We did not know it ourselves until about a week ago, but the official currency of Ecuador is the US dollar. We had some dollars left from Panama, so we did not have to change too much money coming in to the country. It does turn out however, that a 50 dollar bill is unusable here… it’s just too much. Patrick tried a lot of different stores and petrol stations, but nowhere will they accept it. I guess that bill will have to go back in the emergency fund (for emergencies outside of Ecuador).
The weather was much nicer today and we managed to do some serious volcano-spotting. We had some trouble matching the volcanos with the right names – and the lack of internet access the past few days did not really help to clear up much. A nice lady at a fruit stand gave us a quick intro to the volcanoes surrounding us here. We bought a whole bag of fruit from her – which cost us only $1,50.
There’s the Cotopaxi volcano in the background. We were much closer to it yesterday but the visibility was poor due to the weather.
Then there’s the Sangay, spitting out smoke in the background
This unidentified mouton looks like it belongs in a Swiss chocolate advertisement
And finally, the Chimborazo volcano with an impressive 6,268m. If you stand on top of that volcano (I leave it up to you to judge if that is a wise thing to do), you’re the furthest distance from the earth’s core – even further than when you would be on top of Mount Everest!
The rest of the day took us through the mountains past Riobamba to the town of Canas, where we will spend the night. It has been a bit cold the last few days and we are looking forward to a hot shower. And by the way, it’s not because it’s cold that you cannot eat ice-cream. An ice-cream costs 25 cents here… finally our travel budget is recovering a bit!
And I said I need dollar dollar, a dollar is what I need
And if I share with you my story would you share your dollar with me
Keep Calm and Drive South 