specials and 48 hours later we had arranged a volunteer gig in Ecuador just north of Quito.

The trip from Lima to Quito was a doozey but we did a lot of research and decided to stick out the 40+ hour journey instead of trying to break it up and piece meal it together.  So we took a direct bus from Lima to Guayaquil and then from there took a bus to Quito. It was rather uneventful and a fairly smooth trip other than the first leg where Brent was forced to sit sideways for the entirety of the trip thanks to the totally unaware, curnoodly couple sitting in front of us who made the entire 30 hour journey in the full 180 degree recline.  Anyhow, we both survived and were excited to be in Ecuador!

We had a couple of days in Quito where we recouped from the bus-lag and hit a couple of cool things – one of the Equator monuments, the Basílica del Voto Nacional, and some of Old Town.

For the equator – we found that there were a couple of monuments but we chose to go to the Quitsato monument which is a giant sundial spanning 54 meters across. I will say that its not much to see for how long it took us to get there but either way it was fun to say we’ve been in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres at the same time.As for the Basilica – it was most definitely one of the most beautiful churches we have seen in South America thus far. All in all we really liked what we saw of Quito.