Cartagena

After 20 hours of bus rides....we have arrived on the Caribbean Coast... Cartagena and it is awesome!!

Teja

Throwing rocks at gun powder....yep thats what we are doing!

Coffee Country

We traveled to the small town in the hills of central Colombia. We stayed at the Plantation House (an awesome hostel where we had a fireplace in our room). The owners also have a Finca or a coffee farm near the property. Due to heavy rains, most of Team T stayed behind and played with toys. Daddy went on a hike (he was equipped with his rain gear pants and all) through the mud and learned in depth all about the coffee plantation. He gained quite an appreciation of what goes into coffee.
Yummy!

Solento was a great little town to chill out for a few days. Unfortunately it was a little wetter than we had hoped but we were able to rest up and enjoy having a fireplace in our room to keep down the chill.

3rd Birthday!

While we were in Solento (Coffee country) Little Man T celebrated his third birthday. Nootch makes some great castle birthday wrapping paper. Spray snow, slime, and the glowing helicopter arrow were some of his favorite gifts.

ZIPLINING IN POPAYAN

This was a special treat. Outside of Popayan, there is a reserve called Las Ardillas with 1200 meters of canopy cables. We bussed and walked out to the reserve. At first only the girls were going to do it. But after our first zipline cable Little man T was ready to sign up. It became a family activity. We spent a good chunk of the day flying over trees and canyons on all 6 Ziplines. Little man T reports every night he is thankful for ziplines at our family dinner.

COLOMBIA

We made it into Colombia. The southern portion is very green and beautiful. We did some hiking to a waterfall and a hotspring. We´ve been pretty wet in this part of the country. Dry laundry was a little dodgy the last few weeks. We´ve spent more time on the road traveling from place to place. Security seems good. There is a heavy police presence and military presence in this country. It´s pretty routine to have to get off the bus and be lightly searched from time to time. I guess that is a good thing. People are genuinely curious about us, traveling with our kids. Again we get a lot of looks and the kids get plenty of ¨Hay que lindo...¨ We try to stay on the gringo trail best we can.

Traveling by land can be quite exhausting. It´s more expensive and we are traveling the Colombian way (kids on our laps). The country is much bigger than Ecuador, thus the road trips are longer. We go through a lot of barf bags as we wind through the mountainy roads. The scenery is quite worth the down sides. Even Nootch agrees, though she is glad the bus trips are winding down. It´s really the best way to see Colombia.

Wild Condors and Captive Ones

Team T made a special trip to the Condor Park in Otavalo, Ecuador to see these rare birds. We were very lucky to see one of 40 left in the wild. Apparently he comes to visit the captive ones. We also saw a bald eagle up close and a harpy eagle. That´s the harpy eagle right above.

Our kids LOVE birds of prey. We pretend that we are condors and eagles alot. It makes a great game to get Little man T to keep up when we are walking around town.

Teleferico - Gondola Rides in Quito

We took the big cable car above the heights of Quito. Little man T thought this was so exciting. We didn´t have great views of the tops of the volcanoes but some awesome views of Quito. We hiked around and enjoyed the altitude.

Colombia

Team T is currently traveling up the center of Colombia. Yes, thats right, Colombia. We are staying at a coffee plantation in Solento. We have been so busy traveling that we havent had time to download photos for a while. We are headed to the Caribbean next. Lots of travel ahead (20 bus hours).

Hope all is well....

ON THE EQUATOR

Team T straddled the two hemispheres yesterday(technically, rumor has it the monument is off 100m.). But it was well worth the hour and a half trip outside of QUITO to hit this tourist trap. We had some fun with it!

THE AMAZON !

Team T made it to the Amazon basin. In Ecuador, they call it the Oriente. We were anxious to get in and get out. After previous trips to the Malaysian rainforest years ago, we knew that this would not be the most comfortable part of the trip to south america, but a necessary experience!
We are high altitude and cool climate folks.

We took a 6 hour bus from Tena to Coca. We set out on our own on the Rio Napo River. We hired a boat driver to take us to Panacocha five hours down river. From there we began our five day adventure.

Ecuador´s amazon basin is exploited for oil. The Rio Napo river has oil exploration happening all over. From the port at Coca, we watched shifts of oil workers load in boats and speed away down the river. Barges like this one are very common. We saw many big oil rigs somewhat, but not really camoflauged in the rainforest along the banks. It is definitely the livlihood of many Ecuadorians but again, I have second thoughts about driving my large european car back home in the states.

What? No rain in the Rainforest??

We hit really low waters coming out of the lagoon the last day on both rivers. At one point daddy and all the guys in the boat got out and push the boat around to find deep enough water to get the boat through. This also happened on the main Rio Napo. We were weaving all over the place. It took 8 hours to make the journey back to Coca.

First Stop Panacocha
Our plan was just to get to Panacocha and see what happens. We opted to pass on the5 day $350 per person jungle lodge experience since nature watching with a 2 year old is unrealistic and a buzz kill for other tourists in the group. We set out on our own.

Panacocha is about 5-6 hours down river. We took a cargo boat down the Rio Napo river and got out at this tiny small village. We found one place to stay which was quite rustic. We had a tree full of black vultures, a pig, lots of chickens, and some cool spiders as our neighbors. We shared two small beds with mosquito nets. The bugs were bad. Not so much the mosquitos, but the tiny noseeums were awful. We just kind of hung out. The kids played as they always do. One made nests and pretended she was a bird. The other was really into the dirt. Mom just passed the time laying around and trying not to get to aggrevated by the heat and bugs. We took short walks into the jungle and saw amazing things. But it´s not a tame environment and one little T got 3 stings in her foot and our jungle walks were cut short. Daddy also got some stings in the rainforest.

After two nights in Panacocha we hooked up with a group of Ecuadorean Tourism advisors and caught a ride with them to a nearby lagoon. It was about an hour and a half ride up a tributary. The real jungle cruise! We were weaving around all kinds of downed trees. It was fabulous. They happened to get out at the Amazon Dolphin Lodge to check it out. We hopped out too and worked out a deal with the lodge people to stay for two nights. It turned out to be the same tour we had opted out of earlier. But we worked out a deal to stay on with them the rest of the week and catch a ride back to Coca.

I think we had the best of both worlds. The small quaint local experience was more teamT style...make it up as you go. But the ecolodge provided some comforts and a fabulous guide to enrich our experience in the thick of it.

AMAZON DOLPHIN LODGE

We took a jungle boat ride up a tributary to the Piguali lagoon. We joined up with a group at the Amazon Dolphin Lodge for 2 nights. This boat ride was the real jungle cruise, with real piranah, real snakes, and real aligators (caiman). We went on some nature walks and fishing excursions while staying at the ecolodge. Our guide was amazing. He was very knowledgable about the medicinal purposes of the flora and fauna. Two days before we joined the group, he was pulling out large anacondas out of the river. We saw the pictures. We saw some of the wildest plant and animal life while staying at the lagoon. Our guide made us bracelets and necklaces with local plant fibers and seeds. He also gave us temporary jungle tatoos with a local plant.

OUR NEIGHBORS

This giant tarantula was a nightly visitor on one of the huts at our lodge. He was a little bigger than an adult male hand.

I love insects that mimic other objects! Here is a leaf insect that hung out at the lodge with us.

PIRANAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Piranah fishing is what a trip to the Amazon basin is all about. This is one of two fish he caught.

Little Nootch was the first to catch a fish that day.
Mom and Little Man T stayed back lounging in the hammocks at the Amazon Dolphin Lodge. This was some serious fishing time for dad. no messing around. It´s not everyday that he can piranah fish.

Can you see the teeth?

This was our favorite part of the fishing adventure. The chef cleaned and fried these babies up for us to eat. They were beautiful and very delicious.