4:38 a.m.  Leanne is now naturally waking up at the same time as locals rise.  We learn the locals drink tea made from cassava leaves at 4 am to get energized for the day and get work done before the sun blares down. Today we must leave and the teens are so good at being up and ready these days. 

None of us want to leave this magical place nestled hours of travel deep in the rainforest on this lake teaming with fish, insects, birds and reptiles. Well maybe a couple of us do want to leave.  Ashlynn shares that it was not as bad as she had been fearing it would be. And yes snakes!  The rainforest is so very important for their and our survival. 

We take our 30-min canoe ride to the motorized canoe and learn that they found a hat left in one of our rooms.  This is premier customer service — they sent a second canoe after us to return the hat.  Wow! On the Napo River, we speedboat back two hours upstream.  Fortunately it is not torrentially pouring rain like when we came. Kyle chats with Mary from Vancouver where she told him stories of her son who worked in Dubai after college and went on a desert tour with a guide.  When they were out in the desert the guide demanded all his money to take him back. After forking all his money and getting dropped off in the city, he discovered the guide stole his wallet and cell phone.  Kyle makes a note to self to ONLY use TripAdvisor 5 star guides in Dubai (and elsewhere for that matter). 

On the boat ride, we also contemplate the environmental impact on the Amazon we have learned about in Ecuador.  Brazil’s burning and deforestation of the Amazon has been fairly well-publicized; however, the deforestation problem is no less serious in Ecuador, just less publicized.  Back in the 2008 – 2010 Great Recession, Ecuador ran into trouble paying its national debt so it did a deal with the devil in what has become known as the cash of oil deal.  China gave them $3 billion cash and Ecuador owed them $3 billion in oil.  Ecuador is seriously dependent on oil but at the time, they had enough oil reserves to pay the $3 billion without tapping the oil in the Amazon.

Major problem number one is that the initial cash for oil deal turned into a line of credit for Ecuador and before you know it the $3 billion turned into $16 billion owed. No Bueno.  Major problem number two is that the price of oil has dropped in half.  Back of the envelope math – they received 5 times the original amount in cash and now owe 10 times the original amount of oil with the drop in oil prices.  This has forced the Ecuadorian government to start drilling in the Amazon and clearing out the land to do so.

Our guide Dan has told us that the deforestation of an area for oil drilling is only the first problem.  The real problem is that the government lays the infrastructure to access the oil site and soon large amounts of people are moving there and the deforestation is multiplied many times over. 

To put the Amazon problem in perspective, the Rainforest supplies 20% of the world’s oxygen and at the current rate of deforestation, the Amazon will be virtually wiped out in 40 years.  We have witnessed many oil drilling sites just on our two hour boat ride. This is certainly eye-opening for us and saddens us at what we are doing to our planet.

We take the 30 minute flight from Coca to Quito, Ecuador’s capital and the first-ever UNESCO World Heritage City designated in 1978 for its cultural importance.  In fact, each UNESCO World Heritage Site is inscribed with the number that represents the order the site was designated.  The site with the number one is The Galapagos Islands and the site with the number two was the city of Quito.  We joke that the president of UNESCO in 1978 must have been Ecuadorian.  

Quito is a big city and it takes us an hour to get from the airport to the hotel. Upon arriving, we find the doors are shut tight at 2pm. Hmmm.  There is a security camera and buzzer on the wall. We press the buzzer and smile at the camera. A minute later we hear the locks and bolts being undone and the door swings open.  A super friendly guy greets us and takes our luggage inside. Strange that the hotel is on locked down mode as we are right in the city center and at a highly rated TripAdvisor rated hotel.

We head out to explore Ecuador’s capital city which is at 9,350 ft elevation.  In fact, it’s the second highest capital city in the world after La Paz in Bolivia.  After Mount Everest at 16,000 feet and the Inca Trail at 14,000 feet, this altitude seems much more manageable.

Beautiful squares are flanked by majestic Catholic cathedrals.  In the main square of Plaza Grande, as Kyle was snapping away pictures of the Presidential Palace and Cathedral, we are approached by a police officer. “Buenos días,” the police officer says to us in a pleasant tone, “Cómo estás?” “Bien,” Leanne responds, wondering if we jay-walked or did something else equally offensive; however, she thinks the policia wouldn’t be so nice if he were about to haul us off to jail. 

The officer merely suggested to us to keep our cell phones away in our pockets or bags and not just in our hands.  He says, “it’s not a good idea to hold your phone in your hand.  You should just take a quick photo and put phone away.” After eight months of travel, this was a first. The main square is super busy and the police presence is strong.  Now, we are starting to understand the hotel lockdown. Apparently, Quito is a little less safe than we thought.

Still, it’s the middle of the day and we only have one afternoon here, so we trekked through Quito to visit four churches.  The first is the famous Basilica del Voto Nacional which is a gigantic church with two tall towers.  The kids head up to explore the towers while Kyle buys tickets. When Kyle arrives on the elevator, the kids are huddled around a tour guide with a vest.  He is thinking it’s a free guide provided by the church.  She hustles them around the different floor until Kyle realizes that the “free” guide actually works for Somak Travel and is pitching day tours for the rest of our stay.  When Kyle tells her that we are leaving tomorrow, she appears visibly deflated and the tour ends soon afterwards.

Next we hit La Campania, a Jesuit church from 1500s.  Inside, the entire church gleamed with gold from the altar to the roof to side vestibules.  Kyle tries to sneak a photo and gets immediately reprimanded.  

There are numerous artensiañ chocolate shops as the Ecuadorian chocolate have risen in global recognition of late. We try 100 percent cacao chocolate and find it a bit bitter for our buds yet the chocolate with roses, salt, lemongrass and guyano are truly extraordinary.  

We are a bit spent so we can’t muster up the kind of attention a city like Quito truly deserves of us.  The altitude once again drains us so we have a very quick pizza dinner nearby loving the city’s lit-up treasures at night.  As we arrive at the pizza place, it looks like it is closed.  However; upon further inspection, the doors are merely locked and the manager buzzes the door open when he sees us and determines we are not a threat to rob him at gunpoint.  The walk back to the hotel after on the empty dark street is a little unnerving as Quito seems to be the city that is not quite as safe as we thought.

Justin stays in tonight, which never happens.  He is always up for family dinner even if it’s just him and the parents who may have preferred a rare chance at a date night. Unfortunately, he is still battling a cold that seems to be passing back and forth amongst the boys. Close quarters does not help.  

Sun should help.  Fortunately this weekend we are just beaching it in Cartagena, Colombia.  Catching up on sleep.  Hopefully  Doralis and Bibiana - our former au pairs and now career woman in Bogota - will join us there.  However both have started new jobs and time off —even on the weekends — is hard to secure.