June 18-19, 2009 – Horseback Riding and then Oh Oh

Andrew on Horse in Banos, Ecuador, originally uploaded by Andrew & Yvette's world travel.

The day started beautiful enough with the clouds going away just in time for a sunny day of horseback riding. Our horses galloped during certain stretches and Andrew and I realized that it’s actually quite painful when they go faster than a trot.

After that, Andrew had an ingenious idea of renting a road buggy to go up to the Bellavista viewpoint. The viewpoint is actually off limits for buggies but we figured if the road was paved and the gas was on full tank, why not??? Well, the reason is because buggies have small engines and the road up is actually quite steep. The buggy was revving at 8000 rpm and lemme tell you, we were definitely scared for portions at a time. But of course, we made it up, took some quick pics, and then had a blast during the downhill portion.

I got a hot stone massage for $25 after that and while I was relaxing, Andrew’s stomach was doing anything but. However, we had found a Kingdom Hall that had their meeting that day and there was no way we were missing that. We came in to the Banos Spanish Congregation where we were promptly greeted by everyone. Andrew had been practicing our Spanish the whole day and it came in pretty handy for the 20 minutes that we were there. Yup you read right, 20 minutes. Shortly after the meeting started, we had to leave because Andrew threw up in the bathroom and was feeling really awful. The person we sat next to tried to help us go to a doctor but the md office was kinda far and so we settled for just trying to make it back to the hotel.

At the hotel, Andrew threw up several times and despite the heat and humidity, wore his Hot Chillys because of the chills. Thankfully, a doctor was able to make a house call for only $35. The MD diagnosed Andrew with a parasitic stomach infection and told us that our already bad night was only going to get worse. Basically, in addition to the chills which were replaced with the fever, headache, nausea, restless feet and everything else, I now had to help Andrew get to the bathroom fast enough for his diarrhea. So, I went downstairs and got more diarrhea/vomit paper and prepared myself for what was to become a very long and sleepless night.

Another thing we had to worry about was our bus ride back to Quito on the 19th. The MD had told us that Andrew was on the verge of a full blown infection (read: diarrhea-MAJOR) so we were definitely concerned about our bus ride back to Quito. We couldn’t postpone the bus ride, the buses didn’t have bathrooms, and they don’t stop along the way. So the question was: Paper or Plastic?

The answer was neither (although I armed myself with both, plus facemask, gloves and sanitizer) as we had a well equipped pharmacy in our luggages. The parasites that Andrew most likely got from screaming “AAHH” during the class 4 rapids from rafting were no match for our US strength antibiotics which promptly started killing the parasites infecting Andrew’s stomach.

We arrived safely at the Swissotel where my delight was doubled at being upgraded to a suite that had TWO bathrooms; one of which Andrew used promptly upon entering.

After a nice dinner with Andrew’s coworker and daughter who kindly brought our replacement gear (read June 4), we were finally ready for country #3: Peru.