Day one in Ecuador and I woke with a screaming headache.  I knew right away it was from the unaccustomed altitude (9000 feet), I drank as much water as possible until my headache dissipated. The big plans for today are to walk and familiarize ourselves with the neighborhood and find the grocery store or Supermercado. We had street maps and verbal directions from Sandra (received between 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM after a full day of travel, not to mention the elevation issue) directing us to the Supermercado, a hardware store, a bakery/coffee shop, the trolley and the bus stops. She told it would be an easy walk to the grocery store but take a taxi back – it would cost $1.50 for the taxi ride. The coffee shop, fruit stands and hardware store are more “level” so in Sandra’s opinion, would be easy to walk both ways.

We found out exactly what Sandra was talking about. I believe anything less than a 45 degree angle is considered “level”. Our flat is located on a very steep hill and everything to see or do is at least a mile or so lower than where we are. Early on, we discovered that the easy / downhill part of our daily journeys are always at the start of the trek, when we are fresh and full of energy. I think we are both going to have extremely strong leg muscles when we finish this trip. (By the way, we never did take the taxi back from grocery shopping. It was uphill all the way – we had to stop to catch our breath several times on that trip.) You cannot tell from the photos but it really is Very steep.

We explored on foot all day and put on well over 5 miles, mostly up hill and other than our landlady Sandra, no one speaks English. So the good news is we are being forced to brush up on Spanish.