Lay back and relax...

Deciding upon one of the more than 300 Fiji Islands after I arrived here was quite a challenge. I decided for the Wayalailai Island about 2.5h off the 'mainland' coast and the first island of the Yasawa Islands group. Good decision. Sun, sea, sand, palm trees like in the pamphlets! But...after the first day laying around at the beach, I already had somehow enough of it (think I'm not really a sunbunny) and I tried to walk around the island during low tide. Quite a challenge. After about 3h of walking (and some nice snorkeling in between) I couldn't get any further because the waves were already too high and I tried to climb up the stones - bad idea...It took me so much time to fight through the dense vegetation that afterwards I couldn't get back along the coast because the waves were already too high - about 6h after my round-the-island trial I finally arrived back at my resort - very exhausted and really happy to just lay around doing nothing :)

Even though the Fiji islands may be very beautiful, they're at the same time cramped with tourists. Virtually everybody goes to the Nadi Bay area first (after arriving at the airport) and then decides upon one of the two main tourist organizations, Awesome Adventures or Sea Turtle Cruises, which both have their own cruises. Best way to travel here would be most probably with an own boat...

After meeting several people who said New Zealand was the favorite country they visited, I'm looking forward to fly to Auckland tomorrow morning and I might even try one of the Great Hikes there...

From urban to real jungle

Ok, we heard about loads of petty thefts here in Quito and some people we spoke to even got robbed with knifes. We were quite cautious especially when it got dark, but we really didn't expect to get robbed at 10pm only 1 street away from all restaurants and bars and just about 50m from our hostel... 3 guys came towards us and suddenly two of them hold me and tried to get my wallet and one of them tried to rob Franziska. I shouted twice towards the nearby street, but nobody reacted. Fortunately they only stole my wallet (with 2$ and my cards in it) and Franziska was able to successfully hold back her assaulter. Fortunately for us, because she had all the money and even the passport on her :) A somehow very frightening experience which stayed in our mind for days after...

We were glad to drive away from Quito towards the south to Tena, the heart of the Amazon, as they call it here. A cute little city and a gateway to the surrounding jungle. We booked a tour for 3 days and slept in the middle of the Amazonas in Cabanas (little wooden houses), went for jungle trips, lay at the nearby riverbank and got in contact with the local community of Quechua. We also tried a shaman cleaning ritual where we drank some hallucinogen 'drugs' made out of jungle plants - a very interesting experience :) !

After this jungle-trip, our five weeks in Ecuador already came to an end and me and Franziska go separate ways for a bit more than a month :( . She is now already in San Franzisco where she's doing her Assistant Teachership and I arrived in Nadi on Fidji where I'm most probably going on a island-hopping-trip starting tomorrow...

Into the wild

Back from a trip into Ecuadors volcano-region in the south of Quito, we're still recovering from the freezing temperatures in our first tent-experience during this trip on 3900 meters above sea level.
But first things first: About ten days ago, we headed to an extinct vulcano near Quilotoa which is now filled with blue-green water - an absolutely fantastic view when the sun hits the sea and it turnes from azure-blue to turquise-green! With about 3850 meters above sea level, the paths which went 150m down to the laguna were quite breathtaking (in every sense of the word) and the nights rather cold...

Afterwards we headed to the small city of Chugchilan and went on a 7h-hike to a nearby cloud forest - it was like a jungle in the middle of a sparse vegetation on 2800 meters where we saw different kinds of hummingbirds and other small animals. We also did horse riding down a nearby canyon and tried to stress the poor animals up the hill in a galopp (rather unsuccessfully) :)

After a harsh ride crumpled in a pick-up in the back of a car over a pass of about 5000 meters (which was reeeeally cold), we visited a small local market in Saquisili and headed right afterwards to the Cotopaxi National Park. At the Lake Limpiopungo in the park, we decided to put our tent and watch the vulcano clearing up its clouds in the evening. An amazing view!
The next day, after a VERY cold night on 3900 meters, we decided to climb the vulcano up to its base camp on 4800 meters - definitely one of the toughest hikes we ever made. Short of breath, with headache and dizziness we finally reached the camp after about 5 hours of walking. It was unfortunately quite cloudy & we soon decided to start our descent...3h later, when we reached our tent again, we were only able to cook some tea and immediately went to sleep afterwards.
We still felt a bit dizzy the next day when we put our tents together and headed back to Quito - our base-station for the next trip towards the Amazonas in a couple of days...