After leaving Quito, we headed to Coca, which lies along the Amazon River. We spent a few hours seeing a small part of the town, including a local market.

We took a boat to the Yarina Lodge, where we would spend the next week. Nestled deep the rainforest, Yarina Lodge is remote, but offers cozy cabins, (limited) hot water, and a friendly staff who transported us around the Amazon.

One of the most amazing parts of this trip was when we visited this pond at night. Although my camera couldn’t capture it, the pond lit up with glowing algae and the sounds of the rain forest were incredible!

Watch the video below to see our adventure!

I have been avoiding blogging about our trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos for a long time–not because it wasn’t a good trip (it was great!) but because editing the photos, sorting them, and uploading them to the blog would take so much time.

Enter my long forgotten friend: Flickr.

I finally figured out I could just upload my photos to Flickr and pop a slideshow into my blog. That saves me hours of sorting, resizing, and saving for web. Hallelujah.

We started and ended our trip in Quito, Ecuador. We toured the city and learned about the culture. We also ate a lot of food. A lot. In Ecuador they often put popcorn in their soups, much like we might add crackers. This became something we all looked forward to at dinner each night.

Overall, we did find Ecuadorian food a bit bland–but they often serve an incredible hot sauce called Aji that we used on everything. Everything.

And if you go, be sure to try Canelazo–it’s incredible! This warm, alcoholic drink is often served in the colder regions and at markets–a bit like Gluhwein in Germany, though an entirely different (but still delicious) drink.

We honestly didn’t get a lot of time to just explore Quito–and the area we stayed in was pretty touristy. One night we went to dinner with a host family and ate a traditional home-cooked meal, and I really enjoyed seeing what the homes were like. We also tried Quaker–an Ecuadorian drink made with oatmeal! It sounds weird, but was surprisingly good.

After our other adventures in the Amazon and Galapagos (I promise to blog about those soon!), we returned to Quito and visited the Botanic gardens which were full of incredible plants, and Inti-ñan park which was a hilarious tourist-trap full of terrible taxidermy. I did manage to balance an egg on a nail and we enjoyed seeing the water drain clockwise, counter-clockwise, and straight down depending on which side of the equator we were on. It was terrible, in a good way.

Apparently the official Middle of the World monument is off by several hundred feet, so hit up the tourist trap if you actually want to stand on the Equator.

Watch our video below for more!