Vilcabamba

This week was quite the adventure.  We decided to make the LONG and VERY CURVY drive to Vilcabamba, a city in the Providence of Loja near the border of Peru.  

City of Loja entrance

Mural in the city of Loja

The countryside was spectacular we were in awe of how stunning and massive the mountains were.  It's such a stark contrast to the mountains of Montana, which are more peaks, these mountains are covered in green grass and forests and are higher in elevation but since they're on the equator there's no snow.  

The way to Vilcabamba we were feeling great and looking forward to a great time exploring the area.
We arrived at our cute hotel Madre Tierra, which sat on the side of a mountain overlooking the sleepy town and surrounding mountains.

We were sooooo excited with how quaint and cool our room was and were in awe of the HOT water with the added bonus of GREAT PRESSURE!! :)  The shower was amazing considering we haven't showered without losing water pressure in our flat in months and not to mention it's NEVER hot!! Simple pleasures... :)  The only down fall was the ENORMOUS black spiders that would crawl out onto the walls at sunset and all throughout the night.  I found one a foot above my head while sleeping.. I guess this is what you get when choosing to stay in an Ecolodge, no use of chemicals or poisons. So yep, we had our creepy visitors each night... :(

Loving the modern conveniences! :)

Our room!

Taking a rest and watching a little Dora the Explorer (appropriate)

We absolutely LOVED the views from our room!! :)

Stunning!! This is a sacred mountain in the Incan history.  The valley was the place for royalty to vacation and they believed the mountain protected them from natural disasters

These two LOVED the hammocks!! :)  

I was feeling so good while  in Vilcabamba so we decided to try horse back riding.  I grew up with horses, but haven't ridden in years.  I absolutely LOVED every minute of it.  So did Coco...

All smiles!! 

This was a bridge over a BEAUTIFUL river.. I'm sad we didn't get a picture of the river.. :( 

Coco and her horse Prince

Great horses!! 

Riding through downtown Vilcabamba

Vilcabamba

Videos from our ride! :)

That night we came home to a beautiful dinner at our hotel.  Met some wonderful people and enjoyed great conversations. 

Coco was intrigued with our neighbor who was water painting outside his room.  We quietly snapped this picture from our window.  It was cute how intense she was in learning what he was doing.  

Dinner each night is on a beautiful veranda overlooking the valley

Cheers to memories!

The next day we decided to go for a hike.  We'd heard of a reserve that a couple of biologists had founded and had marked many species of plants and identified different types of butterflies and insects.  I was feeling great and not nauseated up till this point so we decided to check it out.  When the taxi dropped us off at the entrance to the reserve there was no one around and we could see a sign for an ecolodge, which we decided would probably be the best bet at finding a map or some sort of direction.  When we came to the lodge it was literally a shack built on stilts.  An older lady came out and explained that we guide ourselves and handed us a map.  She wasn't friendly and quickly explained different trails in her broken English.  She pointed to one and said it was her favorite and reassured us that Coco would probably do fine on it.  Lets just say I think she was drinking too much of the hallucinogenic tea the valley's known for, because...

THE HIKE WAS CRAZY!! I was terrified.  I grew up in Montana and had spent years with my family hiking in the wildernesses of the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat, Glacier National Park and even Idaho's Selway wilderness, this was absolutely foreign to any hiking I had done before.  First off, the insects were HUGE, the spiders and their webs were intimidating.  I don't think anyone had hiked the trail in a quite a while (it needed a good machete chopping) the jungle was thick, the trail was barely visible at times and you could see that on rainy days the trail becomes a waterfall streaming down the mountain.

This was the trail at the start, you could at least see it.  

This is sections in which we were literally climbing on hands and knees

Big sections were taken out of the trail.

This kid is meant to hike!! She LOVED every minute (except the large grasshoppers), but she was incredible wanting to keep going.

We started to make our way out of the jungle and the terrain became dry and full of cactus which was a challenge to avoid especially when there was little to grab or hold onto.  Not to mention there are many huge trees that have large thorns which makes you constantly cautious about grabbing onto for help.  Coco was amazing...  Then came the cliffs, these were intense especially with a 4.5 year old and being pregnant...

It was all WORTH every minute... When we finally got to the top, we were AMAZED at the beautiful views... Not to mention it was all ours, no one else came across our path or disrupted our solitude.

Taking it all in... 

My munchkin..

On top of the world

I had shared the below picture on Facebook of me sitting on top of the Rocky Mountain divide in Glacier National Park after an intense hike in which I was 7 weeks pregnant with Coco.  This picture now in Ecuador in the Andes is a beautiful memory of being 7 week pregnant with this new blessing...

After our hike we went back to our hotel and went swimming, which I couldn't believe Coco had enough energy to do after our hike.. .



That night we met some of our friends from Cuenca at another hotel in Vilcabamba, we watched the sunset, had dinner and then played some intense games of ping pong.  It was weird, but cool to have already made friends we could meet up with in other parts of Ecuador.

Our friend Rich took an amazing picture of the sunset that evening!! :)

Jen and I playing a heated game of ping pong.  She beat me :( 

Another beautiful picture taken by our friend Rich of Vilcabamba

The next day we said goodbye to the magical valley of Vilcabamba and drove the 4 hours back home to Cuenca, just in time since the next 5 days I was very sick with morning sickness.  I was never this sick with Coco.  I found it challenging locating the simplest things like ginger tea in Cuenca grocery stores and instead had to comb the markets for ginger root, which we quickly learned how to boil into a wonderful tea.

Valentines day was no exception to the sickness.  We decided to hang at home and have a celebration with Coco.  I made dinner and we bought a cake, since I can't make one (sans oven).  She absolutely had a blast and honestly it was one of my favorite Valentines ever.  :)

All ready for Valentines Day!! :) 

She got a new coin purse 

I had a quick reprieve from sickness and made a yummy dinner.. 

We had a beautiful night... :)

We found the beauty of nature this week to be overwhelming to all our senses...

I found this quote to be very meaningful...

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us.. We can never have enough of nature.” 

― Henry David Thoreau

Beauty out of Ashes

This past Sunday, Jared woke up bright and early for a run, as he was winding through the streets of Cuenca he began to notice people were wearing masks or scarves.  The air did look cloudy, but nothing serious, until he decided to sit on the grass and stretch and began to notice a black dust covering his clothing.  He quickly asked a passer by why he was wearing a mask and he responded "MUCHO BOOM QUITO".  Jared realized it must be the TUNCURAHUA volcano near Banos, which we had actually booked to stay at the base that night and the following two days, but a hiccup in pay had cut our trip short.

The next couple days the ash was everywhere, Coco and I wore scarves each day and tried not inhaling too much ash.  The city of Cuenca decided to "sweep" up the ash rather than use water to spray the streets because they were worried about it clogging the sewer system of the city, so you can imagine how much of it was being pushed into the air.  We've since heard conflicting stories that Cuenca has only had ash like this once 60 years ago and someone else said its never experienced this before.  Either way we of course felt honored to be participating in this amazing event, not.

Actually we felt very grateful that we were far from Banos and how close we had come to being there.  Seems like Jared and I always have close calls when traveling places, like while in Morocco our favorite restaurant that we would go to each day, was bombed 1 month to the day of our being there by a suicide bomber. The hot air balloon ride we took over the Nile in Egypt, the same balloon burst into flames only a couple months after we took our ride and a plane we had flown on from Rio to Manaus Brazil crashed into the amazon jungle a week after our flight. Then of course there's the earthquake in Haiti, we had only been there one month prior to that tragic event.  So this was the first time we were actually stopped prior to the adventure.   So needless to say we are grateful for everyone's prayers on this journey.

ANNOUNCEMENT

So as many of you know we announced the future arrival of our new family member this coming fall.  What's really amazing and not many people know this but we have been trying for over a year and have had no luck, but as soon as we step out in faith and move here it happens.  :) We are absolutely excited and I would've never expected after so long to find out while on this amazing adventure.  We are elated.  Coco is over the moon with excitement which is why we felt we needed to let the news out so soon, as she tells "EVERYONE" that Momma has a baby in her tummy.

Today, she looked at my belly and said "see Momma you're belly is getting so big".... my reaction yikes.... I shouldn't be showing yet, lol!! :)

Of course we smeared ash on our face to make the photo more dramatic. :) I loved that Coco wanted us to write when it comes to the Brown Familia "We're Loco, From Coco"

OUR NEW NEIGHBORS

We finally met our new neighbors and they were a nice couple from Colorado. They became instantly upset when the Internet was slightly spotty, which usually happens when you have too many people streaming. They were here for missions with the Jehovah's Witness, whom you would've thought would've made them aware of some of these conditions, especially in the old part of Cuenca.

We only really saw them for two days, because their first morning here we happened to all get up and use the showers (in our separate apartments) at the same time, which blew the power out. :(  In order to get this fixed our landlords (who are amazing at getting whatever we need done promptly) had to call the power company and it wasn't fixed until 3:00 p.m.  We had told them we would be happy to figure out a schedule so we wouldn't end up showering at the same time again, but between the spotty Internet (which really isn't spotty they just used it, ALOT), the power having gone out and the propane stove cooking, most of which they knew prior to leasing the flat, they moved out two days later.

Coco was soooo sad to see them go as they were super friendly and nice to her, but honestly we are pleased to have our peace and quite back... :)  They were constantly complaining about stuff.

DADDY'S DAY WITH COCO

I had to do work, so Jared took Coco out for the day.  They had an absolute blast exploring the city.  He somehow found a staircase to the top of the cathedral and they enjoyed the views and ate their oreo cookies.

Oreo Cookies=her favorite

800 steps to the top and we're already at 8500 feet!!! She's been so tough this trip.

She absolutely loves the squares and the flower markets.  She doesn't ever pass one without bringing her Momma a flower :)

OUT AND ABOUT

Here are some more pictures of our days and walks around Cuenca.  I have been feeling VERY tired, but then again we are still walking about 4 to 5 miles a day.

The most popular square in the city Parque De Calderon

Coco thought this mural was cool, she thought it looked like it was going to grab her. :)

Taking a much needed break on one of the many beautiful stair cases throughout the city

We will be leaving Monday to the amazing village of Vilcabamba, south towards the Peru boarder. It is known as the "valley of longevity" because there are many people over a hundred living in great health.  We will be checking it out!! :)

On a final note:  We have been enjoying the church we've been attending here in Cuenca

Last week's message I thought was hugely appropriate with the city being covered in ashes and our announcing of our pregnancy the pastor preached an amazing message titled

"BEAUTY OUT OF ASHES"  

Sometimes that's how I feel on this journey, we were literally feeling exhausted, miserable and having no time for each other as a family and desperately needed a "time-out".  We now truly see all God was doing when He sent us on this journey.