To the equator! Quito, Ecuador

To start this, we want to thank everyone for everything during our time home:

Steph and Connor - for picking us up from the airport, giving us beer, letting us shower, and driving us to West O to meet family.

Matt and Kourtney - for coordinating Kobe reservations, communicating with Mom and Dad, chauffeuring us around, and especially for always taking such good care of our baby (Conan),

Mom and Dad (Tim & Chris) - for changing any plans you had and coming to the city to visit us and meet Kyle's mom and Bryan, especially on short notice and poor communication (Nicole says my bad). Teri and Bryan - for letting us be your temporary roommates, getting us a quick job for income, stocking the fridge, helping fix the throttle body, and letting us destroy your basement.

Nick and Cathina - for getting married so we had an excuse to come home and visit friends and family.

Kenton and Leah - for taking time to make a 24 hour extravaganza in KC with us.

Sierra, Ben, Abigail, John, and Lucy - For allowing us multiple FaceTime opportunities during maybe the craziest time ever for you.

Joe and Sophia - for giving us a grand tour of the new place and taking us to “Kyles birthday dinner” even a month later! We owe you.

Courtney, James, Isaac, Elijah, Ashley E, Josh, Ashley L (I almost put Ashley A), Derick, Violet, Erin, Ryan, Reid, Zach, and Brenden - for coming down to Redeye or letting us stop by on short term notice

Jay and Tammi - for coming to catch up and enjoy piña coladas with us

Julie, Andy, Kevin, Ella, and Harper - for putting us up in KC, allowing us to ditch a vehicle with you, staying up late on a work night, and taking us to the airport in the morning.

....and a shoutout to 3Js auto repair for fixing one of the 2 things that was broken in Kyle's truck same day in the short time we were back!

After our quick trip back to Nebraska, we flew to Quito, Ecuador. On our way out, we actually departed from the Kansas City airport after staying the night with family (thanks again, Andy and Julie). When we arrived at the airport….a 45 minute drive away…Kyle realized he had forgotten his backpack at Julie and Andy’s. It was not his big clothing backpack but his smaller backpack where he keeps his "important things in case the big backpack doesn't make it." Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to go back and get the bag, but we took stock of what was missing and what we'd have to just do without....and we realized most items we could buy fairly cheap in Ecuador. And speaking of buying things in Ecuador: It also came as a shock to us that the official currency in Ecuador is - wait for it - the US dollar. WHAT?! No beneficial exchange rates for bringing cash this time, which was slightly disappointing after Argentina.

We had prepared ourselves for what we thought Ecuador would be: a country along the equator full of hot, humid jungles and beachy coastlines. However, we started our journey in the capital, Quito, which is actually one of the highest elevation cities in the world at 2,850m/9,350 ft up in the Andean highlands. The high temperature during our time there was around 65 degrees and most days in the city tend to be cloudy with occasional sprinkles (although we ended up with much more rain than that, as you will see). We arrived on a Friday night around 9:30 pm with no real plan of attack. We decided to eat at the brewery across the street (avacodo and cheese arepas and a lamb-meat pizza, along with Chicha, an ancient Incan type of beer made from corn) before coming back and calling it a night after minimal sleep the night before and a day full of traveling. We woke up Saturday to catch up on all of our blogs (if you’re reading this you probably know that we were slacking). We took the day to GSD (Get Shit Done), which included haircuts, blogging, instagram (@nebraskanomads), buying stuff Kyle left behind, and planning what to actually do in Ecuador. We had an amazing rooftop bar/restaurant at our hostel which is where all of the planning was done (accompanied by beers and the Ecuadorian highland specialty of Canelazo, and a warm cinnamon/citrus type of drink). We found a local street lined with shops to purchase many necessities (and a fried plantain with cheese), along with SIM cards for our phones.

Feeling accomplished, we woke up Sunday to join a free walking tour of Quito. Though it was a bit overcast and rained on and off throughout our walk, we learned about the history of Quito, some local superstitions, how the USD came to be the official currency in Ecuador, the significance of guinea pigs for both medicine and a food source, and important things to eat, which included samples of rum filled candies (called mistela), chocolate, ice cream, and caca de perrito (“dog crap”…..which is actually brown sugar coated corn). The group voted Kyle to be the person who had to buy this for us all, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed watching him order in Spanish! As our guide says: Chulla Vida (Ecuadorians say it for You Only Live Once).

When the tour concluded, we decided to grab a late lunch at the Central Market with another member from our tour. The Market is actually mostly food stalls with extremely cheap traditional foods (full plates for ~$2.00), with only a handful of actual shops. We opted for fried pork and llapingachos mixto (cheesy potato cakes, with pickled beets, egg, lamb meat, pork sausages, and salad). Kyle tried his first aji sauce here, a supposedly non-spicy (at least, he thought it wasn't going to be spicy) chili type sauce. After a satisfying lunch, complete with fresh fruit batidos (like a milkshake), we headed back to our hostel briefly before finding a sports bar to watch the NFL playoffs. While the sports bar we found had a very suburban-Chili‘s style vibe, we enjoyed the Michelada specials and the fact that every TV had the game on. We had an absolute blast watching the Bengals beat the Chiefs - but decided to head back to our hostel rooftop for the second game. We had a few other rooftop spectators watching and drank warm canelazos during the game, while also ordering dinner and enjoying the spectacular views of Quito at night.

We awoke to another rainy day and, after breakfast (note that we ate a lot of meals in Quito at our hostel as they had an amazing kitchen staff, and food was half off after we left a good review), decided to make it another planning day. We finalized our plans for our next Workaway, looked up bus schedules, researched new COVID restrictions and openings around the world, backed up photos, and charged devices. While these types of days are never the most exciting, it does feel nice to get caught up on things and have some semblance of a gameplan. While we love flying by the seat of our pants, we also like to capitalize on time as it always seems to go too quickly. We headed to the Central Market again where Kyle had visceral lamb bits and clotted blood soup (this was his rough translation, and it tasted MUCH better than it sounds), while Nicole opted for a fish soup. Both came with popcorn and plantains. Afterwards we headed to the shopping street to get some items that Kyle had left behind and were much needed, such as a beard trimmer (which only cuts the face/neck a little bit), a backpack, shoes (okay, actually Nicole got the shoes), and a long sleeve shirt. Once we had all necessities, the rain still bleating on, we decided to try and hike up a nearby hill to the "Quito" sign overlooking the city. Unfortunately, the park was closed and we were drenched so we headed back to safety and packed up for the early bus in the morning. We decided to use our last night to explore the popular street La Ronda, which is a pedestrian only street full of restaurants, bars, and craft shops. We found a corned spot and got a pitcher of canelazo (the same warm cinnamon/aguardiente/fruit drink) and empanada de viento to split (a GIANT cheese and "air" filled empanada with sugar on top), and learned upon our arrival that it was actually a karaoke spot. We ended up closing the place down….not that it was super late but they were closing early due to lack of traffic because of the heavy rain.

The next morning, we left the hostel around 6:00am to catch our 7:15 bus, and we were both feeling a little queasy (maybe it was the clotted blood in Kyle's soup?). Upon arriving at the station, we eventually found the correct bus line, bought our $6 tickets and some sprite for our stomachs, and boarded our bus to the coast. The drive down from the mountains was absolutely stunning, albeit a very winding/curvy road and the busses do NOT take it easy on these roads, often going around slow driving cars. Waiting for a non-windy part Kyle finally made it to the bus bathroom and we learned a valuable lesson: You DO NOT go #2 on a bus in Ecuador unless you want to be publicly shamed for 5 minutes (seriously, the bus driver stopped the bus and shouted at Kyle before we took off again...he was embarrassed but was feeling much better at this point). We ended up changing busses a couple of more times after that (note that if you're ever travelling through Jipijapa, they REALLY want your business, the bus terminal is full of bus company employees shouting for you to join them), and we arrived in Puerto Cayo around 5:30 pm. A quick moto taxi ride (actually a Tuk Tuk!) brought us to our home for the next few weeks, which we will explain more about in our next blog!

Levi's shirt count: 309