fiesta etc.

 these are the pictures from my small pink camera that i always have with me. for example to go partying, i don't normally take my huge canon :-) and because this camera has a very strange memory card, i had to look for an internet cafe for so long, to be able to put the photos on my usb. so that's why here are pictures from a period of almost 2 months.

 first night out in quito, at a club called bungalow. next to me the house owner of where i lived, some friends of him, natalia (she lived with me in the house) and on the right, giga.

ladies night at arctic bar, secret tip of our german friend tobi (left). me, markus, giga and his host sister for a week, isabelle.

well, that's ladies night in quito. they play twlilight in the club.

 jessy and markus, james bond-style. on the right, i'm shooting them with the billiard cue.

that was on st. patrick's day in the irish pub "finn mccools"

most of the people were crazy, drunk, irish guys like that one :-)

...or my friends wearing strange stuff :-)

(including green beard. i only realized that when we came out of the pub, as inside it was dark. i was quite surprised!)

when jessy lost us, she found that girl that also had lost her friends.

different day, same place. one afternoon, while watching a football match switzerland-germany. unfortunately, markus won 7-0.

that's why i needed a tequila :-)

swiss girl with 2 german boys. markus understood my swissgerman, tobi didn't. so we spoke spanish as i wasn't in the mood to talk highgerman.

rooftop-party with jessy and markus (taking the picture)

i was invited to the concert of manu chao and calle 13!! was amazing!

here, it's the most normal thing to eat lollipops when you're going out. it's almost like smoing a cigarette. during the concert, the indigenous women with the boxes around their necks were selling them.

CALLE 13 <3

the concert was in the olimpic stadium "atahualpa", just next to my house. as it was outside and raining all the time, we got quite wet. but it was cool anyways!

my first weekend back in quito, i missed partying so much as there are only trees and alpacas in sierra flor.

this night, we went to bungalow again. actually, i didnt' want to, but it was a good idea :-)

when i came back from toilet, these girls were there. nobody knew who they were, but apparently, they were fun :-)

next day, dinner at coffee tree with estrella. we had spaghetti and with that, you get a glass of wine. but as it was as cold as always, she ordered a coffee and was quite ashamed of that :-)

 next day, lunchtime. coffee tree again (as you can imagine, it's the place we always meet. it's a restaurant on plaza foch, the center of the party area.) i ordered an ice tea, and that's what came. it was good though.

giga explaining me something about a guy he saw in a club. it ought to be tobi, my german friend. and he was with a strange guy that was doing "this" with his glasses all the time. but in fact, tobi was already in columbia since 2 weeks, so giga was talking to a stranger :-)

 that weekend, jessy and giga told me that they would go fishing. it was already the second attempt. so they drove all the way there, and the last 10 minutes they couldn't go further as some rocks fell down the mountain. they were really depressed because they didn't have the fishing experience. so we decided to "go fishing" in quito, with all the water that comes down it should be easy.

same picture, camera turned.

other quito experience: when i met the girls, they came with this masks from a birthday party at their house.

unbelievable: in no-bar, there is a poster about fishing! destiny.

that night, we went to 7 different places. when we came out of finn mccools, jessy saw this pretty flower, so we decided to take a picture. i think it's actually pretty cool!

next stop: strawberry fields! i always wanted to go to this bar, because it's full of beatles stuff, and all the drinks are called like songs of them. we never went, as it was always empty. but this night, quito was just unusable. either, the barkeeper (about 45 years old) was dancing as if he was running, or the music was just s***. so we thought: here, at least the decoration is cool.

weekend in baños

guillo, paco and mary

the boys

 

as julian wasn't hungry anymore, he made a gourmet plate out of the rest of the risotto. then he ate it. he outsmarted himself, i felt like with my babies at work :-)

one day, coming home from latacunga, we saw the volcano (which actually is 2 volcanoes, as the crater is split) called "los ilinizas".

baños

 last weekend, i went to a small town called baños about 4 hours south of quito with some friends from the capital. it's famous for so many adventure sports, about 60 waterfalls and hot spring pools. that's the view from our first hotel, called club ejecutivo. really good hotel for not much money!

 that's one of these tourist-vans to see the route of the waterfalls. instead of doing that, we rented a jeep :-)

cool wall in fron of the hotel

main square with the church

inside the church, during mass. i'm such a respectless tourist taking pictures while the people are praying :-)

 in front of the church, you can buy a lot of unnecessary stuff.

on saturday morning, while looking for a place to have breakfast, we decided spontaneously to go canyoning. that's climbing down waterfalls. these are the first two we did.

 julian going down the first one.

and me! i was afraid to release my arms for the picture :-)

 group picture. the 5 on the left is our group, the 4 on the right are people we didn't know.

paco (orange helmet on the left) wend diving a bit in the third waterfall.

...so i climbed down on the other side.

the fourth one was a slide. i was the first person to go down there and was so not prepared for a different way of going down. the guide just told me: "sit down, put your arms like that" and then pushed me. was great fun though!

 that's the fifth and last waterfall. 45 meters, free fall. first, you had to climb a few meters down, as always. then, you were at the edge and had to let yourself fall back. i was almost telling the guide that i wanted to return, but then he already had let me go :-)

guillo hanging around.

 me after the free fall. the last bit was slowly :-)

picture of the whole cascada.

 paco in horizontal position :-)

our group after the adventure!

then, we went back to the town to eat in the best restaurant in the whole country. it's so authentically swiss, amazing! and the best thing is that you can't even have rice (here, you eat rice all day long. and nothing more)

the menu, i so felt at home :-)

paco and mary looking at the flags of the cantons.

paco had milanese, mary and guillo stroganov. all of them with rösti!! before, i tried to explain that dish. as they didn't know what hash browns was, it was quite difficult and they thought it was like potato-balls-purée.

julian had "züri gschnätzlets" and in my frying pan there is pizokel. was so delicious!

after lunch, we wanted to rent some vehicle to do the route of the waterfalls. we didn't take this one, we decided to take a jeep.

driving through a lot of tunnels to get there!

and also over a few bridges...

on the parking space, there was a bus with "jesus, my loyal friend" on and some geese.

 that was our jeep, with our julian :-)

walking down to the waterfall, we took a picture with a boa. happy she didn't strangle us!

 "welcome to the best tourist center in ecuador"

 huge rocks

 waterfall "pailon del diablo", translated like "devils big frying pan" because there is such a huge basin where the water falls into.

top of the waterfall with some bridge.

 that's "grieta del cielo". you have to crawl through a cave to get to the top of the waterfall. and all of that just for getting wet :-)

yeah, it's cool :-)

on our way back, it was already dark. but anyways, we were able to see the "manto de la novia", fiancées gown or something like that... really pretty!

baños by night. in these streets, there is an uncountable number of agencies that sell adventure trips and vehicles to do fun stuff.

these two guys are making the candy that you see in front. it's too sweet to eat!

in the park, some old men are there with toy-horses to take pictures with.

before taking the bus home, we waited on the bridge. you can do bungee jumping there, but i think climbing down the waterfalls was enough for me :-)

baños

guillo is trying to take a picture of all of us. then, i came with my tripod :-)

and that's the result. weekend was really good. thanks amiguis :-)