I stepped out of my taxi and stood rooted to the ground in front of the train station. A tingle crawled from the bottom of my spine, goosebumps broke out on my arms and I blinked back the tears that threatened. Up to that point it hadn’t seemed real. Up to that point, it had … Read more
As my time in Ecuador grew to a close I vacillated over the best way to make the land border crossing between Ecuador and Peru. Although it was possible to take a bus directly south from Cuenca to Peru, the trip would have required an eight to ten-hours bus ride to Zumba, changing to a … Read more
Gravel spit from beneath the van’s wheels as we climbed into mountains erupting with picture-postcard spring colors. Though I enjoyed my time in Cuenca, it had been difficult to connect with the local culture in a city of half a million people, so I had opted for a day tour to explore tiny artisan villages … Read more
By the time I arrived in Cuenca I was stressed out and beaten down. Though rewarding, traveling through Ecuador had not been easy. I’d been seasick during my spectacular cruise with Ecoventura in the Galapagos Islands; sweaty and smelly in the Amazon jungle at Cuyabeno Lodge; and sardined into a bus full of Ecuadorians, where … Read more
High in the Andes Mountains, at the point where the Guasuntos and Chanchán Rivers meet, a gigantic rock known as El Nido del Condor (Nest of the Condor) soars more than 6,200 feet. I sat atop this massif, safely ensconced in a leather seat on board what has been dubbed “the most difficult railroad in the … Read more
