From Bolivia to Colombia, the majority of the large cities are situated above 2000m located on several high plateaus in the Andes mountain range. The cities, while varied all have certain things in common and Quito was no exception. While 2800m above sea level doesn’t compare to La Paz’s 3650m, you still get the shortness of breath, pollution problems, cold temperatures and cloudy skies setting in every afternoon. Don’t get us wrong, Quito has a majestic historical town filled with colonial-era churches and monasteries and is full of Ecuadorian culture – I think we’ve just had enough of the Andean cities. Continue reading →

From the hippie-surfer town of Mancora, we headed to Ecuador’s equivalent – Montañita. Way too many blogs compare the two and we stayed outside of Mancora and therefore, couldn’t do a proper comparison. Instead, this post will start by featuring the dogs of Montañita. At first we thought all of these dogs were strays, playing freely on the beach, in the waves and wandering the towns few streets. After a few days we came to realize that most of these dogs (if not all) seem to have owners. The owners let them run around playing most of the day while they work/surf/play and then reconnect at some point or another. You’ll notice if one gets too rough or too far away some stranger will start yelling after it. Given they all love to play in the ocean they rated as the cleanest dogs we had seen in ages and we happily petted them. Continue reading →