trip to coast

Hello again, now I would like to put some pictures from our trip to Atacames. Now, let me preface this by saying that the coast might as well be another planet compared to the Sierra, where we live. The climate is different (hotter), the accent is different, the pace of life and customs are different, and the food is different (as you can imagine-seafood.) There are other differences I cannot even put my finger on but the bottom line is that they are different worlds within the same country. We really had a nice time. We took a bus through fun mountain roads. Imagine going from about 9000 feet to almost sea level in about 40 miles or so-that's a lot of curves. The trip there took about 7 hours as the trip back did. So we almost spent more time travelling than being at the beach. We did have a nice full day there and an evening and one morning before we came back. We stayed with our friend Eleanor, at her brother in law's house in Atacames. Now, for some pictures...
This first one is of Mt. Pichincha. You will have to click on the picture and enlarge it to really appreciate it. That is snow on the top. It usually doesn't have snow but did this day, as did some of the other mountains. So, imagine seeing snow-capped mountains and ocean all in one day-that is Ecuador! You could also see jungle as well in the same day but that would be a really long day. This is also South Quito in the picture as well. We drove by all this on the way to the coast.

This is typical coastal transport, or at least in the town that we saw. They had these little carts pushed along by bikes or motorcycles. We went on a ride in one of them.

Here is a picture of us at the beach before we returned to the coast.

This is a Quichua indigenous woman at the beach. The thing that is interesting is that most Quichua live in the Sierra in the mountains and it was funny to see her here in her traditional dress. Anyways, we had a nice time. We went swimming, ate seafood, went on a boat ride, and walked on the beach. The not fun part was picking up amoebas in some juice that we drank. Fortunately, they didn't attack until the trip was over but it made for a long night once we were home.