Just a brief history on Ecuador folks. Pre-Inca Ecuador isn't very well known, but the earliest tools found were in 9,000 B.C. Thus meaning that there was civilization here in the Stone Age. At around AD 1400, the Incans became very powerful in South America. After 150 years of somewhat peaceful rule, Huayna Capac gave the Incan Empire to his two sons who were half brothers. This was the first time that the Incan Empire had been divided. Once Pizarro landed, he enslaved all the indigenous that he could and appointed his brother the governor of Quito. Looking for gold, the governor sent out his friend Orellana down the Amazon. Orellana was the first man to make it all the way down the Amazon River to the Atlantic. Eugenio Espejo was a hero in the early revolutionary times. He was in and out of jail and eventually died there. The first serious attempt at freedom came in 1809. It was led by Juan Pio Montu. He and his group established a government in Quito that lasted all of 24 days. Once Gauyaquil claimed independance in October of 1820, they had the support of Simon Bolivar. It took two years to become fully detached from Spain. The decisive battle was fought n May 24, 1822. In 1941, Peru tried to take nearly 50% of Ecuador's land. This sparked a war which was soon remedied with a treaty in 1942. Due to Ecuador not recognizing these borders, there have been skirmishes up until 1998. The most serious was in 1995 where troops from both sides were killed. The 20th century has seen more periods of military rule than civilian rule. In 1996, Adbala Bucaram was deemed mentally unfit to serve as president, and was removed from office. The following president in 1997 caused an economic collapse. During this time of financial turmoil, the Ecuadorian sucre went from an exchange rate of $1=7,000 sucres to a rate of $1=25,000 sucres. When dolarization was proposed, the were massive, internationaly recognized protests that caused the president to resign. The ensueing vice president folowed through with the dolarization and prices sky rocketed. Now it is estimated that 70% of Ecuador is below the line of poverty. It also has the highest population density in South America having 45 people per square kilometer. By 2028 the population will have doubled. The three main sports are soccer (futbol), volleyball, and bullfighting. Ecuador is also very diverse and rich in its plant and wildlife. It has over 20,000 plant species as opposed to North America's 17,000. There are 1,500 species of birds which is about equal to two times the amount in North America, Europe, and Australia. There are around 300 species of mammal spread over nine national parks. With all of the environment that calls Ecuador home, some of it has to be in trouble. Oil drilling is hurting the forests and wildlife. Shrimp farming is killing off most of the mangrove swamps, and people clearing forests to plants crops and graze cows is also having a major impact on the environment. Home of much history and just as much biodiversity, Ecuador is a jewel for naturalists and environmentalists all over.

Phil

Hello everyone, here we are in Coca, Ecuador. In two days we will leave for our eleven-day trip down the Rio Napo towards Iquitos, Peru. We will be canoeing (sp?) down the Napo and Amazon rivers eventually getting to the largest city not accessible by road. We will be fishing for pirahna and hiking through the jungle with indegenous people. Once in Iquitos, plan on flying into Lima, the capital, and taking a bus to Cuzco. From there, we'll hike the Inca trail to Machu Pichu. Coca isn't the nicest place, an oil town that is extremely dirty. People here don't seem as tolerant with our poor Spanish as in other places. They see it as Ecuador, a place they shouldn't need to speak English. Which is all well and good until they are mad at us for speaking poor Spanish. We manage, though, and will be on our way. Hope all is well back home.
Phil

Well, here I find myself sitting in Quito, Ecuador. It is the capital of the country, and almost as big and sprawling as L.A. The city is much nicer than San Jose was. Our hostel is the oldest in Quito. It is amazing. There are several floors with balconies and sitting areas with spiral staircases. We will take pictures and put them up. At the moment I am putting more pictures onto Flickr. We will soon be heading to Coca where we will either rent a canoe or hop on a boat to go down the Napo river. That eventually joins with the Amazon and we will be crossing the border into Peru on the river. It will take weeks probably and we definately will not have internet access so if you all could be patient for those few weeks, it would be wonderful. So, we have safely arrived in Ecuador and are working out the details of our stay here. I just finished reading The Tesseract by Alex Garland. It is a great book, but at times confusing. If anyone has read The Beach, he wrote that as well. I recommend this book.

Phil

Hi everyone, not much time but we are getting ready to board our plane to Ecuador. The plane just arrived so we will be getting on soon. We'll update when we're in South America!

We finally are at a location where we have internet access. At the moment we are in La Fortuna, Costa Rica. It is a town built 17 km. away from Volcan Arenal. Arenal is the third most active volcano in the world. The town is very touristy, but it is nice to be able to speak English wherever we go. We took a tour the other night which was awesome. Twenty dollars and they pick you up at the hostel, take you through the rainforest explaining plants and wildlife, bring you to a vista looking at the active side of the volcano, and finally brought us to a five star resort hot springs. The forest was amazing. It is a secondary forest, which means that it is very dense but not as old. To be a primary forest, it would have to have trees that are 150+ years old. We got to see a spider monkey with her baby and also a group of howler monkeys. There were guava trees whose leaves are believed to have healing properties, and the guava fruit is high in minerals. No matter where we go down here there seems to be leafcutter ants. The reason for cutting leaves is because the leaves can produce a fungus that the ants eat. There are four different types of leafcutter ants. The queen gives birth to all the ants in the colony and there are about 6 million. The males have the shortest lives and their purpose is to mate with the queen and pass on. The females can be worker ants or a taster. The tasters check and make sure that the leaves are going to be able to produce fungus and the workers collect the leaves. Moving on from the ants now, we were hoping to see a sloth but we didn´t. The sloth´s main predator is the boa constrictor. They live off of secropia leaves, which is the reason they are so slow. The leaves are thick making it hard for the sloth to digest it´s food. The secropia leaf has properties that make it almost like a drug and it causes the sloth to sleep 20 hours a day. The actual inside of a secropia tree is hollow and ants live there. They live off of a liquid given off by the tree. They offer protection. The only animal that can afford to stay on one of the trees for a period of time is the sloth because of their thick fur, the ants can´t get to the skin to bite. Also, howler monkeys are sometimes fast enough to grab a leaf and swing away. It is dangerous for the monkeys to eat the leaves because when they sleep they may fall from the tree, and if a howler monkey falls it is exiled from the group. Due to the lack of light getting to the floor of the forest, it is hard for small plants to survive. One that does survive though, is the marantacia plant. It survives because of it´s wide leaves and it has muscles that allow it to move to face the light. One of the more obnoxious forest animals is the cicada. It lives underground eating worms then becomes a beetle for a few days making very disturbing noises. Once it´s few days are done, it goes back to living underground. Supposedly, if you are lost and dying in a rainforest, a pilon tree is a good thing to find. It reportadly gives energy to those that touch it. It grows straight up, but it´s worst enemy, the ficus, grows down from the branches bending the tree and eventually killing it. It usually takes 75 years for a ficus to kill a pilon tree. The saban tree is the largest in the forest and it is in the same family as the ficus. Although being relatives, the ficus does not stop at killing the saban tree. Last but not least there is the mimosa plant. It has muscles that allow it to move when in danger. The water pressure inside the plant causes it to move when it is touched. The "don´t touch me plant" is quite a sight to see.
After the tour through the forest we sat and viewed the volcano. The volcano is absoultely amazing. It has two cones, one is dormant and the other is a pyroclastic cone. It had previously been thought dormant because of 500 years of inactivity. In 1968, Arenal was no longer dormant. Three weeks before the eruption, Tabacon river had been getting very hot. Little did the townspeople know about why it turned hot. To this day the river remains hot due to geothermic activity. The eruption destroyed the town of Tabacon and killed 80 people. There is now a man-made lake above where the city used to be. There was a following eruption in 1975. Since then it has been consistantly active. There are mostly just large pyroclastic flows coming down the west side of the mountain. A pyroclastic flow is hot ash and rock as opposed to flowing lava. The sights and sounds are awesome.
From there, we went to the Baldi Hotsprings five star hotel, spa, and hotsprings. There were ten different pools all at different temperatures. The hottest that I went in was 118 degrees farenheit. The hottest pool there was 130 degrees farenheit and I stuck my legs in that one. The biggest pool was the size of a large courtyard with graden islands inside of it. It also had two cool pools inside the 113 degree one. In the back there was a lagoon completely surrounded (except for the entrance) with trees and bushes. You could sit in this pool and look at up at the glow from the volcano. The hotsprings were definately the highlight of the tour.
Also in La Fortuna is the picture perfect swimming hole. It is a pool in the river about 12 feet deep. There are two waterfalls coming into the pool. under one of the falls, there is a natural rock chair that you can sit in and look out from behind the waterfall. There is a great ropeswing which at it´s highest is about 17-20 feet. There are several spots to jump from ranging from 8 to 15 feet. We have gone there three of our four days here.
Before we came to La Fortuna, we were taking Spanish classes in Orosi. Orosi is about an hour and a half southeast of the capital, San Jose. It is high in the mountains surrounded by coffee farms. The classes were intense; three hours a day, one on one teaching, and a teacher who doesn´t speak much English. I didn´t learn so much but I recieved a lot of information. I just need to start rememboring and putting things together.
We have been staying in hostels along the way. They are awesome places. Over the few weeks we have been in them, we have met several dozens of peolple. They are all very good people with lots of information to share.
From here, we plan on going back to San Jose to fly to Quito, Ecuador. We will be paddling and taking boats from Coca, Ecuador down the Napo river to Iquitos, Peru. There are no road connections to Iquitos, it is only river accessible. From there, we will be going down rivers as far south as possible, towards Machu Pichu.
That´s all for now and make sure to keep checking in on the site. We can only put pictures up in certain places so bear with us in that department. Sorry for any misspellings of tropical plants!

Phil

After taking care of some logistics we are finally leaving San Jose for the small outpost of Orosi. Don't get me wrong, San Jose is an interesting place. Like most large cities, it's fun to visit but not to stay for too long. This has been our first exposure to Central America and an eye opening one at that. Open air markets, dirt bikes racing on beaten streets, exhaust fumes perfuming the hazy air, centuries old Spanish arcitecture...amazing!! Our hostel has been a placid refuge inside the noise, pollution and craziness of San Jose. You walk in the door of Tranquillo Backpackers to be greeted by friendly faces, psychedelic paintings on the walls, hammocks, green trees and music! From Bob Marley to Pearl Jam and everything in between. A very good place to aclimate ourselves to a very different world, one that we have only read about. Being here is intense and real. The reality of not speaking (or being able to read) the languge, having to exchange our currency for one that we are not familiar with, insects in the sink when your brushing your teeth, armed police and shop owners at every turn and poverty. It's what I have been looking forward to experiencing!
In Orosi we will take Spanish classes, as we will be in Spanish speaking countries for the next few months, it would be helpful to know the language. It is also located in the countryside, coffee plantations, forests, waterfalls and volcano's nearby. We can get outside to hike in the woods and not in a polluted city. Good posibility of no internet access so hang tight as far as the updates go! Adios! Jeff.

Tomorrow we leave San Jose for Orosi. We will be there until next weekend taking Spanish classes. Looking forward to getting out of the city and into the countryside where we will be able to hike, swim, and bike. We won't have internet access so please be patient about your e-mails being returned. We will be taking our classes at Montana Linda. Feel free to check out their website at www.montanalinda.com or do some research on Orosi!

Today is Wednesday, October the fifth. We arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica last night. We left from Miami where we had stayed on the beach for a few days. We took a taxi from the airport to Tranquilo Backpackers Hostel. Today, we walked around the city for the first time. It was amazing seeing all of the open markets and shops around the city. Our main setback now is the language. Neither of us speak Spanish, but luckily most of the people here speak some English. We will be in San Jose until at least Sunday when we will go to Orosi for a week long Spanish class. From there we will make our way down the Pacific coast of Central America eventually arriving in South America. Looking at the sheer size of the places we plan on going to, we are questioning how far around we will be able to go in our one year period of time. Also, we are deciding on whether or not to ditch about 50-60% of our stuff. We met a guy from New Zealand who has been traveling for three years now. We broke down what we had in our packs and he told us all the stuff we wouldn't need. We were relieved to hear that we probably wouldn't be needing most of our stuff. We havn't actually sent anything home yet due to a bit of skepticism. We are bringing the laptop with us now. We decided that to save space and weight it would be easier and much more functional than the external dvd burner we previously had. That's all for now so I'll check back later.

Phil

Hello again toute la monde, we're in South Beach, Miami right now. We have been here since Thursday and we are leaving on Tuesday the fourth for San Jose, Costa Rica. We are in a hotel one block away from the beach and in the middle of the historic Art Deco district, next to all the nightlife. Unfortunately, due to my being 15, club hopping isn't my cup of tea. The weather has been beautiful with the occasional rainfall. We have met quite a few really cool people and we are confident that we will run into more. One observation I have made is that there are more people out walking on the streets at 1:30 in the morning than there are at two in the afternoon. I thought that was pretty sweet. South Beach is definately not the cheapest place to find a bite to eat. Lunches start at around $13 for a sandwiche and only go up from there. All is well and we hope to get back to you soon.

Phil