Buenas tardes from Ecuador. I´m in San Pablo Del Lago at Hacienda Cusin and I´m having a fantastic stay here.
I spent my first full day in Ecuador getting used to the altitude and being partially sick. I also hiked for 3 hrs which probably didn´t help things.
Yesterday was my second day in Ecuador and I took a 4 hour horseback ride up to see a volcano up close and in person. Sadly I have no pictures from the ride because it was rather treacherous and I was more concerned with staying on my horse and having it not break a leg than taking pictures. I´ll show yáll on Google Earth where it was.. Vulcan Imbrabura.
And today was the most whirlwindy of all. I went on a guided tour of the province of Imbrabura. Each town here is known for some form of artistry. I´m not a big shopper and I didn´t bring much cash with me so I didn´t come away with all the beautiful things I saw but I learned a ton from my bilingual guide Hans. He made me speak Spanish all day much to my dismay / embarassment because 5 minutes after I was in his car he found out I actually truly understand it and wanted me to practice. It was incredibly endearing really albeit I´m braindead now.
The weirdest thing is what makes the title of this post..... I went to a town called Agato today that´s about 30 mins from where I´m staying here. It´s famous for the weaving and the master weaver of the town gave me a demonstration that I can´t possibly describe othe rthan it´s truly authentic, takes crazy concentration and precision and looks incredibly hard. He makes everything from scratch in the Andean style. Well after the demo I went to his shop where there were some newspaper articles. One of the articles was about how he did a demo at the Smithsonian. And the other was a set of articles from when he, his daughter and his wife went to the Rhinebeck Crafts Fair in 1989. Yup, that´s right. This little old man from Agato Ecuador that weaves everything from scratch in the most beautiful way and his barefoot spinning wife who fed me popcorn have been to RHINEBECK. Holy small world after all!!! I was so floored with excitement I could barely explain to Miguel (the weaver) in Spanish that he´d been to my hometown. It was sooo neat and his wife was adorable and gave me a hug for it.
Ahhh this is a good trip already. Tomorrow I´m back to the capitol of Quito and then Friday I fly to the Galapagos with Amy, Danielle and our tour group for aweek!!
I´ve already seen condors and eagles and kestrels and lots of random farm animals and volcanos... yet I´m still excited for the Galapagos.
Adios de Ecuador.
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