We're Home

Ryan sick in bed with tons of gatorade, fiber bars, and pedialite. This is how we spent most of Valentines Day, all of Monday and some of Tuesday.

At the beginning of the Cuicocha hike. See that ridge? That's what we hiked along. Pretty strenuous for a first hike.

Ryan bought a flute at the handicrafts market. yay. He can play two songs: When the saints go marching in and Jingle Bells.

At the waterfall before being sick, after the market!

We got home from Otavalo yesterday afternoon. It was a really great trip with one minor bump. On Sunday we went for a hike at Cuicocha lake. It was a pretty tough hike. We basically hiked along the ridge of these mountains overlooking the lake for 4-5 hours. Ryan got pretty sick from dehydration while we were hiking and it took him a couple of days to recover. Hence, coming home on Tuesday instead of the originally planned Sunday.

All in all though the trip was really great. The hostel was AMAZING! If anyone is ever in Otavalo we would highly recommend Rose Cottage. It was outside of the town, nestled in between valleys and mountains. It was so beautiful and so relaxing. The perfect escape from the city. Plus, we really got a long well with the people that run the hostel. Basically the place used to be a family's vacation home. Then about a year ago they decided to make it into a hostel. Instead of building one big building, they built a bunch of smaller houses. Each member of the family takes a turn living at the hostel and running it. One of the sons, Richard, had just arrived a couple of days before we arrived with his girlfriend, Sophie, and Sophie's brother, Alex. Sophie and Richard are going to be running the hostel until at least June. We exchanged phone numbers and hope to see them sometime again!

Anyways, we'll share more about the trip in the next couple of days. In the meantime, check out the photos on facebook. The album is Otavalo and they're on my account.

MULUB,

Taylor

PS. We're praying for the Matson family.